The insult left her unmoved; she scarcely attended to it. With one of her inept attempts to divert him, she said: “You aren’t feeling well this morning. We can discuss it another time.”
He pitched the core of his apple into the fire, and licked his fingers before answering her. “There’s nothing to discuss. I’ve had it out with Cliff. It’s all settled.”
“You shan’t do it!” she cried. “I won’t let you, I won’t! Clay at least shan’t be tied to this hateful place as I am! It isn’t fair! You’re only doing it to hurt me! You’re cruel, Adam, cruel!”
“That’s a good one!” he exclaimed. “Why, you bloodless little idiot, a lad with an ounce of spirit in him would thank me for it! I’m giving him a damned good roof over his head, and the best life a man could ask! He can hunt, shoot, fish”
“He doesn’t care about that kind of thing!” she said, betrayed into another of her disastrous admissions.
His anger, which had so far been smouldering, burst into flame. “God damn the pair of you!” he thundered. “He doesn’t care for that sort of thing! He doesn’t care for that sort of thing! And you sit there boasting of it! He’d rather live in town! Then let him do it! Let him show me what he’s made of! Let him set up for himself in London, and astonish us all with this precious writing of his! Let him send me to the devil, and cut loose! I’m agreeable!” He beat with one hand upon the patchwork quilt, upsetting the dish of fruit. An orange rolled off the bed, and a little way across the floor, and lay, a splash of crude colour, in the middle of the carpet. He looked savagely at Faith, out of narrowed, mocking eyes. “Can you see him doing it, this fine son of yours? Can you, whey-face?”
“How can he get away, when you know very well he has no money? Besides, he isn’t of age. He—”
“That wouldn’t stop him, if he were worth his salt! Not of age! He’s nineteen, isn’t he? When Bart was his age he was the most bruising rider to hounds in two counties, besides being the handiest young ruffian with his fists you’d meet in a month of Sundays! Hell and the devil, he was a man, d’ye hear me? If I’d thrown him out on his arse, he could have got his living with his hands! And he would have! Why, he was younger than your brat when he fathered a child on to Polperrow’s bitch of a daughter!”
“I believe you would like Clay better if he’d been as wild and shameless as Bart and Conrad!” she cried in a trembling voice.
“I should,” he replied grimly.