The Owls' House

It was late evening when John Penhale left the Helston lawyer’s office. A fine drizzle was blowing down Coinage Hall Street; thin beams of light pierced the chinks of house shutters and curtains, barred the blue dusk with misty orange rays, touched the street puddles with alchemic fingers, turning them to gold. A chaise clattered uphill, the horses’ steam hanging round them in a kind of lamp-lit nimbus, the post-boy’s head bent against the rain.

Outside an inn an old soldier with a wooden leg and very drunk stood wailing a street ballad, both eyes shut, impervious to the fact that his audience had long since left him. Penhale turned into “The Angel,” went on straight into the dining-room and sat down in the far corner with the right side of his face to the wall. He did so from habit. A trio of squireens in mud-bespattered riding coats sat near the door and made considerable noise. They had been hare hunting and were rosy with sharp air and hard riding. They greeted every appearance of the ripe serving maid with loud whoops and passed her from arm to arm. She protested and giggled. Opposite them a local shop-keeper was entertaining a creditor from Plymouth to the best bottle the town afforded. The company was made up by a very young ensign of Light Dragoons bound to Winchester to join his regiment for the first time, painfully self-conscious and aloof, in his new scarlet. Penhale beat on the table with his knife. The maid escaped from the festive sportsmen and brought him a plate of boiled beef and onions. As she was about to set the plate before him one of the hare hunters lost his balance and fell to the ground with a loud crash of his chair and a yell of delight from his companions.

The noise caused Penhale to turn his head. The girl emitted an “ach” of horror, dropped the plate on the table and recoiled as though some one had struck her. Penhale pulled the plate towards him, picked up his knife and fork and quietly began to eat. He was quite used to these displays. The girl backed away, staring in a sort of dreadful fascination. A squireen caught at her wrist calling her his “sweet slut,” but she wrenched herself free and ran out of the door.

She did not come near Penhale again; the tapster brought him the rest of his meal. Penhale went on eating, outwardly unmoved; he had been subject to these outbursts, off and on, for eighteen years.

Eighteen years previously myriads of birds had been driven south by the hard winter upcountry. One early morning, after a particularly bitter snap, a hind had run in to say that the pond on Polmenna Downs, above the farm, was covered with wild duck. Penhale took an old flintlock fowling piece of his father’s which had been hanging neglected over the fireplace for years, and made for Polmenna, loading as he went.