Penhallow

Chapter Sixteen

Raymond was long in falling asleep that night. Unable to lie still in his bed, but continually tossing and turning, he got up after an hour, and, putting on his trousers and a tweed jacket over his pyjamas, and thrusting his feet into a pair of brogues, went downstairs, and let himself softly out of the house into the moonlit garden. Here he walked up and down with his pipe gripped between his teeth, and his head filled with hard, tangled thoughts, until the chill of the night, and his own physical and mental fatigue, finally drove him in again. The broad stairs creaked under his feet as he went up them, and as he crossed the upper hall the door into his sister’s room opened, and Charmian came out with an electric torch in her hand.

“Who’s that?” she said sharply.

The moonlight, streaming in through the great uncurtained window above the stairs, made the torch superflous. She switched it off as she saw Raymond, with his hand already upon his bedroom door-handle.

“It’s all right,” he said. “Sorry I woke you.”

She had cast a severe, masculine dressing-gown over her shoulders, and now slid her arms into it, and tied its cord round her waist. “Anything wrong?” she asked, observing his attire.

“No, nothing. I couldn’t sleep, that’s all.”

“I thought you looked a bit off-colour at dinner. Have you been out?”

“Yes. Couldn’t get to sleep.”

She glanced shrewdly at him. “Getting on your nerves?”

“Is what getting on my nerves?”

“Oh — !”This place.”

“No,” he replied.

“No, of course you’ve always been ridiculous about Trevellin. Father, then.”

“I haven’t got any nerves.”

“Don’t be too sure of that! How long has Father been like this?”

He looked at her under his brows. “Like what?”.

“Oh, don’t be a fool!” she said impatiently. “You know what I mean! He wasn’t as bad as this when I was last here. Is he breaking up?”

He shrugged. “Lifton thinks so.”

“I never had the least opinion of that old idiot. What do you think?”

“I’m not a doctor: I don’t know. I should say he’d last a good few years yet.”

“Well, I think he’s going mad!” Charmian said roundly.

“He’s not mad.”

“He may not be technically mad, but he seems to me to be perfectly irresponsible. Do you know that he told Aubrey today that he was to come home and study forestry, or some such nonsense? Aubrey! And why has he suddenly removed Clay from college?”

“Thought he was wasting his time there. So he was. Clay’s a waster.”

“He won’t cure him of that by encouraging him to chop and change about. What was the sense of sending him to Cambridge at all if he meant to take him away before he got a degree?”

“There was never any sense in sending him there, except that it got rid of him. You’d better get back to bed you’ll catch cold if you stand about much longer.”

He opened his own door as he spoke, but she detained him for a moment, saying: “Well, I’m not worrying my head about Clay, but I wish you’d tell me if Father’s in the habit of drawing out vast sums of money by way of petty cash.”

“Why? What’s it got to do with you?” he asked.

She disregarded this question. “Why the hell don’t you put a stop to it?” she asked.

“I have no power to stop Father doing anything he wants to do,” he replied roughly. “Good night!”

He went into his room and shut the door. When he got into bed again he still could not sleep, and lay for a long time flogging his brain over and over the events of what had surely been the longest day of his life.

It seemed to him that he had been to sleep for only a few minutes when he was awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder, and Reuben’s voice insistently speaking his name in his ear; but when he opened his eyes he found that the sunlight was flooding the room, and that the hands of the clock beside his bed pointed to eight o’clock. He raised himself on his elbow, yawning, and passing a hand across his sleep-drenched eyes. He realised that Reuben’s voice sounded unusually urgent, and said:

“What’s the matter?” Then he saw that tears were running down Reuben’s lined cheeks, and this extraordinary sight fully awoke him, and he sat up with a jerk. “What the devil’s up with you?” he demanded.

“Master!” Reuben said, his lower lip trembling grotesquely. “He’s gone, Mr Ray!”

