“Bet you he doesn’t come,” Conrad insisted.
“You ass, he’s bound to come down for the old man’s birthday!” Bart reminded him. “Even Aubrey wouldn’t miss that! Then, if he’s broke, I’ll lay you any odds he stays. Oh, Ray, is it true that Aubrey’s coming home?”
Raymond, who had just come into the room through the door at the far end, replied harshly: “Not if I have anything to say to it.”
“As you won’t have anything to say to it -’ began Ingram sarcastically.
Bart cut in on this. “Well, say everything you can think of, will you? Damn it all, we can’t have Aubrey here, corrupting our young minds! Think of Con and me!”
A shout of laughter went up from three of his brothers, but Raymond remained unsmiling. He walked over to the tea-table, and stood waiting for his aunt to fill a cup for him.
“It only remains for the old man to summon Char home for the circle to be complete,” said Eugene, in his light, bored voice. “What a memorable day this has turned out to be!”
“One way and another,” remarked Conrad, cutting himself a large slice of seed-cake, “there’s a good deal to be said for Vivian’s point of view. Too many people already in this house.”
“Don’t worry!” said Raymond. “One day there will be fewer!”
Vivian flushed hotly, but Eugene smiled with unimpaired good humour. “Do tell me!” he invited. “Is that to my address?”
“Yes,” replied Raymond bluntly.
“Now you know what to expect!” said Ingram, with one of his aggressive laughs. “Raymond was always overflowing with brotherly affection, of course.”
Raymond stood stirring the sugar in his tea. He glanced at Ingram, with a slight tightening of his mouth, but he did not speak. Bart, having eaten the last of the splits, turned his attention to a dish of saffron cakes. “Oh, I say, Ray! Are you going to turn us all out when the old man dies?”
The frowning eyes rested on his face for an instant. “Shan’t have to turn you out,” Raymond said. “Father will hand Trellick over to you — if you don’t make a fool of yourself.”
Bart coloured up, and muttered: “Don’t know what you’re driving at. I wish the old man would hurry up, that’s all.”
Ingram’s eyes went from him to Raymond, with quick curiosity. “Hallo, what have you been up to, young Bart?”
“Nothing. You mind your own business!”
“Love’s young dream!” murmured Eugene.
“Oh, is that all!” said Ingram, disappointed.
At this point, Myra, who had not been paying any attention to the interchange, appealed to her husband to corroborate her statement that Bertram’s housemaster had said that that young gentleman had plenty of ability, if he would but learn to take more pains; and under cover of the animated account, which followed, of Rudolph’s and Bertram’s prowess in the field of athletic achievement, Bart lounged out of the room.
He found Loveday in one of the passages upstairs, curled up in a deep window-embrasure, and looking pensively down upon Clara’s fern-garden. She turned her head when she heard his step, for she had been expecting him, and embraced him with her warm, slow smile. He pulled her up from the window-seat without ceremony, and into his strong young arms. “Gosh, it’s an age since I saw you last!” he said in a thickened voice.
Her body yielded for a moment; she kissed him with parted lips; but murmured, with a quiver of laughter in her voice, as he at last raised his head: “'This morning!”
“For two minutes!”
“Half-an-hour!”
“It isn’t good enough. I can’t go on like this! Here, come into the schoolroom!”
He thrust her into the room as he spoke, grasping her arm just above the elbow, and kicked the door to behind him. She let him kiss her again, but when he pulled her down beside him on the old horsehair sofa, she set her hands against his chest, and held him a little away from her. She was still smiling, and there was a kind of sleepy desire in her eyes, but she slightly shook her head. “Now, Bart! Now, Bart!”
“You little devil, I don’t believe you love me at all!” he said, half-laughing, half-hurt.
She leaned swiftly forward to plant a quick, firm kiss upon his mouth. “Yes, then, I do, my dear, but you’re a bad one for a poor girl to trust in. A clean-off rascal you are, love, aren’t you now?”
He dragged her across his knees, so that her dark head lay on his arms. “I swear I’ll marry you, Loveday!”
She made no attempt to free herself from the rough grip upon her, but said softly: “No.”
His hand, which had been stroking one of her thighs through the thin stuff of her dress, tightened on her firm flesh. “You’re driving me mad! I’m not going on like this!”
“We must be patient,” she said. “Give over, Bart-love! you’ll have me bruised black and blue. Let me sit up like a decent woman, now do!”
He released her, and she began to straighten her dress, and her dishevelled hair. “You’ll get me turned off without a character, my dear, that’s what you’ll do. We’ve got to be careful.”
“To hell with that! I’m my own master, and I’ll do as I choose. If the Guv’nor won’t give me Trellick Farm, I’ll cut loose and make a living on my own! I could do it.”
“No, but you shan’t then,” she said, taking one of his hands between hers and fondling it. “There’s never one as would employ you, love. You with your wildness, and your high-up airs, and the crazy notions you do be taking into your head! The poorhouse is where we’d end, and you promising to set me up in style at Trellick!”
He grinned, but said' I’m damned useful to Ray. He’d be willing to employ me up at the stud-farm.”
“He would not, then, and well you know it. You tell Raymond you’re planning to marry Loveday Trewithian, and see what! Besides, there’s nothing he could do for us, whatever he chose, while your father’s alive.”
“Well, then, I’ll set up as a trainer on my own.”
“Not without some money you won’t, love. Leave the Master give old Penrose his notice to quit, and put you into Trellick, and you may put up the banns the first Sunday after.”
“I can’t wait!”
She sighed. “Why won’t he set you up the way he said he would, Bart?”
“What’s the good of asking why my father won’t do a thing? I don’t know — daresay he doesn’t either. He talks a lot of rot about my not being ready for it, but that’s not it.
“Seeming to me,” she said thoughtfully, “he’s set on keeping you here under his thumb, my love, the same as he has Mr Raymond. But he’ll not last for ever, not the way he’s carrying on, and so they all say.”
“Well, I’m sick of hanging about, meeting you in odd corners. I’d rather have it out with the old man, and be damned to him!”
“Wait!” she counselled him. “There’s plenty of things can happen yet, and now’s not the time to say anything to him that he wouldn’t be pleased to hear. He put himself in a fine taking over the letter he had from Mr Aubrey, by what my uncle told me. Wait, love!”
“I don’t believe you mean to marry me,” he said sulkily.
She leaned towards him, till her arm touched his. “Yes. I do mean. You know I do! And I will be a good wife to you, even if I’m beneath your station, my darling Barty. But there’s not one of your brothers, nor your father neither, would leave you marry me, if they could stop it. We must be sensible. If it were found out you were keeping company with me before you’ve twopence to call your own, they’d send me packing, and manage it so that you couldn’t come next or nigh me.”
That made him laugh; and he hugged her to him, and pinched her cheek. “You don’t know me if you think any one of them could manage anything of the kind! Besides, why should my brothers care what I do?”
“Your brother Conrad would,” she insisted. “Bart, I do be afraid of Conrad. He looks at me as though he’d like to see me dead.”
“What rot!” he scoffed. “Con? Why, you silly little thing, Loveday, Con’s my twin!”
“He’s jealous,” she said.
But Bart only laughed again, because such an idea was so alien to his own nature as to be ridiculous to him. If Conrad looked darkly, he supposed him to be out of sorts, and gave the matter not another thought. When Loveday suggested that Conrad might divulge their secret to Penhallow, he replied without an instant’s hesitation: “He wouldn’t. Even Eugene-wouldn’t do that. We don’t give each other away to the Guv’nor.”
