The Jervaise Comedy Part 14

"Too far for them, in the omnibus," she said. "And nothing else would be big enough for four people and their luggage. But, as a matter of fact, Nora and I talked it all over with Mrs. Jervaise before prayers, and she said we weren't to think of going--especially as it was all right, now, about Brenda."

"I'm glad it is all right, if only for old Jervaise's sake," I said, craftily.

She looked up at me, trying to guess how far I was honest in that remark.

"But you don't really believe..." she said.

"I don't see why not," I returned.

"That Brenda _has_ come back?"

"Mrs. Jervaise said..."

"Had to, of course," Miss Tattersall replied curtly.

I pursed my mouth and shook my head. "It would be too risky to deceive us as crudely as that," I said. "Make it so much more significant if we discovered that they had been lying about her."

Miss Tattersall looked obstinate, putting on that wooden enduring expression peculiar to fair people with pale eyes.

"I don't believe she has come back," she said.

I continued to argue. I guessed that she had some piece of evidence in reserve; also, that for some reason she was afraid to produce it. And at last, as I had hoped, my foolish, specious arguments and apparent credulity irritated her to a pitch of exasperation.

"Oh! you can talk till all's blue," she broke in with a flash of temper, "but she hasn't come back."

"But..." I began.

"I know she hasn't," Miss Tattersall said, and the pink of her cheeks spread to her forehead and neck like an overflowing stain.

"Of course if you know..." I conceded.

"I do," she affirmed, still blushing.

I realised that the moment had come for conciliation. "This is tremendously interesting," I said.

She looked up at me with a question in her face, but I did not understand until she spoke, that what had been keeping back her confession was not doubt of my trustworthiness but her fear of losing my good opinion.

"I expect you'll think it was horrid of me," she said.

I made inarticulate sounds intended to convey an effect of rea.s.surance.

"You _will_," she insisted, and gave her protest a value that I felt to be slightly compromising. I could only infer that the loss of my good opinion would be fatal to her future happiness.

"Indeed, I shan't," I protested, although I had to say it in a tone that practically confirmed this talk of ours as a perfectly genuine flirtation.

"Men have such queer ideas of honour in these things," she went on with a recovering confidence.

"Do you mean that you--peeped," I said. "Into Brenda's room?"

She made a _moue_ that I ought to have found fascinating, nodding emphatically.

"The door wasn't locked, then?" I put in.

She shook her head and blushed again; and I guessed in a flash that she had used the keyhole.

"But could you be sure?" I persisted. "Absolutely sure that she wasn't there?"

"I--I only opened the door for a second," she said, "But I saw the bed. It hadn't been slept in."

"And this happened?" I suggested.

"Just before I came down to prayers," she replied.

"Well, where is she?" I asked.

Miss Tattersall laughed. Now that we had left the dangerous topic of her means of obtaining evidence, she was sure of herself again.

"She might be anywhere by this time," she said. "She and her lover obviously went off in the motor together at twelve o'clock. They are probably in London, by now."

I did not give her confidence for confidence. I had practically promised Banks not to say that I had seen him on Jervaise Clump at five o'clock that morning, and I was not the least tempted to reveal that important fact to Miss Tattersall. I diverted the angle of our talk a trifle, at the same time allowing my companion to a.s.sume that I agreed with her conclusion.

"Do you know," I said, "that the person I'm most sorry for in this affair is Mr. Jervaise. He seems absolutely broken by it."

Miss Tattersall nodded sympathetically. "Yes, isn't it dreadful?" she said. "At breakfast this morning I was thinking how perfectly detestable it was of Brenda to do a thing like that."

"Or of Banks?" I added.

"Oh! it wasn't his fault," Miss Tattersall said spitefully. "He was just infatuated, poor fool. She could do anything she liked with him."

I reflected that Olive Jervaise and Nora Bailey would probably have expressed a precisely similar opinion.

"I suppose he's a weak sort of chap?" I said.

"No. It isn't that," Miss Tattersall replied. "He doesn't look weak--not at all. No! he is just infatuated--for the time being."

We had been pacing up and down the lawn, parallel to the front of the house and perhaps fifty yards away from it--a safe distance for maintaining the privacy of our conversation. And as we came to the turn of our walk nearest to the drive, I looked back towards the avenue that intervened between us and the swelling contours of Jervaise Clump. I was thinking about my expedition towards the sunrise; and I was taken completely off my guard when I saw a tweed-clad figure emerge from under the elms and make its way with a steady determination up the drive.

"Well, one of them isn't in London, anyway," I said.

"Why? Who?" she returned, staring, and I realised that she was too short-sighted to make out the ident.i.ty of the advancing figure from that distance.

"Who is it?" she repeated with a hint of testiness.

I had seen by then that I had inadvertently given myself away, and I had not the wit to escape from the dilemma.

"I don't know," I said, hopelessly embarra.s.sed. "It--it just struck me that this might be Banks."

He had come nearer to us now, near enough for Miss Tattersall to recognise him; and her amazement was certainly greater than mine.