“Gone?” Raymond repeated. “What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”

“He’s dead!” Reuben said. “He’s dead, Mr Ray. Cold dead!”

“What?” Raymond ejaculated incredulously. He flung back the bed-clothes, and got up quickly, snatching up Iris dressing-gown. “When? How?”

“I don’t know when. He must have gone in the night. You should know how, Mr Ray!”

Raymond tied his dressing-gown cord, and groped for his slippers. “What the devil do you mean?” he asked.

Reuben drew his sleeve across his eyes. “It was you setting on him the way you did, trying to choke the life out of him, and him as good as bedridden! I told you then we’d know whose door to set it to if he was to go off sudden! Yes, sure, I told you!”

“Don’t be such a blithering old fool!” Raymond said roughly. “He was perfectly well last night! I had nothing whatsoever to do with his dying! More likely what he ate and drank at dinner. Who knows about this? Who found him?”

Reuben followed him to the door. “Martha found him, poor soul! Stiff, he is. He must have gone in his sleep. And today his birthday! I told him how it would be if he ate that lobster! I told him!”

“Shut up! There’s no need to rouse the whole house yet!” Raymond said, turning into the corridor at the back of the house, and going swiftly along it to the narrow stairs down which Faith had passed the day before.

As he approached the small hall at the head of these stairs, the sound of wailing reached his ears. Martha was lamenting over Penhallow’s body, and it was plain that this noise had already awakened those who slept at the end of the house. Eugene’s door stood open; and even as Raymond set his foot on the top step of the stair, Aubrey came out of his room, in a very exotic-looking pair of black pyjamas piped with silver, and asked plaintively what new horror had come upon the house.

“Reuben says Father’s dead,” Raymond replied over his shoulder.

He did not wait to see how this news was received, but as he ran down the stairs he heard Aubrey exclaim: “Oh, no, not really? I simply can’t believe it! You’re not serious, Ray?”

In Penhallow’s room, Martha was rocking herself to and fro on a chair beside the vast bed, and Vivian, with a kimono caught hurriedly round her, and clutched together with one hand, was standing in the middle of the room staring as though she could not believe her eyes, first at Martha, and then at Penhallow’s still form. When she heard Raymond’s footsteps, she turned, and said in a queer, hushed voice: “He’s dead!”

“So I’ve heard,” Raymond replied, brushing past her, and bending over the bed. He straightened himself after a moment. He looked a little pale under his tan, and he did not at once say anything. He was indeed so much shaken by this unexpected turn which events had taken that he was unable immediately to marshal his wits into some sort of order. Through the medley of thoughts racing past one another in his brain, one more persistent than the rest kept on recurring: that Penhallow’s death was of immense importance to him, since he could never now betray the secret of his birth. He remembered that Penhallow had spoken of papers to prove his story; the picture of him jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the cupboards in the head of his bed flashed vividly across his mind. He glanced from one to the other of the three persons gathered about the bed, a coldly calculating light in his frowning eyes. He addressed Vivian. “You’d better go and get dressed!”

She pushed her hair away from her brow. “Yes,” she agreed mechanically. “I — I don’t seem able to take it in. He’s really dead! I shan’t have to live here any more! We’re free!”

Martha lifted her head. “You shameless malkin! There he lays, gone dead, and you stannin’ there as bold and as heartless as yer mind to! Eh, my dear, my dear, the proper man that you was! Out of this, you wicked hussy! You shanna’ stand staring at un! You shanna’, I tell you!”

Vivian coloured slightly, and seemed as though she would have retorted. Raymond said, before she could speak: “Go on! You had better let Eugene know what’s happened. Reuben, get Martha out of this! We can’t have this row going on. And send Jimmy down to Lifton’s house at once, do you hear?”

“That young runagate!” Reuben said bitterly. “For anything any of us knaves he’s laying abed still!”

“Kick him out, then! Martha! I say, Martha, it’s no good crying like that! You go and lie down, or something. Where’s Sybilla, Reuben?”

