Clay dared not assert that he was not going to stay at home, although every minute spent in the company of his family made him the more determined by hook or by crook to escape from Trevellin; but he showed so little interest in the question of what horses he could ride during the coming season that even Eugene roused himself to remark dispassionately that no one would take him for a Penhallow. Fortunately, Penhallow was too much absorbed in what Bart was telling him about the Demon colt to pay any heed to this interchange; and as any mention of the Demon colt had the invariable effect of drawing nearly every member of the family into the discussion, Clay was presently able to slip out of the room without attracting attention. His mother soon followed him, and they went upstairs together to her bedroom, where Clay at once unburdened his mind to her, pacing about the room as he did so, and fidgeting with whatever came in the way of his unquiet hands. Faith’s attention was thus divided between what he had to say, and what he was doing, and she found herself impelled to interrupt him several times, to beg him not to twirl the lid of her powder-bowl round; to take care of that chair, because one leg was broken; and please not to swing the blind-cord to and fro, because it made her giddy.
“I don’t believe,” said Clay gloomily, “that you have the least idea how desperate it all is!”
“Oh, darling, how can you say that to me?” Faith reproached him.
“I suppose you’re used to it,” pursued Clay, disregarding this interpolation. “You simply don’t realise how ghastly it is here! But I’ve been away from it, and you just can’t imagine how it strikes one, after having lived in civilised surroundings, amongst cultured people! I couldn’t bear it, Mother. It’s no use expecting me to. I mean, I should simply cut my throat. There’s nothing I wouldn’t rather do!”
Correctly assuming that this sweeping assertion excepted any form of manual toil, or office drudgery. Faith said: “Yes, but what can we do about it? I’ve tried my best to make your father see reason, but you know what he is. If only you’d done better in your First Part I think there might have been some hope, but...”
“Of course, anyone who imagines that one goes to the Varsity merely to swot, and pass examinations, just doesn’t understand the first thing about it,” said Clay loftily. “And, what’s more, I never heard that Eugene did so damned well up at Oxford, or Aubrey either, if it comes to that!”
“I know,” she said quickly. “That’s what’s so unfair! You were much too young to know anything about it at the time, but actually Eugene cost your father a great deal of money, when he was up, besides getting into the sort of scrapes I should have thought any father would have However, that’s his affair! Only, I believe the awful thing is that your father wouldn’t have minded, if you’d disgraced yourself at Cambridge, and got entangled with dreadful girls, and been sent down for sheer hooliganism!”
Clay stared at her. “Of course, he’s mad!” he said, with conviction. “Absolutely batty!”
She shook her head, but said, as though she feared to be overheard: “He’s got very strange lately. Not mad, but very — very eccentric. More than that, really. He has been doing some outrageous things, and he seems to me to be drinking more than he used to. I’m very worried about him.”
Clay accepted this conventional statement. He himself disliked his father, but he would have been rather shocked had Faith admitted that she too disliked him. He said: “He looks all right. I didn’t notice any change.”