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Clive turned to see his father walking out of the room; then he looked at his sister and, the corner of his mouth moving up into a twisted smile, he stared at her for some moments before saying, "You know, it's a funny thing about time, it can be endless, and then it is as if it had never been. I thought you might have changed but you haven't, you're still the same Isabelle."

Her face took on a blank, dead look as she returned his stare and, her voice low in her throat, she said, Tou're wrong. Time takes its count from where you are; and on a grey island every minute is a month, and a year eternity, and the seasons chop you Up and you die slowly. "

When her lips trembled and she swallowed and the bone in her neck moved up and down like a man's Adam's apple, he put his hand out and gently touched hers. She gripped it fiercely, and hung on to it; then, her head bowed, she thrust her hand through his arm, saying thickly, "Come; let's get out of this room, we've got a lot to talk about, you and I.

"

After only a month at home Clive was experiencing the strange sensation of being confined on all sides, even more so than when he had been incarcerated in that boat in the middle of the ocean. Yet his days were filled with riding, shooting, visiting, and, of course, walking with his son.

His son troubled him. Strange as it was, or perhaps not so strange, he was the only person in the household who wasn't worshipping at the boy's feet, for memories recurring from his own childhood caused him to object to different liberties accorded the boy. He himself had never been allowed such liberties. He had been fourteen years old before he had sat down to a meal with his father, yet this child came into the drawing room every afternoon for tea.

Months had gone by in his own and Isabelle's childhood during which they didn't see their parents. When the season came their parents disappeared to a place called London and they were left to the mercies of a nurse and a relaxed household. Even when their parents were at home, weeks would go by without their getting a glimpse of them; then perhaps for three days at a time they would see their mother. She would come up to the nursery, gay and beautiful, and want to play with them, but he himself could never play with her because he wasn't used to her.

In his childhood the nursery had been a world kept apart from the rest of the house; now the whole house was merged into the nursery. Every morning his father visited the nursery; every afternoon, weather permitting, he walked with the child; then there followed the tea ceremony in the drawing room. He doubted whether in all the land there was a child who had as much liberty as this flyblow of his.

But whereas his son irked him, the attitude of his father towards the boy angered him. He would scarcely give himself a day's shooting because he would miss a session with the child.

And now there was this business of inheritance. The child was his, he couldn't disclaim that even if he wanted to, but to recognize him legally, not only to give him his name, but to state in writing that no matter what further issue he might have this child would claim first place as his heir was taking the whole business to lengths that were not only unreasonable but fantastic.

When he put to his father the question, "What if I marry? Do you think any woman is going to stand for her son taking second place to a bastard, for no amount of legal writing is going to alter that fact?"

his father's reply had merely been, "He is your son."

He was standing now at the window of his room looking out over the drive and the sunken garden, and into his view came his father and the child, with the nurse walking some distance behind. The ritual was taking place again. The child's chatter, penetrating through the window to him, irritated him. He was allowed to talk without let-up; he was under no discipline; not that he was rude, for in spite of his liberty he had a charming way with him. This being so, why couldn't he love him, at least like him? It came to him as he watched the child running wildly here and there that he felt towards him as his own father had felt towards himself, a mixture of irritation and responsibility.

The child, too, he knew had sensed his feelings, tor after the first ecstatic moments when he had been presented to him as his papa from the big ship, he had not been free with him as he was with his grandfather, or even with Isabelle. Now that was strange, the affection that existed between the child and Isabelle. As she had said, he almost treated her as his mama, and she in turn, behind the outwardly cynical acceptance of his affection, was now as besotted by him as was his father.

What was going to happen to Isabelle? Would she marry? Bellingham's nephew seemed attracted, but he was like whey to her thick brown beer.

What she needed was a master, but where was he to be found? Not in the narrow, censored circle of their acquaintances as far as he could see.

His feelings towards his sister, too, disturbed him. They were a mixture of pity that was akin to love and dislike that was akin to hate; his softer feelings towards her were aroused when she told him, as she did at intervals, of her life with the licentious, puritanical parson and their aunt, a female replica of their father enlarged still further by frustration.

He had been made to wonder at first how she had become such a good shot, for she handled a gun like a man, which was unusual. Then one night after supper when she had drunk well--their father no longer objected to her taking wine at the table--she had not only told him how she had become so expert with the gun, but had given him a demonstration, which, in a strange way, had made him shudder, for she had put her arms around his neck and slid her hands down his arms and over his hands and brought them into a firing position, and like this she had held him close for a moment before almost throwing him off her as she said, "That is how I learned. He would knock me up at dawn, or before, to take me out shooting. He kept the table supplied with wild duck, and as Aunt cooked and served it I know she prayed that it would choke him ... and me." She had laughed wildly for a moment, and he'd had a clear picture of the hell in which the three had existed in the stone house on the island, and his own experiences in the bilges seemed clean in comparison.

And it had all come about because of an argument as to who had right of way in a narrow passage. His thoughts had brought him to the point from which he always shied because the picture in his mind did not actually put before him the act of his first copulation but that of a sweat-covered face out of which were staring two terrified eyes.

He turned swiftly now from the window and looked about the room, then flexed his arms wide as if to push aside the walls. He'd have to get away, not only from the house but from the grounds, and not only from the grounds but from what lay immediately outside, the land, poverty stricken, overrun with the poor and the mean and the starving.

