“I don’t know where you think I could find five pounds,” she said cautiously. “What with the vet’s bill, and me needin’ a new pair of boots, and “
“You can’t refuse your favourite nephew! Now, you know you haven’t the heart to, Clara darling!” wheedled Bart.
“Get along with you! You’re a bad boy,” Clara told him fondly. “I know where your money goes! You can’t get round your old aunt.”
Bart grinned at her, apparently satisfied with the result of his coaxing. Clara went on grumbling about her poverty and his shamelessness; Conrad and Raymond began to argue about a capped hock, a discussion which soon attracted Clara’s attention; and by the time Vivian Penhallow came into the dining-room the four members of the family already seated at the table were loudly disputing about the rival merits of gorse, an ordinary chain, or a strap-and-sinker to cure a stall-kicker.
Vivian Penhallow, Surrey-born, was a fish out of water amongst the Penhallows. She had met Eugene in London, had fallen in love with him almost at first sight, and had married him in spite of the protests of her family. While not denying that his birth was better than their own, that his manners were engaging, and his person attractive, Mr and Mrs Arden had felt that they would have preferred for their daughter a husband with some more tangible means of supporting her than they could perceive in Eugene’s desultory but graceful essays and poems. Since they knew him to be the third, and not the eldest, son of his father they did not place so much dependence on Penhallow’s providing for him as he appeared to. But Vivian was of age, and, besides being very much in love with Eugene, who was seven years her senior, she had declared herself to be sick to death of the monotony of her life, and had insisted that she hated conventional marriages, and would be happy to lead an impecunious existence with Eugene, rubbing shoulders with artists, writers, and other Bohemians. So she had married him, and would no doubt have made an excellent wife for him, had he seriously settled down to earn a living with his pen. But after drifting about the world for a few years, leading a hand-to-mouth existence which Vivian enjoyed far more than Eugene did, Eugene had suffered a serious illness, which was sufficiently protracted to exhaust his slender purse, and to induce him to look upon himself as a chronic invalid. He had naturally gone home to Trevellin to recuperate both his health and his finances, and Vivian had never since that date been able to prevail upon him to leave the shelter of the parental roof. Eugene declared himself to be quite unfit to cope with the cares of the world, and added piously that since his father was in a precarious state of health, he thought it his duty to remain at Trevellin. When Vivian represented to him her dislike of living as a guest in a household teeming with persons all more or less inimical to her, he patted her hand, talked vaguely of a roseate future when Penhallow should be dead and himself peculiarly independent, and begged her to be patient. A tendency on her part to pursue the subject had the effect of sending him to bed with a nervous headache, and since Vivian believed in his ailments, and was passionately determined to guard him from every harsh wind that blew, she never again tried to persuade him to leave Trevellin.
Since she was not country-bred, knew nothing about horses, and cared less, she was regarded by her brothers in-law with an almost complete indifference. Being themselves unable to imagine a more desirable abode than Trevellin, and having grown up to consider the tyranny of its master an everyday affair, they had none of them any conception of the canker of resentment which ate into Vivian’s heart. They thought her a moody little thing, laughed at her tantrums, and mocked at her absorption in Eugene. Without meaning to be unkind, they teased her unmercifully and were amused when she quarrelled with them. In their several ways, they were all of them imperceptive, and insensitive enough to make it impossible for them to understand why anyone should be hurt by their cheerful brutality.
Faith, their father’s second wife, had been crushed by the Penhallows; Vivian remained a rebel, and had even developed a kind of protective crust which rendered her indifferent to their contempt of herself. She never pretended to take an interest in the subjects which absorbed them, and said now, as she walked into the room in time to hear Conrad ask Bart whether he remembered a herring-gutted chestnut Aubrey had picked up cheap some years ago: “Oh, do shut up about horses! I want some fresh toast for Eugene. Sybilla sent him up slices like a doorsteps. I should have thought she must know by now that he likes very thin toast, not too much browned.”
She cast a frowning glance at the toast still remaining icy in the racks on the table, but Bart warded her off with one outstretched arm. “No, you don’t! Eugene is damned well not going to pinch our toast!”
She stalked over to the bell-rope, and tugged at it imperiously. “That’s cold, anyway. Sybilla must make some fresh for him. He’s had one of his bad nights.”
Both twins at once made derisive noises, which had the effect of bringing a flush to her cheeks. Even Raymond’s grim countenance relaxed into a faint smile. “There’s nothing the matter with Eugene, beyond a common lack of guts,” he said.
She said hotly: “Because you’ve never known a day’s illness in your life, you think no one else has a right to be delicate! Eugene suffers from the most terrible insomnia. If anything happens to upset him—”
A roar of laughter interrupted her. She shut her lips closely, her eyes flashing, and her nostrils a little distended.
“Now don’t tease the gal!” said Clara. “Eugene’s got a bit of indigestion, I daresay. He was always the one of you with the touchy stomach, and if he likes to call it insomnia there’s no harm in that that I know of.'
“I don’t know how anyone can expect to get any rest in this house, with your father behaving as though there was no one but himself entitled to any consideration, and shouting for that disgusting old woman in the night loud enough to be heard a mile off!” cried Vivian furiously. “You wouldn’t like it if I said that there was nothing the matter with him, but nothing will ever make me believe that he couldn’t be perfectly well if he wanted to be!”
“Who said there was anything the matter with him?” demanded Bart. “He’s all right!”
“Then why does he rouse the whole house four times during the night?”
“Why shouldn’t he? His house, isn’t it?”
“He’s as selfish as the rest of you! He wouldn’t care if Eugene got ill again!”
Raymond got up from the table, and collected his letters. “You’d better tell him so,” he advised.
“I shall tell him so. I’m not afraid of him, whatever you may be!”
“Ah, you’re a grand girl, surely!” Bart said, lounging over to where she stood, and putting an arm round her shoulders. “Loo in, my dear, loo in! Give me a bitch-pack every time!”
She pushed him angrily away. “Oh, shut up!”
At this moment Reuben came in. “Was it one of you, ringing?” he asked severely.
“It was I,” said Vivian, in a cold voice. “Mr Eugene can’t eat the toast Sybilla sent up to him. Please tell her to make some more, thin, and not burnt!”
“Sybilla’s more likely to box his ears for him,” remarked Conrad, preparing to follow Raymond out of the room.
“I’ll tell her, m’m,” said Reuben disapprovingly, “but he always was a one for picking over his food, Master Eugene was, and if we was to start paying any attention to his fads there’d be no end to it. Many’s the time Master’s walloped him -’
“ If you’ll kindly do as I tell you?” snapped Vivian.
“You’re spoiling him,” said Reuben, shaking his head. “I’d give him fresh toast! Master Eugene indeed!”
Vivian with difficulty restrained herself from returning an answer to this, and after giving one of his disparaging sniffs Reuben withdrew.
“Stop worryin’ over the boy, my dear, and have your breakfast!” recommended Clara kindly. “Here’s your tea. Now sit down, do!”
Vivian took the cup-and-saucer, remarking that it was as black as ink, as usual, and sat down at the table. “I don’t know how you can bear that man’s impertinence,” she added. “He’s familiar, and slovenly, and impossible!”
“Well, you see, he’s been at Trevellin ever since he was a boy, and his father before him,” explained Clara mildly. “He doesn’t mean any harm, my dear, but it’s not a bit of good expecting him to be respectful to the boys. When you think of the times he’s chased them out of the larder with a stick, it’s not likely he would be. But never you mind!”
Vivian sighed, and relapsed into silence. She knew that Clara, though sympathetic, would never take her part against her own family. The only ally she had in the house was Faith, and she despised Faith.
