“Your position is what you mean, Phin!” Penhallow had retorted. “A fat lot you ever cared for Delia’s troubles! All you want is to be able to live snug and soft in your damned respectability! Well, you won’t live quite so snug in future. Time some of the lard was sweated off you!”
“What about me?” Raymond had demanded, his words falling heavily between the two older men.
His father’s eyes had glinted at him mockingly. “You’ll learn to sing small, Ray. Maybe if you behave yourself I’ll hold my tongue.”
Raymond had been silent, bitterly envisaging his future at Penhallow’s hands.
“I apprehend,” had said Phineas, “that a woman why was once in my father’s employ, and later became nursemaid to your children, is also privy to this affair. I must insist that adequate steps be taken to ensure her silence.”
“Oh you must insist, must you?” had retorted Penhallow, kindling to quick wrath. “By God, Phineas.. I’d like to know where you think you are! This is my stamping ground, let me tell you, and the only man to do any insisting at Trevellin is Penhallow! Perhaps you’d like to offer old Martha a fat bribe? Or perhaps you’re going to insist that I should? That ’ud be more like you, wouldn’t it, so careful as you are with your money? Well, I shan’t do it, but I’ve no objection to your trying it on! Lord, I’d like to see your smug face well scratched!"
“If you are satisfied that the woman’s loyalty may be trusted,” had replied Phineas, with what dignity he could muster, “I must of course bow to your superior knowledge of her character, but I would point out to you—”
“You’ll bow to more than my superior knowledge of Martha’s character!” Penhallow had interrupted brutally.
Phineas had been obliged to swallow that. For how long the interview had been prolonged Raymond did not know. He had left the room, perceiving that neither he nor Phineas was serving any other purpose in remaining than that of providing Penhallow with a sport after his own heart. From the exultant joviality of Penhallow’s present mood, he inferred that he had succeeded in thoroughly discomfiting Phineas. He was obviously enjoying an extension of his power, and had as obviously begun to exercise it in a fashion as fiendish as it was capricious, since he announced, with a good deal of relish, that the Otterys were going to join his birthday party on the morrow.
“Well, it’s your party, sir,” said Eugene, in a tone that left no one in any doubt of his own sentiments.