The tears started to run down Reuben’s cheeks again. “She was cooking his breakfast. She’s got him some thickback beauties, just the way he liked them, and he won’t never eat them now!”

“Well, take Martha to her!” Raymond said. “If that little swine, Jimmy, isn’t dressed, send one of the girls down to Lifton’s on her cycle, and ask him to come up as soon as he can. Get a move on, man!”

“I won’t leave un!” Martha moaned. “You shanna’ make me leave un! There’s never another soul shall touch him! It’s me and Sybilla will lay him out decent, the way he’d wish for us to do!”

“Oh, all right!” he said, trying not to let his impatience to be rid of her get the better of him. “You can do that, but not until Lifton has seen him.”

Reuben looked at him with hostility in his reddened eyes. “It’s little you care, Mr Ray!” he muttered; but he seemed to feel that Martha could not be permitted to continue wailing over Penhallow’s body, for after a moment’s indecision he bent over her, and coaxed and bullied her into going with him to the servants’ hall.

As soon as they had left the room, Raymond quickly closed the double doors, and returned to the bed. He did not waste a glance on the inanimate figure in it, but began with feverish haste to pull open the cupboards and the little drawers above it.

A magpie collection was disclosed, ranging from receipted bills, most of them for trivial sums, and many of ancient date, to such irrelevant objects as a champagne cork with a tarnished silver top; a tattered copy of Handley Cross; an old hunting-crop; the stubs of countless cheque-books; several boxes full of paper-clips and rubber-bands; a repeating-watch with a broken face; bunches of keys bearing the rusty appearance of having been unused for decades; numerous bottles of iodine and embrocation, jumbled amongst boxes of canine worm pills, mange-cures, and alternative powders; and a tangle of gold chains, fobs, and seals huddled into a screw of tissue paper. One of a cluster of shallow drawers was so full of old letters and papers that it could only with difficulty be opened. Without the smallest hesitation, Raymond pulled out the sheaf. Any moment Reuben might come back into the room, or some member of the family enter to put an end to his search. He had no time to do more than glance hurriedly through the papers, casting back into the drawer such immaterial items as old advertisements torn from periodicals, a collection of laded snapshots and picture post-cards, some of his and Ingram’s school-reports, and a miscellaneous assortment of letters which he saw, from their superscriptions, could have no bearing on the secret of his false birth. The rest he stuffed into the pockets of his dressing-gown, his ears straining all the time to catch the sound of an approaching footfall. Drawer after drawer he opened, without discovering either a birth certificate or any other document relating to his birth. There were the pedigrees of dogs and horses, a copy of Rachel’s marriage-lines, old account-books and Bank pass-books, an expired passport, and some old diaries which seemed to contain nothing but the records of day-to-day engagements, but which he also pocketed.

He felt a clammy sweat on his brow, and wiped it away with the back of one slightly trembling hand. Unless it lay hidden, in one of the envelopes he had abstracted to inspect at his leisure, there was no document that in any way concerned his birth. So intent was he upon the one object of his search, so hard-pressed for time, that he never noticed that the little tin box in which Penhallow, kept his money was missing from its usual place in the central cupboard. His mind veered towards the other cupboards in the room. He looked about him irresolutely, trying to recall what his father kept in them. He strode over to the marquetry chest, and began to pull open its drawers. They contained, as far as he had time to see, nothing but clothing. He crossed to the lacquer cabinet, and opened its doors, disclosing Penhallow’s ivory-backed hairbrushes, clothes-brushes, combs, and a variety of stud-boxes, corn-razors, and nail-scissors. He closed the doors again. He did not believe that Penhallow would have stowed such a document, if it existed, away out of his reach, and he began to think that Penhallow had invented it to alarm him. He walked to the door, and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. As he did so, Reuben came round the corner of the corridor, blowing his nose. He looked at Raymond over the edge of his damp handkerchief, and said rather huskily: “I’ve sent the gardener’s boy down to the village, but there’s nothing Lifton nor any other can do for the Master.”

