Three months after his accident he rode into Penzance market. If one woman squeaked at the sight of him so did a dozen, and children ran to their mothers blubbering that the devil had come for them. Even the men, though sympathetic, would not look him in the face, but stared at their boots while they talked and were plainly relieved when he moved away. John never went in again, unless driven by the direst necessity, and then hurried out the moment his affairs were transacted. For despite his bulk and stoic bearing he was supersensitive, and the horror his appearance awoke cut him to the raw. Thus at the age of twenty-three he became a bitter recluse, a prisoner within the bounds of his farm, Bosula, cared for by a widow and her idiot daughter, mixing only with his few hinds and odd farmers and fishermen that chance drove his way.
He had come to Helston on business, to hear the terms of his Aunt Selina’s will, and now that he had heard them he was eager to be quit of the place. The serving girl’s behavior had stung him like a whip lash and the brawling of the drunken squires jarred on his every nerve. He could have tossed the three of them out of the window if he liked, but he quailed at the thought of their possible mockery. They put their heads together and whispered, hiccoughing and sniggering. They were, as a fact, planning a descent on a certain lady in Pigs Street, but John Penhale was convinced that they were laughing at him. The baby ensign had a derisive curl in his lip, John was sure . . . he could feel the two shop-keepers’ eyes turned his way . . . it was unbearable.
Sneers, jeers, laughter . . . he hated them all, everybody. He would get out, go home to Bosula, to sanctuary. He had a sudden longing for Bosula, still and lonely among the folding hills . . . his own place. He drank off his ale, paid the score and went out to see what the weather was like.
The wind had chopped around easterly and the rain had stopped. The moon was up breasting through flying ridges of cloud like a naked white swimmer in the run of surf. Penhale found an ostler asleep on a pile of straw, roused him and told him to saddle his horse, mounted and rode westwards out of town.
He passed a lone pedestrian near Antron and a string of pack horses under Breage Church, but for the rest he had the road to himself. He ambled gently, considering the terms of his aunt’s will. She had left him her strong farm of Tregors, in the Kerrier Hundred, lock, stock and barrel, on the one condition that he married within twelve months. In default of his marrying it was to pass to her late husband’s cousin, Carveth Donnithorne, ship chandler of Falmouth.
John Penhale paid silent tribute to his aunt’s cleverness. She disliked the smug and infallible Donnithorne intensely, and in making him her next heir had passed over four nearer connections with whom she was on good terms. Her reasons for this curious conduct were that she was a Penhale by birth with intense family pride and John was the last of her line. A trivial dispute between John and Carveth over a coursing match she had fostered with all the cunning that was in her till the men’s dislike of each other amounted to plain hatred. She knew John would do anything in his power to keep Donnithorne out of the Tregors’ rents. She would drive him into matrimony, and then, with reasonable luck, the line would go on and Penhales rule at Bosula forever and ever.
John laughed grimly at the thought of his aunt—sly old devil! She had married and left home before he was born, and he had not seen her a score of times in his life, but she was a vivid memory. He could see her now riding into Bosula, a-pillion behind one of her farm hands, her cold blue eyes taking in every detail of the yard, and hear her first words of greeting to her brother after a year’s separation.
“Jan, thou mazed fool, the trash wants cutting back down to Long meadow, and there’s a cow coughing—bring her in to once and I’ll physick her.”
The cow came in at once; everybody obeyed Selina without question or delay both at Bosula and Tregors. Her husband, Jabez Donnithorne, was the merest cipher whose existence she barely acknowledged.
On one occasion Jabez, returning very drunk from Helston market, having neglected to buy the heifers he was sent after, Selina personally chastised him with a broom handle and bolted him in the pig-sty for the night, where he was overlaid by a sow and suffered many indignities. That cured Jabez.