Penhallow jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the painted cupboards set in the bed-head. “I’ve got papers to prove it.”
The old grandfather clock in the corner gave a whirring sound, and began timely to strike the hour. Raymond found that the palms of his hands were sweating and cold. Wisps of thought jostled one another in his brain; he was unable to seize any one of them, but the wild improbability of his father’s words prompted him to say again: “I don’t believe it! You old fool, you must be in your dotage to put up such a tale as that to frighten me with! It couldn’t be true!”
Penhallow leaned back against his pillows once more. The rage had faded from his face, leaving it gloating and grinning. “I thought that ’ud make you sing a different tune,” he said, with diabolical satisfaction. “It’s done me good too. Damme, it’s gone against the grain with me to keep that secret from you during all the years that you’ve been giving yourself enough airs to make a cat sick!”
Raymond drew one hand from his pocket, found that it was shaking, and put it back again. He passed his tongue between his lips, and said carefully: “I think you’re more insane than any of us suspected. How could I possibly have been brought up here — Oh, don’t talk such damned rubbish!”
“Ah, that was Rachel’s doing!” Penhallow said amiably. “I wasn’t in favour of it, but she would have it so. She was a grand lass, my Rachel!”
“Mother.” Raymond said incredulously. “My God, you are mad!”
“She wasn’t your mother,” Penhallow replied, heaving himself on to his elbow, and picking up the decanter of claret from the table by the bed. He poured himself out a glass, and relaxed again, sipping the wine and grinning at Raymond. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you were born abroad? Lord, I made sure you’d smell a rat! Especially when Rachel left her money to Ingram!”
The over-furnished room seemed to close in on Raymond, although he saw it through a blur. He felt as though he were hot and cold at once, and became aware presently of the spaniel, which had got up, and was whining and scratching at the door to be let out. This trivial circumstance, intruding upon a moment heavy with a sense of impending disaster, recalled him from the whirling nightmare which had caught him up and threatened, for an instant, to overpower him. The dog’s insistence was not to be borne; he moved to the door and let her out, feeling this mundane action to have in it some quality of unreality. He went back to the huge fireplace, and took up his former position before it. He was extremely pale, but he thought he had himself under rigid control. Yet his voice, when he spoke, sounded unfamiliar in his ears. “If what you say is true, why did my — why did your wife bring me up as her son?”
“She was proud, was Rachel,” Penhallow responded reminiscently. “She didn’t want a breath of scandal about the business. Damned nearly murdered me, when she found out about it! But she loved me, she did, through it all. A grand lass! There was never any need to explain to Rachel: she knew what I was! Knew it didn’t mean a thing. She took me as I came: never dripping forgiveness over me, bless her!”
“I don’t want to hear about your relations with Mother!” Raymond interrupted roughly. “I should have thought you’d created plenty of scandal! She never paid any heed to what you did, that I can remember!”