“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!”