“I know that. Somebody had better tell Mrs Penhallow. I’m going upstairs to put some clothes on. Send one of the maids up with my shaving-water. And keep everyone out of that room until Lifton’s been.”

“I shall stay with un, Mr Ray,” Reuben replied, a touch of belligerence in his tone. “It’s little you or Mrs Penhallow cares, but I won’t leave un laying there alone, and that’s straight! I knawed un when he was not so high ,is that chest there, and the daringest young rascal from here to Land’s End! I never left un, never, and I won’t leave un now, when un’s stiff and cold!”

“You can do as you like. Have you kicked that young swine out of bed? Where is he?”

"Jimmy!” Reuben said, with one of his contemptuous sniffs: “He never come in last night, and he’s not back yet, the dirty loose fish that he is! And not the first time, not by a dozen times it isn’t!”

“Well, that’s one of the abuses in this house that’s going to stop more quickly than the little bastard thinks for!” Raymond said grimly.

Then he remembered the look he had surprised on Jimmy’s face the previous evening, and his eyelids flickered, and he turned away abruptly, and went up the stairs, feeling as though an icy hand had closed upon the pit of his stomach. His mind, at one moment lightened of its fear, plunged again into an abyss of uncertainty and dread. If Jimmy knew the truth, there could never be any security for him while he lived. Buy him off? Send him out to the colonies? He thought bitterly that he would do better to strangle the little beast. He could visualise, though as yet only vaguely, years of being bled white by Jimmy, of living for ever in the fear that Jimmy’s malice, or perhaps his own inability to satisfy a blackmailer’s greed, would prompt him to carry his story to Ingram. In an instant, his father’s death, which had seemed in the first shock of discovery to be no less than a direct intervention of providence in his favour, became fraught with lurking danger. There was Martha too. He would have to do something about her, though what he hardly knew. He fancied that her devotion to Penhallow would lead her to pursue the course she supposed him to have wished her to; her silence, then, would depend not upon bribery but upon what Penhallow might have said to her.

He went into his bedroom, and shut the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves when a gentle tap fell on one of the oaken panels, and Loveday Trewithian came in with a jug of boiling water. He looked at her frowning , realising that she was one of those most nearly affected by Penhallow’s death. She was a little pale, but her face was quite calm, and her dark eyes met his with no other discernible expression in them than one of timid respect.

“I’ve brought your shaving-water, sir,” she said, in her gentle way. “Things is a little at sixes and sevens.”

“Thanks,” he said briefly. “Doctor arrived yet?”

“No, sir,” she replied, setting the jug down on the old fashioned marble-topped wash-stand, and covering it with a folded towel. “Not yet.”

“Tell Reuben to let me know as soon as he does. Does your mistress know what’s happened?”

“She’s sleeping, Mr Ray. Leave me tell her when I take her tea in to her!”

“You’d better do so at once. Mrs Hastings, too.”

“Mrs Hastings went out early. She’s up at the stables.” Loveday moved towards the door, adding as she reached it: “Bart, too.”

He noticed that she had omitted a prefix to this last name. It annoyed him, but he said nothing. She went away, and he began to shave himself. His face was still half-covered with lather when Eugene walked in without ceremony. He met Eugene’s eyes in the mirror, and could almost have laughed at the look of chagrin so clearly depicted in them. Whoever else might regard Penhallow’s death in the light of a blessing, Eugene was one who saw in it a disturbance to his own indolent peace. He was still in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, and since he had not yet shaved, and was as darkly complexioned as his brothers, his chin had a blue appearance detrimental to his good looks.

“Ray, is this really true?” he asked.

“Good lord, you must know it’s true!” Raymond answered.

