“No?” said Penhallow, his eyes narrowing. “You’d rather I sent Jimmy, would you?”
“You can send whom you please. You won’t do it often. I’ve already had an interview with the manager. It may interest you to know that he wanted to know if I considered you fit to be trusted with a cheque-book. I don’t, but I haven’t said so — yet.”
There was silence for a few hard-breathing seconds. Penhallow had heaved himself forward from his supporting pillows, as though in an attempt to reach his son. His face had become suffused with dull colour, and his eyes blazed with an expression of naked hatred. “You hound, Raymond!” he said thickly, panting. “You ill conditioned mongrel-cur! So that’s it, is it? You’d like to get a couple of doctors to declare me incapable, would you?”
“No,” Raymond answered coldly. “I prefer to wash our dirty linen at home. But I won’t stand by idly while you waste the estate, so don’t think it! If you drive me to it, I will have you declared incapable — God knows it’s the truth!”
Penhallow raised his clenched fists in an impotent, raging gesture. He let them fall again, and began to rock himself from side to side. “Have me declared incapable!” he said. “By God, I’ve been too easy with you! Think yourself master here already, don’t you? You’re not! Not by a long chalk, Raymond! I’ve been watching you; I’ve seen you beginning to think you own Trevellin, grudging every penny I’ve spent on my other sons. You didn’t like it when I had Eugene and his wife give up that damned London folly. You didn’t want Clay here. You’re like a bear with a sore head because I mean to keep Aubrey under my eye. That doesn’t matter to me. I get a laugh out of seeing you play the Squire. But my hand’s still on the reins, my fine son, and there was never a horse could unseat me, no, nor get the better of me! There’s been no love lost between you and me, but I’ve made use of you because it suited me to. You were always a surly, cross-grained boy. I should have known that you wouldn’t stand corn!”
Raymond shrugged his shoulders, indifferent to this flood of abuse. “You should know better than to waste your breath telling me what you think of me,” he said. “I’ve never cared what you thought, and I’m not likely to start now. All I care for is the place, which you’re doing your best to ruin. But you’ll not do it! You’ve been behaving for the past weeks as though you were out of your mind: it wouldn’t be so difficult to get all the business out of your hands.” A grim little smile curled his mouth; he said with a note of mockery in his voice: “You’re not certifiable, but it isn’t necessary that you should be. I’ve been into all that.”
“Have you?” Penhallow said. “Have you indeed, Ray? Maybe you think it’s you who are in the saddle now?”
“It’s I who am going to hold the purse-strings,” Raymond replied uncompromisingly. “Better make up your mind to that. You can yield gracefully, or you can wait to be forced into it.”
“Yield!” Penhallow ejaculated. He flung back his head, and broke into a roar of laughter. The spaniel lying at his feet sat up on her haunches, flattening her ears, and lolling her tongue at him. He kicked at her, and she jumped down from the bed, and waddled over to a patch of sunlight, and lay down in it. “Yield!” Penhallow said again. “And what would you like me to do, Master Ray? Turn Eugene out, I suppose, for a start! Ask you politely for a little pocket-money every week? You’re riding for a fall, Ray!”
“Turn Eugene out for a start,” Raymond agreed. “Leave Aubrey to settle his own debts, and Ingram to pay for his brats’ schooling! And stop squandering money on your dirty little bastard!”