Джорджетт Хейер - Penhallow

“He doesn’t darken my doorstep!” Bart said, his eyes smouldering. “Con! Con to say such a thing!”

“Yes, but, Bart-love, it’s because he don’t like to think of losing you the way he thinks he must if you marry me. I don’t think me good enough for you, besides, and indeed I’m not! I don’t know that I blame him so much is all that. Now, you won’t quarrel with him, my dear, will you? For if you do, they’ll say it was me turned you against him.”

He turned his head, as it lay on her shoulder, and mumbled into her neck. “O God, Loveday, my poor old Guv’nor!” he said in a broken voice. “If I knew — if I only knew who did it, I’d kill him with my own hands, whoever it was! Loveday, who could have done such a thing?”

Provided that neither she nor he were implicated in the murder, her private feeling was that the unknown murderer had done her a good turn, but since such a point of view would plainly shock Bart, she replied suitably, assuring him that indeed she had liked his father very well, and wished him alive at that moment. She experienced not the slightest difficulty in uttering these sentiments. If she had considered the matter ethically, which she did not, she would have considered her insincerity justified by the comfort it evidently brought to Bart.

In a similar fashion, later in the day, she listened sympathetically to the jerky outpouring of poor Clara’s over-charged heart. At sundown, with the approach of the dinner-hour, it had occurred to Clara that it was Penhallow’s birthday, and that he had been going to give a party. It was too much for her: she had gone away to her own room, and had given way there to a burst of weeping which was none the less violent for being very unusual in one of her reserved temperament. Loveday had heard her strangled sobs as she had passed the door and without pausing to consider whether her present would be welcome, had softly entered the room. The sight of Clara, crumpled up in a chair, draggled and damp, and convulsed by her grief, woke all that was best in her. She coaxed and persuaded Clara on to her bed, tucked her up with a hot-water bag, and fondled and petted her, as though she had been Faith, until she at last fell into an exhausted sleep. When she emerged from the room it was to find that Faith had been ringing for her for twenty minutes, and was in a state of mind quite overwrought as Clara’s.

“I can’t bear it!” Faith said wildly, lifting both hands to her head, and thrusting the hair back from her brow. “It’s hideous, hideous! No one’s safe from their suspicions! I never dreamed — Even the Otterys! Oh, do they ever convict innocent people, Loveday? Do they?”

“Of course they don’t, my dear! There, now, leave me bathe your face with lavender-water! It’s been too much for you, and no wonder! You’ll have your dinner quietly in your bed, and give over worrying your poor head any more about it today.”

“I ought to go down,” Faith said wretchedly. “They’ll think it strange of me if I don’t.”

“No, they won’t. They’ll think it natural that you, that was his wife, should be upset.”

Faith gave a shiver. “Oh, don’t! I tried to be a good wife! I did, Loveday, I did!”

“And so you were, my dear, never fret!”

Faith’s eyes crept to her face. “Loveday, you don’t think they could suspect me?”

The girl gave a rich little laugh. “No, that I don’t!”

“Or Clay? Loveday, has anyone said anything to you about my boy? Loveday, tell me the truth! Do they — do they think he could have done it?”

Loveday patted her hand. “Now, will you be easy, my dear? There’s no call for you to work yourself into a state on Mr Clay’s account, nor on anyone’s. Seeming to me, there’s nothing to show who did it. You let me get you to bed, with one of those aspirins of yours, and you’ll be better.”

“Don’t leave me!” Faith begged.

“Yes, but dearie, I must, for a little, for my uncle’s that upset that I’ll have to give a hand in the dining-room, or no one won’t get a bite of food this night. I’ll come back to you, surely. Now let me get the clothes off you, and some water to wash your face with, and I’ll soon have you comfortable, my poor dear.”

The appearance of Loveday in the dining-room, waiting on the family in Reuben’s place, though it excited no remark from the greater part of the company, made Clara say grudgingly that she was bound to admit that the gal had a good heart. Clara, restored by her short nap, had reappeared with rather swollen eyes, but all her accustomed self-possession. “I’ll say one thing for her, it hasn’t gone to her head, all this nonsense of Bart’s,” she observed. “I shouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started takin’ advantage. If it weren’t for her bein’ Reuben’s niece, I wouldn’t mind it so much, for I’m sure I don’t know what we should have done without her this day.”

Conrad compressed his lips, and kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Charmian said: “Well, I don’t believe in class distinctions, and I consider she’s rather an exceptional girl. I haven’t the slightest objection to having her for a sister-in-law, and I hope you’ll invite me to Trellick when you’re married, Bart!”

He threw her a glowing look of gratitude. “By God, I will, Char!"

“Pile it on thick enough, and he’ll invite the Pink Fondant too,” drawled Eugene.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t mind whom Bart marries,” said Aubrey. “But I do think it’s frightfully anomalous and shy-making to have his intended waiting on one at meals. I feel I ought to leap from my seat, and say Allow me! or something like that.”

Loveday came back into the room just then, with the sweets, and Charmian instantly said: “I’ve just been telling Bart that I hope you’ll both of you invite me to Trellick one of these days, Loveday.”

Everybody but Bart looked slightly outraged. Loveday blushed, and stammered: “You’re very good, miss, I’m sure.”

“You’d better get used to calling me Charmian, my dear girl, if you’re going to be my sister-in-law,” said Charmian, by way of demonstrating her freedom from class consciousness.

Conrad got up, violently thrusting back his chair. “I don’t want any pudding!” he said. “All I need is a basin to be sick into!”

He slammed his way out of the room, and Bart, who had started up, was pressed down again into his chair by Loveday’s hand on his shoulder. She said in her gentle way: “It wouldn’t be seemly, miss, not as things are. It’s better we should go on the same for the present.”

This speech, while it rather discomfited Charmian, still further predisposed Clara in Loveday’s favour. She said, a little later, when the family repaired to the Yellow drawing-room, that it showed a good disposition. Since Bart was not present, she was able to add that nothing would ever make her like the gal, but that things might have been worse.

The nightly gathering in Penhallow’s room had never been popular with any member of the family, but a melancholy feeling of loss and of aimlessness descended upon the company when the lamps were brought in, and the curtains drawn. The sense of that empty, darkened room at the end of the house lay heavily upon the minds of the family; and the absence from the gathering not only of Faith, but of Raymond, Clay, and the twins as well, brought home Penhallow’s death more poignantly to his children than anything else during that interminable day had done.

Ingram, walking up after dinner from the Dower House, was instantly struck by the change, and blew his nose loudly, and said that the old place would never be the same again. Gregarious by nature, he had enjoyed the evenings spent in his father’s room, and he had enough of Penhallow’s patriarchal instinct to wish to herd as many of his family together (always excepting Aubrey and Clay) as he could. He would have gone to look for the twins, had he not been dissuaded by Clara, who said gloomily that it would be better to leave both of them alone; and although he had very little interest in his stepmother, he inquired after her as well, and seemed disappointed to hear that she had gone to bed.