“Yes. That is, Vivian told me, but really I find it hard to take it in! It doesn’t seem at all possible. When did it happen? Have you any idea?”

“None at all. He’s cold, that’s all I can tell you.”

Eugene gave a slight shudder. “You may spare me any further details.” He looked Raymond over, his lips twisting into a wry smile. “Well, you’ve got what you’ve been waiting for, haven’t you? I congratulate you!”

Raymond wiped the soap off his razor. “Thanks.”

“It must be a great day in your life,” Eugene remarked. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown, and hunched his shoulders in the semblance of a shrug. “I suppose there isn’t anything I’m wanted to do, is there?”

“What should there be?”

“Nothing, I hope. I don’t propose to come down to breakfast. This has been a shock to me. I slept very badly, too.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“If I had heard anything I should have gone down,” Eugene replied, turning to leave the room.

He was intercepted in the doorway by Bart, who came impetuously in, his whip still in his hands, and all the healthy colour drained from his cheeks. “Ray!” he blurted out, thrusting rudely past Eugene. “Loveday says… the Guv’nor!”

“Yes, that’s right,” Raymond answered, putting on his collar. “Looks as though he went in his sleep. I’m waiting for Lifton.”

“Rame’s car is standing outside. When — who found…Was anyone with him?”

Raymond had quickly knotted his tie, and was putting on his coat. “No, no one. Martha found him dead when she went in this morning. Sorry, I must go down. Did you say Rame’s car?”

Loveday tapped on the half-open door at that moment. “The doctor’s here, Mr Ray. Dr Lifton has the influenza: it’s Dr Rame that’s come. I was thinking it might be well he should see the mistress when he’s finished downstairs. It will be a shock to her nerves. surely, when she knows what’s happened.”

“If she wants him, she can send a message down. " Raymond replied unsympathetically, and went out of the room.

Loveday glanced towards Bart, standing rigidly by the window, and jerking at his whip-lash. “I’ll get you a cup of tea, my dear,” she said, pity and love warming her rich voice.

He gave his head a little shake. “No, I don’t want it.” His stubborn mouth quivered. “I cursed him last night. I — Oh, Guv’nor!”

She went towards him, ignoring Eugene, who stood by the door, somewhat cynically regarding her. “Don’t you take on, my dear!” she said. “It’s little he’d care for a curse or two. You were a good son to him, and he knew it.”

"No, I wasn’t. I thought — I didn’t even believe — But he was ill! I didn’t want him to die! I — oh, hell, I was dammed fond of him, the grand old devil that he was! And I wish to God he were alive now to — to bawl the lot of us out!” His voice broke on something between a laugh and a sob; he brushed his hand across his brimming eyes, and pushed his way past Eugene out of the room.

“I am afraid, my dear Loveday,” said Eugene maliciously, “that you will find my brother Bart more upset by this event than perhaps you expected.”

“It’s natural he should be,” she-responded, picking up Raymond’s dressing-gown, and putting it away in the wardrobe. “If you please, sir!”

He stood aside to allow her to pass, a little nettled by her self-possession, and she went away towards the back of the house to fetch her mistress’s early tea-tray from the pantry.

Faith had fallen asleep on the previous evening without the aid of narcotics. She had gone up to her room soon after Penhallow had been wheeled out of the Long drawing-room, and, as Loveday assisted her to undress, she had noticed with vague surprise that the nightly headache which she had come to regard as inevitable was for once absent. She supposed that the aspirin she had swallowed before going down to dinner must still be operating on her system, and she had told Loveday, with a little sigh, that she felt as though she could sleep naturally. A feeling of deep peace hung over her, undisturbed by any twinge of remorse for what she had done. She was very tired, but not with the nervous fatigue which made it impossible for her to relax her limbs and to be still in her bed. Almost as soon as she had laid her head upon the pillow, her eyelids had begun to sink over her eyes; and as she thought, not of Penhallow but of the little flat in London, she drifted into a deep peaceful sleep from which she did not arouse until Loveday drew back the curtains next morning.

