Джорджетт Хейер: Penhallow

Clara accepted this without comment, and began to pour out some coffee for him, and tea for herself: Having done this, she got up and went over to the sideboard, returning in a few moments with a plate upon which reposed a sausage, a fried egg, and several rashers of bacon. Raymond was studying a sheet of figures, and paid no attention to her. It occurred to neither of them that he should wait upon her.

“Your father was on the rampage again in the night,” remarked Clara presently.

“Reuben told me. He had Martha out of bed four times.”

“Gout?” inquired Clara.

“I don’t know. There’s a letter from Aubrey.”

Clara stirred her tea reflectively. “I thought I heard him shoutin’,” she said. “Aubrey gettin’ into debt again’’

“So Reuben says. I shouldn’t be surprised. Damned young waster!”

“Your father won’t be happy till he’s got him down here,” said Clara. “He’s a queer boy. I never could make head nor tail of those bits of writing of his. I daresay they’re very clever, though. He won’t like it if he has to come down here.”

“Well, nor shall I,” said Raymond. “It’s bad enough having Eugene doing nothing except lounge on the sofa, and fancy himself ill all day.”

“Your father likes havin’ him,” said Clara.

“I’m damned if I know why he should.”

“He’s very amusin’,” said Clara.

Raymond having apparently nothing to say in answer to this, the interchange ceased. The clatter of heavy feet on the uncarpeted oak stairs, and a loud whistling, heralded the approach of one of the twins. It was Conrad, the younger of them. He was a good-looking young man, dark and aquiline like all his family, and, although taller than his eldest brother, was almost as stockily built. Though not considered to be as clever as Aubrey, his senior by three years, he had more brain than his twin, and had contrived to pass, after a prolonged period of study, the various examinations which enabled him to embrace the profession of land agent. Penhallow having bought him a junior partnership in a local firm of some standing, it was considered that unless the senior partners brought the partnership to an end, on account of his casual habit of absenting himself from the office on the slimmest of pretexts, he was permanently settled in life.

He came into the room, pushed the door to behind him, favoured his aunt with a laconic greeting, and helped himself largely from the dishes on the sideboard. “The old man’s had a bad night,” he announced, sitting down at the table.

“So we’ve already been told,” said Raymond.

“I heard him raising Cain somewhere in the small hours,” said Conrad, reaching out a long arm for the butter-dish. “Your grey’s cast a shoe, Aunt Clara.”

She handed him his coffee. “I know. Your brother says Jimmy can take him down to the village.”

“Bet you the old man keeps Jimmy dancing attendance on him all day,” said Conrad. “I don’t mind leading him down. I’m going that way. You’ll have to arrange to fetch him, though.”

“If you’re going to the village, you can drop that at the Dower House,” said Raymond, tossing a letter over to him.

Conrad pocketed it, and applied himself to his breakfast. He had reached the marmalade stage, and Raymond had lighted his pipe, before the elder twin put in an appearance.

Bartholomew came in with a cheerful greeting on his lips. There was a strong resemblance between him and Conrad, but he was the taller and the more stalwart of the two, and looked to be much the more goodhumoured, which indeed he was. He had a ruddy, open countenance, a roving eye, and a singularly disarming grin. He gave his twin a friendly punch in the ribs as he passed him on his way to the sideboard, and remarked that it was a fine day. “I say, Ray!” he added, looking over his shoulder. “What’s the matter with the Guv’nor?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. He had a bad night.”

“Gosh, don’t I know it!” said Bart. “But what’s got his goat this morning?”

“That fool Aubrey. Reuben says he’s got into debt again.”

“Hell!” said Bart. “That puts the lid on my chances of getting the Guv’nor to dip his hand in the coffer. Lend me a fiver, Ray, will you?”

“What do you want it for?”

“I owe most of it.”

“Well, go on owing it,” recommended Raymond. “I’ll see you farther before I let you owe it to me.”

“Blast you! Con?”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

Bart turned to Clara. “Auntie? Come on, be a sport, Clara! I swear I’ll pay it back.”

“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.