Penhallow by Georgette Heyer

Author:Georgette Heyer [Heyer, Georgette]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780755108961
Goodreads: 2762735
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2010-03-14T18:30:00+00:00

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Chapter Thirteen

When he left his father’s room, Raymond was in the grip of an overmastering instinct to get out of the house, and away from the curious eyes of its various inmates. He had no clear notion of where he was going, or what to do. He felt as a man might who, half-stunned, had survived an earthquake only to find his home and his life-work in ruins. He would have gone out of the house by one of the garden-doors but for Reuben, who met him, and checked him, by saying dryly: ‘If you’ve done trying to be the death of the Master, happen you’ll ‘tend to Tideford. He’s been waiting this twenty minutes in your office.’

Raymond stopped, with his hand already on the door, grasping the iron ring that lifted its latch. He stared stupidly at Reuben, feeling himself so remote from the ordinary cares of the estate that a visit from one of Penhallow’s tenants had no meaning for him. He repeated, in a blank tone: ‘Tideford?’

Reuben pulled down thee corners of his mouth, and gave one of his disapproving sniffs. ‘What do you want to go a-losing your temper for?’ he asked severely. ‘Fine doings! If Master was to go off sudden, we’ll knave whose door to lay it at.’

Raymond passed his hand across his eyes, as though to clear away the red mist that still obscured his vision. ‘That’s enough from you!’ he said roughly. ‘Tideford, did you say? All right: I’d forgotten.’

He released the iron ring, and went on down the broad passage towards his office at the other end of the house. He remembered now that Tideford had come up to see him by appointment; and realised that whatever cataclysm had overturned his life, the mundane occurrences of the everyday world had not stopped in sympathy with him, and would have to be attended to. He paused for a few minutes outside his office, attempting at once to thrust to the back of his mind the horror numbing his faculties, and to recall the business upon which Tideford wanted to see him. He was surprised, when he presently confronted Tideford across his desk, to find how calm he was, how steady both his voice and his hands. The interview helped to bring his faculties under his control again; when he saw Tideford off the premises half an hour later, he had recollected various duties waiting to be performed, and was able to attend to them in his usual methodical way. He was still conscious of a sensation of numbness, as though one half of his brain were clogged and weighted, unable to comprehend or to grapple with the hideous secret which had been disclosed to him; and he was still bent on escaping from the house, and carrying his trouble out into the open, as far from human sight as he could contrive. When he had finished such office-work as lay upon his desk, he left the house, and strode off to the stables, and briefly ordered a favourite hack to be saddled.

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