She seemed then to herself to be rising to the surface of a vast ocean of sleep, and as she stirred, and opened her eyes, she murmured: “Oh, I have had such a loverly sleep!”

Loveday came towards the bed with her mistress’s bed jacket in her hand. Faith stretched herself, and yawned, not immediately remembering the events of the previous day. She asked what the time was, and when Loveday told her, half past eight, she said, sitting up, and putting her arms into the sleeves of the jacket: “Why, how late! You shouldn’t have let me sleep on, Loveday!”

Loveday turned to the table beside the bed, and poured out a cup of tea. “No, ma’am, I know. But you were sleeping so sound I didn’t care to wake you. There’s some bad news you have to hear, ma’am.”

As she spoke these words, remembrance of what she had done came flooding back to Faith, and she gave a stifled exclamation. After so good a night’s rest, with its soothing effect upon her overwrought nerves, it now seemed to her that she must have been mad, and she could almost have believed that she had dreamt the whole. She recalled quite clearly her every action, and even her thoughts, which, appearing reasonable to her at the time, seemed in the light of morning to partake of the nature of insanity. The wish that Penhallow might die was still present; but the resolution to bring about his death had departed from her mind as suddenly as it had entered it. So unreal did her action seem to her that she felt as divorced from it as though she had performed it in a trance.

She raised her eyes to Loveday’s face. “Bad news?” she faltered, clasping her hands tightly together.

“It’s the Master, ma’am.”

Then she had done it. She had succeeded. She swallowed, but found herself unable to speak. She waited, her gaze fixed on Loveday’s face with an expression on it of wonder and of dread.

“The Master’s dead, ma’am.”

A sound that was hardly a cry broke from her; she buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Loveday! Oh, Loveday! Oh, no, no!”

Loveday put her arms round her, drawing her to lie against her deep, warm breasts. “There, my dear, there! Don’t you take on, now. He went in his sleep, the way anyone would wish for him.”

Faith wept, but not for sorrow, nor yet for pity. She wept for her own madness, which had turned her into a murderess, and for relief that her long purgatory was ended. Loveday rocked her, and murmured to her, and after a little while she stopped, and groped for her handkerchief. Loveday found it for her, and when she had dried her eyes, she coaxed her to drink her tea. She was leaning back against her banked-up pillows, sipping the tea between spasmodic sobs, when Vivian came into the room. When she saw Vivian, she thought how she had set her free too, and her eyes filled with weak tears again. She said: “Oh, Vivian!”

Vivian’s uncompromising honesty made it impossible for her to understand how anyone could weep for what she was glad of. She said bluntly: “I don’t see what you’ve got to cry for. We all know that you’ve been miserable for years.”

“Oh, don’t!” Faith begged, the tears brimming over “Don’t talk like that, please!”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t pretend that I care. It would be sheer hypocrisy. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best thing that has ever happened in this house!”

Faith was really shocked by this speech, for although she had been able to do what perhaps Vivian had never contemplated doing, she was incapable of facing an unvarnished truth, and was already seeing her action, not as a crime, but as a deed undertaken as much for the good of others as for her own peace. Loveday, whispering comfort, had spoken of Penhallow’s death as a release from suffering, and she realised without effort that this was true, and had begun to believe that she had been at least to some extent actuated by this thought when she had determined to poison Penhallow. But not even to herself did she use that harsh word. There were plenty of euphemisms for the ugly terms, Murder and Poison, and they came more naturally to her brain, so that she had no need consciously to evade the cruder words.

“It’s been a shock to her,” Loveday said, in a reproving tone. “Indeed, Mrs Eugene, you didn’t ought to speak like that, with the poor gentleman lying there dead.” She paid no heed to the angry flush that stained Vivian’s cheeks, but turned from her to her mistress, asking whether she should prepare the bath for her.

