pain had been merely blanketed by a strong anodyne. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, and, getting up from her chair, began to change her dress for dinner.
She thought that if she met anyone on her way to Penhallow’s room, or heard someone in the room when she came to it, it would be a sign to her that she was not, after all, meant to carry out her intention; but she felt so sure that she was meant to that it would have been a shock to her to have encountered even so small a hindrance as a housemaid upon the landing.
When she came out of her room, there was no one in sight. She could hear the twins’ voices raised in the hall below, and Charmian singing, rather unmelodiously, behind the shut bathroom door. The broad corridor at the back of the house, with its deep window embrasures, was deserted too. The doors into the twins’ rooms stood open on to it; Conrad had put his shoes outside; she taught a glimpse, as she passed, of Bart’s clothes tossed carelessly on to the floor of his room. The corridor led into a smaller hall, the counterpart of the one below it. Here was Eugene’s and Vivian’s bedroom, with its dressing-room beyond, and Aubrey’s room opposite. Aubrey had gone downstairs, but a murmur of voices sounded in Eugene’s room. Faith went softly down the narrow, worn stairs, meeting no one, holding the phial in her handkerchief. A scent of lavender drifted into the hall at the foot of the stairs from the door which stood open on to the garden; and one of Bart’s dogs, an old setter, lay on the mat with his head on his paws. He cocked his ears, and followed Faith with his eyes, but he did not lift his head, because he was uninterested in anyone but Bart. The double door into Penhallow’s room stood wide, as though to invite her to enter. From the hall she could see the patchwork quilt upon the bed shimmering and glowing in a shaft of late sunlight striking into the room slantways through one of the windows. She went in, quite unafraid, and crossed the room to the corner- cupboard. The decanter stood there, with a glass beside it, and a siphon, upon a silver tray. As she had expected, there was only a little whisky in it. She removed the heavy cut-glass stopper, and poured in the veronal. A tiny sound behind her made her start, and look over her shoulder. But it was only Penhallow’s cat, Beelzebub, which had awakened. and was stretching luxuriously. She replaced the stopper, and closed the cupboard door. The cat sat on its haunches, and began to wash one foreleg. As she moved away from the cupboard, it paused to regard her fixedly, holding its paw suspended. She did not like cats; she thought that this one looked malevolently at her, as though it knew what she had done. She left the room: and the setter’s eyes followed her again as she went towards the staircase.
Eugene and Vivian were still talking in their room; Charmian was whistling an air from La Boheme in the bathroom. Faith went into her room, and put the empty veronal phial back on the shelf beside the other bottles and pots that stood there. She felt strangely calm, as though she had not done. anything at all out of the ordinary, but she thought that her headache would be sure to return before she had spent many minutes amongst the Penhallows, so she swallowed a couple of aspirin tablets before going downstairs to join the party in the Yellow drawing-room.
No one paid much attention to her when she entered the room, and she went to sit down by the open window. Bart, who was standing by the pie-crust table upon which Reuben had set the tray with the sherry, had the decanter in his hand, and did indeed acknowledge his stepmother’s presence by lifting it suggestively, and saying: “Faith?”
She shook her head. There was a motley collection of glasses in the room, for it seemed that nothing broke quite so readily as a sherry glass, or was so hard to replace. Penhallow held one of an old set in his hand, and Clara had another; but Conrad was drinking from a tinted glass of thin Czecho-Slovakian ware, obtained from Woolworth’s; and Bart had a miniature club-tumbler. Faith thought dreamily that when she and Clay lived together in their London flat, everything should match.
Phineas’s call had left Penhallow in high good humour. Not even the appearance of Aubrey in his maroon velvet jacket provoked him to more than a sardonic crack of laughter. He said, a little boastfully, that he had not felt so well in years. Then he saw Bart look at him with narrowed, frowning eyes, and he added that he was going to die on his feet, or at any rate in his chair. When the time came to go in to dinner, he had his chair wheeled to the head of the table, remarking agreeably to Raymond that he was not going to be deposed yet. Raymond returned no answer to this jibe, but took his place between Charmian and Eugene. His brothers thought that the set look on his face betokened annoyance at Penhallow’s presence, and were amused at seeing him put out of countenance. But Penhallow’s resumption of the place which he had not sat in for so long affected him not at all. He was thinking of the strange interview which had taken place in the Yellow drawing-room after tea.
