“Our half-brother! My God, what next?” Raymond said furiously.
“Oh, he’s one of mine all right!” Penhallow said, malice twinkling in his eyes. “Look at his nose!”
“I don’t doubt it! But if you imagine I’m going to have my orders ignored by him or any other of your bastards, you’ll learn your mistake!”
“Well, damn it, it was you who tried to override Father’s orders to him!” interrupted Ingram.
Raymond rounded on him, an ugly look on his face. “You keep out of this! What are you doing here, anyway? Haven’t you got a home of your own to sprawl in — rentfree?”
Conrad gave a crack of laughter, and started to chant: “Worry, worry, worry!” Eugene began to laugh; and Bart ranged himself on Raymond’s side, loudly applauding his conduct in having ordered Jimmy out of the room. Above the tangle of angry voices, Penhallow’s made itself easily audible. Vivian, realising that the family was fairly embarked upon one of its zestful quarrels, clenched her fists, and said sharply: “Oh, my God, how I loathe you all! How I loathe you all!”
Faith folded her embroidery with trembling hands, and slipped from the room. She found that her knees were shaking, and had to stand for a moment, leaning against the wall, to recover herself. The quarrels were becoming more frequent, she thought, or she was too worn-down to bear them as once she must have been able to. The sound of angry voices beat still upon her ears; she fled from it, down the long broad passage to the main hall, and up the shallow stairs to her room at the head of them, and sank into a chair, pressing her hands to her temples.
She found herself thinking of Clay, picturing him in the midst of such a scene as was now raging in Penhallow’s room. As sensitive as she was herself, afraid of his father, and of his brothers, wincing from a raised voice, life at Trevellin, if it did not drive him out of his mind, must surely wreck his nervous system. He would be expected to do all the things his more robust half brothers delighted in, and between his fear of their contempt if he refused his fences, and his fear of the fences themselves, his life would be a lasting misery.
His last letter to his mother had announced his intention of defying the parental mandate, and seeking employment in London, but Faith knew that this was only bluster, and not meant for other eyes than hers. He would come home at the end of the term, resentful, yet not daring to speak out boldly to Penhallow. He would pour out his troubles to his mother; he would think that somehow or other she ought to be able to protect him, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to see that she was as helpless as he in Penhallow’s remorseless grip. She did not blame him: she knew that she ought to help him, and thought that there was nothing she would not do to set him free from Penhallow’s tyranny. But there did not seem to be anything she could do, since her entreaties had been of no avail, and she was wholly without the means of supplying Clay with money to make him independent of Penhallow.
She tried to explain this to him when he came back to Trevellin early in June, but he had inherited her dislike of facing unwelcome facts and was more inclined to descant upon what they might both have done, had almost every circumstance of their respective positions been other than they were, than to form any plan founded on the situation as it was.