“Oh, I don’t know!” Faith said undecidedly. “I feel so upset, and queer, Loveday!”

“Well, you aren’t going to stop washing just because there has been a death in the house, are you?” inquired Vivian caustically.

Put in such blunt terms as this, it did seem absurd, but Faith felt vaguely that in the performance of everyday actions at such a moment there was something bordering on the indecent. She ignored Vivian. “I suppose I — Yes, of course I shall have my bath just as I always do. Please get it ready for me, Loveday!”

“That’s right, my dear,” Loveday said, patting her hand. “Then you’ll get back into bed, and I’ll bring your breakfast up to you, and you’ll be better.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” Faith said. “I couldn’t swallow anything! Please don’t ask me to! I ought to get up. Do you think I should go down at once? I — I feel so absolutely bowled over I don’t seem to be able to think!”

“You lay quiet awhile,” Loveday counselled her. “"There’s nothing you can do, my dear. The doctor’s below at this moment, and I was thinking you would like to have him come up to you, and give you something for your poor nerves.”

“No. No, I shall be all right!” Faith said, pressing her finger-tips to her temples. “I don’t want a doctor. Unless I ought to see him about — about Adam. Must I? I don’t feel that I can bear it! But of course if I ought to — I don’t know what one does when — when a thing like this happens!”

“If you don’t want to see him, there’s no particular reason why you should,” said Vivian. “Raymond’s there, and I don’t see that you can tell him anything he doesn’t know already. I mean, it isn’t as though this was unexpected. Lifton warned you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, oh yes! And he had been getting worse later hadn’t he? Charmian saw a great change in him. She told me so.”

“It’s Dr Rame,” Loveday said. “Dr Lifton has the influenza.”

“Dr Rame!” Faith repeated nervously. “Oh, I would rather not see him if I needn’t! I never liked him. He’s so hard, and unsympathetic!”

“I’ll go and turn the bath on,” Loveday said, picking up the early tea-tray. “Mr Ray said if you wanted to see the doctor to send down a message.”

“Only if I must! But if he wants to speak to me of course I’ll see him! Tell Mr Ray that, Loveday!”

“You’ve no call to worry, my dear,” Loveday said soothingly.

Vivian would have remained, after she had left the room, to discuss Penhallow’s death with Faith, but Faith stopped her, saying that she could not bear to talk about it. She shrugged contemptuously, therefore, and went away.

In the dining-room, several members of the family were gathered round the table, partaking of breakfast in a desultory and ill-at-ease fashion. Clara was seated as usual at the foot of the table, dispensing coffee and tea in the intervals of sniffing into a screwed-up handkerchief: with which she from time to time wiped the corners of’ her eyes. Conrad was somewhat defiantly consuming a plateful of bacon and eggs; Aubrey, not noticeably affected by the general depression, was spreading a thin slice of toast with marmalade; and Bart, having pushed away his plate, almost untouched, was mechanically stirring his coffee, his rather reddened eyes lowered.

Neither Raymond nor Charmian was present. In response to Vivian’s inquiry, Clara replied huskily that they were both in Penhallow’s room still, with the doctor.

Vivian sat down, having helped herself to some fish from the dish on the sideboard. After a short silence, Conrad cleared his throat, and said: “I shan’t go to work today, of course.”

Nobody made any answer to this observation. Vivian said: “What on earth are they taking so long, for? I saw the doctor’s car drive up ages ago! What do you suppose they can be doing?”

Aubrey, who had dignified the occasion by discarding his colourful sports-wear for a lounge suit which he wore with a lavender shirt, replied: “Darling, must we go into that? You’re so marvellous with your self-possession and all that, I expect you don’t mind a bit what you talk about at breakfast, but I haven’t got anything like your strength of character, and I do wish you wouldn’t, sweetie. Besides, some of our number are quite upset about it.”

