Phineas stopped his gentle drumming. “What? Who else?”
"Jimmy the Bastard.”
“This lad who has absconded with the money from your father’s strong-box? His mouth must be shut at once! I consider him far more dangerous than the woman!”
“You’re right,” Raymond said evenly. “I should think he’d demand a high price for giving up the chance of being able to call me — Raymond the Bastard.”
Phineas winced, and glanced at his nephew’s broad back with an expression of distaste. “Really, Raymond, must you?”
Raymond laughed mirthlessly. “Don’t you like the sound of it? Well, if you don’t, what do you think I feel about it?”
“Properly managed, there is no reason why anyone should—”
Raymond wheeled about. “God, can’t you see. Even it I could shut Jimmy’s and Martha’s mouths, I know the truth, don’t I? I’m not Penhallow of Trevellin! I’m just another of Father’s bastards! I’ve no more right here than Jimmy! Do you think I can take that thought to bed with me every night, get up with it every morning, carry it with me all through every day? No, you don’t understand! Why should you? You weren’t brought up to believe yourself Penhallow of Trevellin: it doesn’t mean a thing to you! But it means something to me! You and your land deals! What have you ever cared for the land? What have you ever known about it? I’ve never cared for anything else. Trevellin, and my name! Well, I haven’t got a name, and if I hold “Trevellin it’ll be by the courtesy of my nurse, and my fellow-bastard! I can’t stand it, I tell you!”
“My dear fellow, you’re — you’re overwrought!” Phineas said, looking frightened. “You don’t know what you’re saying! No doubt the whole affair has been too much for you. Naturally I understand how you feel, but really there is no reason for these — well, really, I must say these heroics! If you do not care to approach your nurse, I am perfectly willing to act for you, but I do feel—”
“You’ll keep your nose out of it!” Raymond said savagely. “That was one thing Father told you that was true! You’d get your damned smug face scratched open if you approached Martha, as you call it! If Father told her to keep her mouth shut, she will; if he didn’t, there’s nothing you or I can do about it, and — hell, I won’t buy my place here!”
“Of course, if you believe that your father’s wishes would influence the woman to such a great extent—”
“She was his mistress for years. Didn’t you know? Cared for him, too. I never knew why: he wasn’t any more faithful to her than to any of the rest of them.”
“Need we go into that?” said Phineas disgustedly. “I was certainly unaware of this — this extremely unsavoury relationship, and I should prefer not to discuss it. But I must point out to you that matters are very precariously poised, and you have need to behave with the greatest circumspection. If anything should — er — leak out, I feel sure I can rely on your sense of delicacy to keep my sister’s name out of it. There is really no reason why it should ever be known who your mother was, even if—”
He broke off, shrinking back instinctively in his chair for Raymond had taken a hasty step towards him with such a look of fury in his face that he thought for a moment that he was going to be assaulted.
But Raymond did not touch him. “Get out!” he said. His voice grating unpleasantly. “Get out, and take your sister with you! If you cross this threshold again, you fat hypocrite, I’ll throw you out myself?”
Phineas rose with more haste than was consonant with his dignity. “I realise that you are not yourself, Raymond. so I shall leave you. It was not my wish that my sister should have accompanied me. I was, in fact, very much against it, but her very natural feelings towards you were such that she could not rest until she had seen you.”
“I don’t want to see her! Can’t you grasp that the very sight of her makes me sick? O God, it makes me sick to think… “He stopped, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. “You’d better go.”
Phineas retreated to the door. “I can assure you I have no desire — But I must insist on being told what you mean to do.”
“I don’t know.”
“I appreciate the painful position...”
"Get — out!”
Phineas withdrew, gathering the rags of his dignity about him.
Chapter Twenty
Her worst enemy could not have accused Loveday Trewithian of possessing a rancorous disposition. She bore her aunt and uncle no malice for the denunciation of her behaviour, but listened meekly enough to all they had to say, standing with her lovely head a little bowed, and a corner of her muslin apron held between her hands. Martha’s more violent attack upon her she met with a like calm. She was sorry for the old woman, and looked at her with pity in her dark eyes, and presently slipped away from her without returning any retort to her taunts. She had expected to have to run the gauntlet of backstairs condemnation; it did not worry her, nor did it rouse any feeling of resentment in her breast.
Her instinct was to serve, and she was kept so fully occupied in attending to her mistress, and in stepping into the various breaches in the household caused by Sybilla’s collapse on first hearing of Penhallow’s death, and the hysterics into which the upper-housemaid thought it proper to fall, that she had very little time at her disposal to speculate on the manner of Penhallow’s death. When she had been sent for by the Inspector, she had been so frightened that she had lied instinctively. She felt the police to be her natural enemies; and no sooner did she learn that Penhallow had in all probability been poisoned with Faith’s veronal than she at once perceived the dangerous position in which she might stand, and denied her engagement to Bart. Bart scolded her for that afterwards, and told her what a silly girl she had been and swore to protect her from Inspector Logan and a dozen like him. With Bart’s strong arms round her, she regained control over herself; but it was not long before she bethought herself of Conrad. She faltered out her fear that he would try to get rid of her by putting the blame of the murder on to her. Bart had laughed such an idea to scorn, cherishing such confidence in his twin’s loyalty that the shock of finding it had been misplaced came like a blow to the solar plexus. Prevented from choking the life out of Conrad, he had stormed away in search of Loveday, who no sooner saw the condition of rage and grief which he was in than she forgot her own troubles, and put her arms round him, and drew his head down on to her breast, and soothed and petted him into some sort of calm. When he was beside himself, she felt as though she might have been his mother. Her flesh ached with the love a mother has for her first-born, and she would cheerfully, at such a moment, have gone to the scaffold in his stead. She disliked and feared Conrad, but since Bart loved him she was willing, even anxious, to propitiate him, and made up her mind to do it just as soon as his first wild jealousy had had time to wear off. Stroking Bart’s short, crisp locks, she told him that he mustn’t mind so, for his brother would come round when he saw what a good wife she meant to be.
“He doesn’t darken my doorstep!” Bart said, his eyes smouldering. “Con! Con to say such a thing!”
“Yes, but, Bart-love, it’s because he don’t like to think of losing you the way he thinks he must if you marry me. I don’t think me good enough for you, besides, and indeed I’m not! I don’t know that I blame him so much is all that. Now, you won’t quarrel with him, my dear, will you? For if you do, they’ll say it was me turned you against him.”
He turned his head, as it lay on her shoulder, and mumbled into her neck. “O God, Loveday, my poor old Guv’nor!” he said in a broken voice. “If I knew — if I only knew who did it, I’d kill him with my own hands, whoever it was! Loveday, who could have done such a thing?”