For the first two and a half years of his voyaging he had lived not only among the poor and the mean and the near-starving but also among the dregs of humanity; and he had been brought down to their level, and had prayed the while to be delivered. And he had been delivered, in so far as during the latter part of the voyaging he had risen, first to second mate, then to first mate, thanks to the barracuda and a six-inch blade. But even then he had longed for civilization again, a feather bed, eight-course meals, and the ebb and flow of lackeys around him.

Now he had all this, and perverse nature was turning it into brine in his mouth, for yesterday he had gone into Shields and walked the waterfront and lingered on until dark when he had meandered through the taverns; and part of him had felt at home even while he had seen the earth as peopled with scum.

And what of his painting? He had promised himself that, once ashore, between eating and sleeping and drinking he would paint, do nothing but paint;

for during his four-year voyage he had painted only five pictures and they during the last six months. And they weren't of seascapes, mountainous seas, or billowing sails, but of the brutalized faces of his companions. And now, here he had been almost five weeks in dvilization and he hadn't lifted a brush.

He went to the wardrobe and took down some breeches and put them on.

This was another thing. He had become so used to dressing himself that he couldn't bear a man fingering him. As he buttoned up the breeches he went out of the door, across the wide landing, down a passage to where there was a window at the end, and, opening it, called into the courtyard below, "Mickyi Mickyi" and when a stable boy appeared he shouted at him, "Saddle me the Rover." Then he strode back to his room, finished his dressing, and fifteen minutes later he was on his horse and riding out through the main gate.

He paused for a moment outside the gates. To the right and four miles away lay Bellingham's place; but he wouldn't go that way because he had refused to join the shoot. Opposite him was the road to Jarrow and Rosier's pit village, and he didn't fancy passing through that stinking hole; so he turned up the road to the left which led back towards the North Lodge, deciding that from there he would cut across the open ground towards Felling and perhaps stop at the tavern near the Toll gates because he felt like talking to someone; he did not add "someone ordinary," but left it at that.

There was a bend in the road some distance ahead and he saw a peasant woman come running down from the fell and on to the road. She was holding up her skirts. She had brown hair which glinted in the sunshine. He wondered in passing whom she was running from or whom she was running to, for this was a lonely part, there being no habitations about. Then a surprising thing happened. When he rounded the bend and looked along the straight stretch of road that led to the Lodge there was no sign of the woman.

When the explanation came to him his chin jerked, and he thought.

She'll certainly be tickled, if nothing more painful, for she had likely gone into the thicket bordering the wall to relieve herself. He put the horse into a canter and galloped along the road.

When opposite the North Lodge, he turned the horse and mounted the fells; he let the animal have its head, and it had covered almost a mile before it tossed him. When he felt himself diving through the air from the saddle he relaxed his body before it touched the ground, a life-saving trick that an old sailor had taught him--when you're thrown almost from one end of the deck to the other, and not only by high seas, you have to learn some defense. But his horse hadn't been so fortunate. When it scrambled to its feet it was evident that it had badly sprained its fetlock. He swore as he led it back over the way they had come. But before they were in viewing distance of the North Lodge he decided that he could cut the journey short by forking to the left; this should bring him almost to the bend in the road and near the main gates.

He was some distance from the actual road itself when he again saw the woman. He saw her coming out of the tangle near an oak tree, and he mightn't have thought anything more but to remark to himself that it had taken her a long time to do her business but for the fact that she first looked one way along the road, then the other. If she had raised her head high she must have seen him and the horse, but she didn't.

What she did now was to turn away and walk along the road; and when she reached the bend she mounted the fells and became lost to him among the hillocks.

He took the horse gently down the slope and on to the road; and when he came to the oak tree he glanced at it, then stopped. He noticed that it was covered, except for a few feet from its base, by a tangle of bramble and ivy. One thing, however, stood out: the ivy on the left hand side was dead because it had been cut.

Dropping the bridle and using both of his gloved hands, he pushed at the tangle, and when it fell inwards like an object without support his eyebrows moved upwards. Pushing it still further aside, he now saw through the dimness a clearing leading to the actual wall. He pursed his lips into a silent whistle. He did not venture to investigate further as he thought that would be unwise; there could be a trap somewhere, it could even be a spring trap and blow his head off. Yet why would anyone want to set a spring trap outside the grounds? No, that wasn't the reason for this tunnel; the tunnel had to do with the wall, the wall that guarded the grounds. He stepped back and pulled the bramble into place again, then thoughtfully led the horse away.

The thought of the woman and the tunnel intrigued him, and he would have returned to investigate further but for the fact that he hadn't escaped altogether lightly from his fall. He found he was bruised rather badly down one side and his shoulder was stiffening up; so when the next day it rained he took the carriage into Newcastle and presented himself at his father's club and sat drinking most of the afternoon, and although he was without company he found the atmosphere preferable to that of the house where everything seemed to be dominated by the requirements of Master Richard. The child, he e thought, attracted people up to the third floor more surely than a whore did long-voyage men.

He did not rise early the following day because he had a heavy head, but when he looked out the sun was shining, and after a light breakfast he decided to take a walk.

Isabelle met him at the foot of the stairs. She had not seen him since early yesterday morning and now she looked at him through narrowed eyes, and when she spoke there was hostility in her tone.

"Is it by accident you are becoming aloof, or is it intentional?"

He gave her his one-sided smile as he answered, "It was very wet outside yesterday, so I decided to match it" --he thumbed his chest as he ended"--internally, so I took myself to a place where the process would be undisturbed."

"A sailor's hostel?" Her lip was slightly curled, but he showed no offense and even laughed before he said, "No, no. No place so sordid.

I am reverting to my inherited standards; I honored Father's dub in the city. "

"I want to talk to you."