“Not you,” Bart said, momentarily raising his eyes from his coffee-cup.

“My dear, the only thing which upsets me — and you simply can’t imagine how frightful it was! — was the perfectly ghoulish noise which Martha made. I mean, talk about the purely primitive! No, I’m not going to pretend that I’m shattered by Father’s death. You wouldn’t any of you believe it if I did. He was showing the most alarming signs of being about to interfere with my lovely, ordered existence, and I regard his death as an unmixed blessing.”

“Well, I’m glad one of you has the moral courage to say what you really think!” said Vivian.

“Your approval, darling, might have been expresses I more grammatically, but I can’t tell you how much it has encouraged me,” said Aubrey dulcetly. “After all, it is the spirit which counts, isn’t it?”

“Anyway, you can bloody well keep what you think to yourself!” Bart said, addressing his sister-in-law. “We all know what you thought of the Guv’nor!”

“Now, Bart, don’t, there’s a good boy!” Clara said. “We, don’t want any quarrellin’. I daresay he was a wicked old man, but I don’t know what we’re any of us goin’ to do now he’s gone. It won’t seem like Trevellin without him goin’ on the rampage, and upsettin’ everybody right and left.” She applied her handkerchief to her eyes again. “I’m sure I don’t know why I’m cryin’, for very uncomfortable he’s made me, time and time again, but there it is! Has anyone been up to Faith?”

“I’ve seen her,” Vivian answered. “She’s having a bath at the moment.”

“Is she cut up about it?” asked Conrad.

Vivian gave a short laugh. “She thinks she is, anyway. I’m afraid I’ve got no time for these conventionally minded women who think it incumbent upon them to shed tears just because someone whom they detested has died!”

“Here, I say, that’s coming it a bit thick!” protested Conrad. “I don’t say Father didn’t treat her to rather a rough passage, but you’ve got no right to say that she detested him! I should have thought that she’d be bound to be cut up about it!”

“Then you won’t be disappointed,” said Vivian acidly. “She’ll gratify all your ideas of how a bereaved person should behave, I’m sure!”

Clay came into the room at that moment, looking reared and bewildered. “I say, is it true?” he asked. “I’ve just heard — I overslept this morning — I didn’t know a thing! But one of the maids told me — only I simply couldn’t believe it!”

“If you mean, is it true Father’s dead, yes, it is!” said Conrad. “So you can go upstairs again, and take off that bloody awful pullover, and put on something decent!”

“Of course I wouldn’t have put on a coloured thing if I’d known!” Clay said. “I’ll change it after breakfast, naturally. Good lord, though! I — I can’t get over it! How did it happen? When did he die?”

The barely veiled excitement in his voice roused Bart to a flash of anger. “What the devil does it matter to you how he died, or when he died? A fat lot you care! God damn your eyes, you’re glad he’s dead!”

“How dare you's-say such a th-thing?” Clay stammered, flushing to the roots of his hair. “Of course I’m not!”

“Liar!” said Conrad.

Aubrey intervened, saying in his most mannered style: “Sit down, little brother, and try to carry off this very difficult situation with as much grace as you can muster. You really could hardly do better than to model yourself on me. Now, I’m not bewailing Father’s death in the least, but neither am I permitting an indecent elation to appear in my demeanour. As my raiment, so my conduct: subdued but not funereal!”

“Shut up, you ass!” said Conrad.

“Listen!” Vivian interrupted, lifting her head. “That sounds like the doctor going!”

In another minute the door opened, and Charmian came in. She looked rather pale, as though she had sustained a severe shock, and she did not at first say anything.

“Is that Rame going?” Vivian asked. “What on earth has he been doing all this time?”

“Where’s Ray?” Conrad demanded.

“Seeing Rame off.” Charmian dug her hands into her coat-pockets, and took up her favourite position on the hearth-rug, with her feet widely planted. “Well, you might as well know at once what has happened. Rame won’t sign the certificate.”