“Good lord, I only told him to shut up! Here, Clay, you’d better go after her, and tell her it’s all right! I didn’t mean to upset her.”
“Tell her you’ve kissed, with tears,” recommended Eugene, drawing a dish of strawberries towards him.
Charmian waited until Clay had left the room before delivering herself of her opinion. Then she said, leaning back in her chair, and driving one hand into the pocket of the slacks she was wearing: “It’s amazing to me that you none of you have the wit to see what’s happening under your noses. It’s my belief that Faith is heading for a nervous breakdown. I never saw her so much on edge in my life. She looks as though she hasn’t had a proper night’s rest for months.”
Eugene, who could not bear anyone to encroach on his prerogative, said with light contempt: “My dear Char, we have all been sufficiently bored by the recital of Faith’s so-called insomnia already. If she had ever been called upon to suffer one tenth of what I go through nightly, she might have some cause to complain!”
“There’s nothing whatsoever the matter with you, Eugene,” retorted his sister. “You are fast turning into a hypochondriac, and Vivian can apparently find nothing better to do than to encourage you. Don’t bother to rush to his defence, Vivian! I haven’t the slightest interest in either of you. But unless I’m much mistaken Faith has reached a breaking-point, and will probably have a complete collapse one of these days. When I look at her, I am reminded of the terrible time I went through with poor Leila once, when she had been living on her nerves for months, and they gave way under the strain.”
Bart broke into a roar of laughter. “Oh, gosh! I should think they damned well might! Anything would give way under the strain of having that lump of Turkish Delight living on it!”
Aubrey intervened before Charmian could blister Bart for this irreverence. “Of course, I don’t suppose any of you will be at all interested, but I must inform you that Faith is not the only person in this house threatened with a nervous breakdown. And I do hope that when I so far forget myself as to render this board untenable by bursting into tears at it, you will remember that I am not uncountable for my actions.”
“I expect,” said Clara wisely, “that she needs a change of air.”
Clay came back into the room, with the news that his mother was lying down, so no more was said. Faith reappeared at tea-time, but from the look of dismay which came into her face when she paused on the threshold of the Long drawing-room it was plain that she would not have done so had she been informed that Penhallow intended to make one of the tea-party.
He was wrapped in his aged dressing-gown, and it was evident that it had cost him an effort to get up at all. His eyes held a look of strain; his colour was bad; he eased himself in his wheeled chair from time to time, as though he were suffering a considerable degree of discomfort. He was quick to see Faith’s instinctive recoil. He said in his roughest, most derisive voice: “No, you wouldn’t have come down if you’d known you were going to find me here, would you? A fine wife you are! I might be dead for all the notice you ever take of me! Why haven’t you been near me all day? Eh? Why haven’t you?”