Hardly knowing what good, if any good at all, he hoped to do, he had joined his father and his uncle there, encountering, as he had entered the room, so bleak a look of hatred from Phineas that it had surprised a laugh out of him. In her dread of having her youthful indiscretion exposed by Penhallow, it appeared that Delia had cast herself upon her brother’s protection, openly acknowledging what Phineas had known, or perhaps only guessed, for forty years, but had shrunk fastidiously from facing. It was evident that he was furious at having the discreet veil in which he lived torn down by rude, Penhallow hands; and from the expression of distaste on his countenance it seemed that he blamed Raymond as much as Penhallow himself for the disturbance created in his ordered life.
“Hallo, Ray!” had said Penhallow genially. “Here’s your uncle been playing ostrich for forty years! You’ve upset his apple-cart nicely! What did you go running off to Delia for, you fool?”
“To learn the truth!” Raymond replied.
Penhallow had chuckled. “There’s an undutiful son for you! Mistrusting your own father! Didn’t I tell you that Delia was the sort of little fool who couldn’t keep a still tongue in her head? You might have known she’d scuttle off to blurt the whole thing out to Phineas, who didn’t want to hear it.” He directed his attention to his visitor, scanning him appreciatively. “Knew it all along, didn’t you, Phin? Old pussy-cat Phin! I thought you did. Lacked the plain guts to tackle me! Lord, there was never more than one man in your family, and that was my Rachel!”
Phineas had passed his tongue between his lips. The hostility he had been at pains to disguise for so many years was naked in his eyes, but his dread of scandal was more powerful than his dislike of Penhallow, and he had not allowed himself to be goaded into any intemperate rejoinder. He had said smoothly, picking his words with care: “I conceive it to be useless, my dear Penhallow, to indulge in idle recriminations. I have come here today to learn from you what your object was in making this unsavoury disclosure to the — er — unfortunate outcome of an interlude in your past which I prefer not to dwell on.
“That’s you, Ray,” remarked Penhallow.
“He wants an answer,” Raymond had replied. “So do I”
One of his soundless laughs had shaken Penhallow. “Damme if I ever thought I was going to get so much amusement out of it when I told you!” he had said. “Maybe I hadn’t got an object.”
Phineas had set his slightly trembling finger-tips together. “I require your assurance, Penhallow, that this affair will go no farther.”
“You won’t get it,” Penhallow answered genially.
Phineas’s voice had become a little shrill. “Have you considered what my sister’s position must be if any word of this disgraceful story passes your lips?”
“Your position is what you mean, Phin!” Penhallow had retorted. “A fat lot you ever cared for Delia’s troubles! All you want is to be able to live snug and soft in your damned respectability! Well, you won’t live quite so snug in future. Time some of the lard was sweated off you!”
“What about me?” Raymond had demanded, his words falling heavily between the two older men.
His father’s eyes had glinted at him mockingly. “You’ll learn to sing small, Ray. Maybe if you behave yourself I’ll hold my tongue.”
Raymond had been silent, bitterly envisaging his future at Penhallow’s hands.
“I apprehend,” had said Phineas, “that a woman why was once in my father’s employ, and later became nursemaid to your children, is also privy to this affair. I must insist that adequate steps be taken to ensure her silence.”
“Oh you must insist, must you?” had retorted Penhallow, kindling to quick wrath. “By God, Phineas.. I’d like to know where you think you are! This is my stamping ground, let me tell you, and the only man to do any insisting at Trevellin is Penhallow! Perhaps you’d like to offer old Martha a fat bribe? Or perhaps you’re going to insist that I should? That ’ud be more like you, wouldn’t it, so careful as you are with your money? Well, I shan’t do it, but I’ve no objection to your trying it on! Lord, I’d like to see your smug face well scratched!'
“If you are satisfied that the woman’s loyalty may be trusted,” had replied Phineas, with what dignity he could muster, “I must of course bow to your superior knowledge of her character, but I would point out to you —”
