The first person he encountered on entering the house was Bart, who hailed him good-naturedly enough, saying: “Hello, kid! I forgot you were descending on us today. Skinny as ever, I see.” He turned his head, as Eugene came out of the library, and called: “Hi, Eugene! The budding lawyer’s blown in!”
Clay bristled at once, and replied in rather too high-pitched a voice: “You don’t suppose I’m going to go into Cliff’s office, do you? I can assure you that I shall have something to say to Father about that!”
Bart grinned. “I’ll bet you will! I can hear you: Yes, Father. No, Father! Just as you wish, Father.”
Faith at once rushed to the defence of her young: “Can’t you let the poor boy set foot inside the house without starting to tease him? I should have thought that after not having seen him for three months you might have found something pleasant to say to him!”
“Kiss your little brother, Bart!” said Eugene reprovingly. “Well, Benjamin? Will you receive our address of welcome now, or later?”
“Oh, shut up!” said Clay. “You’re not a bit funny!”
“Darling, I know you’ll want a bath after that horrid journey,” Faith said, ignoring Eugene. “I told Sybilla to be sure to see that the water was properly heated. Come upstairs, won’t you?”
She took his arm, and pressed it affectionately, and he went with her up the stairs, leaving Bart to grimace expressively at Eugene, and to observe that why Penhallow should want to draw such an appalling little wet back into the fold was a matter passing his comprehension.
Chapter Nine
Clay’s first meeting with his father took place that evening, after dinner, in the presence of the rest of the family. Upon setting eyes on his youngest son, Penhallow at once demanded to be told why he had not presented himself several hours earlier, shooting this question at Clay in such a fierce way that the boy changed colour, and stammered out a rather incoherent reply, which was to the effect that he hadn’t known that Penhallow wanted to see him particularly. This had the effect of making Penhallow scarify him soundly for his lack of filial respect; and as he addressed most of his diatribe to him in a thunderous tone, and ended by asking him what he had to say for himself, Clay was speedily reduced to a state of pallid terror, and was only able to say, in shaken accents, that he was sorry, and hadn’t meant to offend anyone. Such supine behaviour roused all the worst in Penhallow, who set about bullying him in good earnest, insisting on receiving answers to quite impossible questions, and saying everything he could to goad him into making a hot retort. Faith, perilously near tears, tried to come to Clay’s support, and succeeded, in as much as Penhallow’s ire was instantly diverted, and fell upon her luckless head. Clay slid into the background, and tried to look as though he did not mind having been roared at, and was not in the least upset by the interlude. Conrad, who had seen Bart kissing Loveday in the orchard, and was in a smouldering temper in consequence, began to bait him, with so much ill nature that Bart came to his rescue, telling his twin to lay off the kid, for God’s sake! Bart was quite capable of inflicting physical hurt on anyone who roused his wrath, but he was never spiteful. But since he could not understand that his good-natured intervention increased Conrad’s ill-humour, Conrad’s jealous temperament being unable to brook his twin’s siding with another member of the family against himself, he did Clay very little service. Raymond, who had scarcely been on speaking terms with Penhallow since their quarrel over Jimmy, took no part in the general turmoil, but sat scowling into the fire, and occasionally exchanging a brief word or two with his aunt. He glanced contemptuously at Clay, when that unfortunate young man withdrew to a chair in a secluded corner, and seemed slightly amused by Conrad’s baiting of him.
Having worked off his rage, Penhallow was ready to discuss the affairs of the estate, the stables, the farm, and the neighbouring countryside with his sons. Clay, bearing as little part in this animated conversation as his mother, sat with clenched teeth, wondering with sick distaste whether it was worse to be berated by Penhallow than to be obliged to sit through an evening of such talk as this. When Reuben and Jimmy brought in the usual refreshments, he had to help the twins dispense these. He carried a glass of whisky-and-soda to Vivian, and told her in an undertone that he couldn’t stand this sort of thing.
She shrugged her shoulders. “You say that, but you will stand it. I know you!”
He coloured, and asserted more loudly than he meant to: “Well, I shan’t. I’m not a child any longer, and the sooner everyone realises that, the better it will be for — for them!”
Conrad overheard this, and said at once: “Listen to this, all of you! Dear little Clay isn’t a child any longer! Isn’t it wonderful what a Varsity education will do for one? What did they teach you at Cambridge, Clay? We never managed to teach you anything — not even to throw your heart over!”
“Or to stop pulling his horse right into a fence,” said Raymond dryly. “If you are going to stay at home, Clay, I suppose you will have to be mounted.”
Clay dared not assert that he was not going to stay at home, although every minute spent in the company of his family made him the more determined by hook or by crook to escape from Trevellin; but he showed so little interest in the question of what horses he could ride during the coming season that even Eugene roused himself to remark dispassionately that no one would take him for a Penhallow. Fortunately, Penhallow was too much absorbed in what Bart was telling him about the Demon colt to pay any heed to this interchange; and as any mention of the Demon colt had the invariable effect of drawing nearly every member of the family into the discussion, Clay was presently able to slip out of the room without attracting attention. His mother soon followed him, and they went upstairs together to her bedroom, where Clay at once unburdened his mind to her, pacing about the room as he did so, and fidgeting with whatever came in the way of his unquiet hands. Faith’s attention was thus divided between what he had to say, and what he was doing, and she found herself impelled to interrupt him several times, to beg him not to twirl the lid of her powder-bowl round; to take care of that chair, because one leg was broken; and please not to swing the blind-cord to and fro, because it made her giddy.
“I don’t believe,” said Clay gloomily, “that you have the least idea how desperate it all is!”
“Oh, darling, how can you say that to me?” Faith reproached him.
“I suppose you’re used to it,” pursued Clay, disregarding this interpolation. “You simply don’t realise how ghastly it is here! But I’ve been away from it, and you just can’t imagine how it strikes one, after having lived in civilised surroundings, amongst cultured people! I couldn’t bear it, Mother. It’s no use expecting me to. I mean, I should simply cut my throat. There’s nothing I wouldn’t rather do!”
Correctly assuming that this sweeping assertion excepted any form of manual toil, or office drudgery. Faith said: “Yes, but what can we do about it? I’ve tried my best to make your father see reason, but you know what he is. If only you’d done better in your First Part I think there might have been some hope, but...”
“Of course, anyone who imagines that one goes to the Varsity merely to swot, and pass examinations, just doesn’t understand the first thing about it,” said Clay loftily. “And, what’s more, I never heard that Eugene did so damned well up at Oxford, or Aubrey either, if it comes to that!”
“I know,” she said quickly. “That’s what’s so unfair! You were much too young to know anything about it at the time, but actually Eugene cost your father a great deal of money, when he was up, besides getting into the sort of scrapes I should have thought any father would have However, that’s his affair! Only, I believe the awful thing is that your father wouldn’t have minded, if you’d disgraced yourself at Cambridge, and got entangled with dreadful girls, and been sent down for sheer hooliganism!”