“I won’t leave un!” Martha moaned. “You shanna’ make me leave un! There’s never another soul shall touch him! It’s me and Sybilla will lay him out decent, the way he’d wish for us to do!”
“Oh, all right!” he said, trying not to let his impatience to be rid of her get the better of him. “You can do that, but not until Lifton has seen him.”
Reuben looked at him with hostility in his reddened eyes. “It’s little you care, Mr Ray!” he muttered; but he seemed to feel that Martha could not be permitted to continue wailing over Penhallow’s body, for after a moment’s indecision he bent over her, and coaxed and bullied her into going with him to the servants’ hall.
As soon as they had left the room, Raymond quickly closed the double doors, and returned to the bed. He did not waste a glance on the inanimate figure in it, but began with feverish haste to pull open the cupboards and the little drawers above it.
A magpie collection was disclosed, ranging from receipted bills, most of them for trivial sums, and many of ancient date, to such irrelevant objects as a champagne cork with a tarnished silver top; a tattered copy of Handley Cross; an old hunting-crop; the stubs of countless cheque-books; several boxes full of paper-clips and rubber-bands; a repeating-watch with a broken face; bunches of keys bearing the rusty appearance of having been unused for decades; numerous bottles of iodine and embrocation, jumbled amongst boxes of canine worm pills, mange-cures, and alternative powders; and a tangle of gold chains, fobs, and seals huddled into a screw of tissue paper. One of a cluster of shallow drawers was so full of old letters and papers that it could only with difficulty be opened. Without the smallest hesitation, Raymond pulled out the sheaf. Any moment Reuben might come back into the room, or some member of the family enter to put an end to his search. He had no time to do more than glance hurriedly through the papers, casting back into the drawer such immaterial items as old advertisements torn from periodicals, a collection of laded snapshots and picture post-cards, some of his and Ingram’s school-reports, and a miscellaneous assortment of letters which he saw, from their superscriptions, could have no bearing on the secret of his false birth. The rest he stuffed into the pockets of his dressing-gown, his ears straining all the time to catch the sound of an approaching footfall. Drawer after drawer he opened, without discovering either a birth certificate or any other document relating to his birth. There were the pedigrees of dogs and horses, a copy of Rachel’s marriage-lines, old account-books and Bank pass-books, an expired passport, and some old diaries which seemed to contain nothing but the records of day-to-day engagements, but which he also pocketed.
He felt a clammy sweat on his brow, and wiped it away with the back of one slightly trembling hand. Unless it lay hidden, in one of the envelopes he had abstracted to inspect at his leisure, there was no document that in any way concerned his birth. So intent was he upon the one object of his search, so hard-pressed for time, that he never noticed that the little tin box in which Penhallow, kept his money was missing from its usual place in the central cupboard. His mind veered towards the other cupboards in the room. He looked about him irresolutely, trying to recall what his father kept in them. He strode over to the marquetry chest, and began to pull open its drawers. They contained, as far as he had time to see, nothing but clothing. He crossed to the lacquer cabinet, and opened its doors, disclosing Penhallow’s ivory-backed hairbrushes, clothes-brushes, combs, and a variety of stud-boxes, corn-razors, and nail-scissors. He closed the doors again. He did not believe that Penhallow would have stowed such a document, if it existed, away out of his reach, and he began to think that Penhallow had invented it to alarm him. He walked to the door, and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. As he did so, Reuben came round the corner of the corridor, blowing his nose. He looked at Raymond over the edge of his damp handkerchief, and said rather huskily: “I’ve sent the gardener’s boy down to the village, but there’s nothing Lifton nor any other can do for the Master.”
“I know that. Somebody had better tell Mrs Penhallow. I’m going upstairs to put some clothes on. Send one of the maids up with my shaving-water. And keep everyone out of that room until Lifton’s been.”
“I shall stay with un, Mr Ray,” Reuben replied, a touch of belligerence in his tone. “It’s little you or Mrs Penhallow cares, but I won’t leave un laying there alone, and that’s straight! I knawed un when he was not so high ,is that chest there, and the daringest young rascal from here to Land’s End! I never left un, never, and I won’t leave un now, when un’s stiff and cold!”
“You can do as you like. Have you kicked that young swine out of bed? Where is he?”
"Jimmy!” Reuben said, with one of his contemptuous sniffs: “He never come in last night, and he’s not back yet, the dirty loose fish that he is! And not the first time, not by a dozen times it isn’t!”