“It won’t do your gout any good,” grumbled Reuben, but he went off to obey the order.
When he had drunk as much port as he wanted to, and had reached that stage of boisterous elation which his wife so much dreaded, Penhallow had himself wheeled into the Long drawing-room to join the ladies. His intellect was just sufficiently clouded to prevent his keeping his usual strict tally on the various members of his family, so that both Clay and Bart were able to slip away unperceived; Clay to spend an unmolested evening morosely knocking the balls about in the billiard-room and Bart to keep an assignation with Loveday in the schoolroom. However, when Penhallow decided at last to go to bed, and it was discovered that Jimmy had taken French leave, and was nowhere to be found, he insisted on having Bart to help Reuben to undress him, and get him into his bed, and for the first time noticed his absence from the room. Conrad, who, for all his jealous of Loveday, would have been torn in pieces before, betraying his twin to their father, at once said that Bart was working on some accounts in Ray’s office, and went off to find him; while Reuben diverted Penhallow’s rising anger by announcing that he had had enough of Jimmy’s habit of sneaking off to the village as soon as his back was turned. Penhallow promptly forgot about Bart, and said that they all grudged poor little Jimmy his bit of fun, but that he was the only one amongst the whole pack who cared two pins for his old father.
“A more unjust observation,” murmured Eugene, “in face of the Bastard’s practice of deserting his post whenever he hears the call of the flesh, I have yet to listen to.”
“Ah, you’re all jealous of Jimmy!” said Penhallow, shaking his head. “You’re afraid of his cutting you out!”
An expression of acute nausea came into Eugene’s face, but as Conrad and Bart came back into the room at that moment, his reply was lost.
Bart was looking heated, Conrad having walked without warning into the schoolroom, where he had been sprawling in a deep chair, with Loveday on his knee, and interrupted this idyll by saying caustically that if he could think of something besides wenching for a few minutes Penhallow wanted him to assist him into bed.
Bart had leaped to his feet in quick wrath, and there would undoubtedly have been a minor brawl had not Loveday represented to him the folly of keeping his lather waiting, and so arousing his suspicions.
“And where the devil have you been?” demanded Penhallow. “Don’t give me any of your lies, because I know damned well what you’ve been up to!”
“All right, then why ask me?” Bart retorted. “What do you want me for, anyway? Where’s Jimmy?”
“Need you ask?” said Eugene. “He seeks his pleasures in the village. Unlike some others one might mention.”