The Jervaise Comedy Part 19

"Oh! well, I'll risk the inn at Hurley for one night," I said.

"What about your things?" he asked.

"Blast!" was my only comment.

"Rummest go I ever heard of," Banks interjected thoughtfully. "You don't mean as they've actually _turned you out?_"

"Well, no, not exactly," I explained. "But I couldn't possibly go back there."

"What about writing a note for your things?" he suggested. "I'd take it up."

"And ask them to lend me the motor?"

"I don't expect they'd mind," he said.

"Perhaps not. Anything to get rid of me," I returned. "But I'm not going to ask them any favours. I don't mind using the bally thing--they owe me that--but I'm not going to ask them for it."

"Must have been a fair old bust up," he commented, evidently curious still about my quarrel at the Hall.

"I told you that it ended with my wanting to fight Frank Jervaise," I reminded him.

He grinned again. "How did he get out of it?" he asked.

"What makes you think he wanted to get out of it?" I retorted.

He measured me for a moment with his eye before he said, "Mr. Frank isn't the fighting sort. I've seen him go white before now, when I've took the corner a bit sharp." He paused a moment before adding, "But they're all a bit like that."

"Nervous at dangerous corners," I commented, sharpening his image for him.

"Blue with funk," he said.

It occurred to me that possibly some hint of the family taint in Brenda had influenced, at the last moment, the plan of her proposed elopement; but I said nothing of that to Banks.

"I'd better leave my things," I said, returning to the subject which was of chief importance to me. You take me to that inn at Hurley. If I arrive in a motor, they'll take me in all right, even though I haven't any luggage. I'll invent some story as we go."

"They'd take you _in_," Banks replied thoughtfully. "'Tisn't hardly more than a public house, really."

I thought that some strain of the gentleman's servant in him was concerned with the question of the entertainment proper to my station.

"It's only for one night," I remarked.

"Oh! yes," he said, obviously thinking of something else.

"Too far for you to go?" I asked.

He glanced at his wrist watch. "Quarter past five," he said. "It'd take me the best part of two hours to get there and back--the road's none too good."

"You don't want to go?" I said.

"Well, no, honestly I don't," he replied. "The fact is I want to see Mr.

Jervaise again." He smiled as he added, "My little affair isn't settled yet by a good bit, you see."

I sheered away from that topic; chiefly, I think, because I wanted to avoid any suggestion of pumping him. When you have recently been branded as a spy, you go about for the next few days trying not to feel like one.

"Isn't there any place in the village I could go to?" I asked.

He shook his head. "There's one pub--a sort of beerhouse--but they don't take people in," he said.

"No lodgings?" I persisted.

"The Jervaises don't encourage that sort of thing," he replied. "Afraid of the place getting frippery. I've heard them talking about it in the car.

And as they own every blessed cottage in the place...." He left the deduction to my imagination, and continued with the least touch of bashfulness, "You wouldn't care to come to us, I suppose?"

"To the Home Farm?" I replied stupidly. I was absurdly embarra.s.sed. If I had not chanced to see that grouping in the wood before lunch, I should have jumped at the offer. But I knew that it must have been Miss Banks who had seen me--spying. Jervaise had had his back to me. And she would probably, I thought, take his view of the confounded accident. She would be as anxious to avoid me as I was to avoid her. Coming so unexpectedly, this invitation to the Farm appeared to me as a perfectly impossible suggestion.

Banks, naturally, misinterpreted my embarra.s.sment.

"I suppose it would put you in the wrong, as it were--up at the Hall," he said. "Coming to us after that row, I mean, 'd look as if what they'd been saying was all true."

"I don't care a hang about _that_," I said earnestly. In my relief at being able to speak candidly I forgot that I was committing myself to an explanation; and Banks inevitably wandered into still more shameful misconceptions of my implied refusal.

"Only a farm, of course..." he began.

"Oh! my dear chap," I interposed quickly. "Do believe me, I'd far sooner stay at the Home Farm than at Jervaise Hall."

He looked at me with rather a blank stare of inquiry.

"Well, then?" was all he found to say.

I could think of nothing whatever.

For a second or two we stared at one another like antagonists searching for an unexposed weakness. He was the first to try another opening.

"Fact is, I suppose," he said tentatively, "that you'd like to be out of this affair altogether? Had enough of it, no doubt?"

I might have accepted that suggestion without hurting Banks's self-respect. I saw the excuse as a possibility that provided an honourable way of escape. I had but to say, "Well, in a way, yes. I have, in all innocence, got most confoundedly entangled in an affair that hasn't anything whatever to do with me, and it seems that the best thing I can do now is to clear out." He would have believed that. He would have seen the justice of it. But the moment this easy way of escape was made clear to me, I knew that I did not want to take it; that in spite of everything, I wanted, almost pa.s.sionately, to go to the Home Farm.

I was aware of a sudden clarity of vision. The choice that lay before me appeared suddenly vital; a climax in my career, a symbol of the essential choice that would determine my future.

On the one hand was the security of refusal. I could return, unaffected, to my familiar life. Presently, when the Jervaise nerves had become normal again, the Jervaises themselves would recognise the egregious blunder they had made in their treatment of me. They would apologise--through Frank.

And I should go on, as I had begun. I was already decently successful. I should become more successful. I could look forward to increased financial security, to a measure of fame, to all that is said to make life worth living. And as I saw it, then, the whole prospect of that easy future, appeared to me as hopelessly boring, worthless, futile.

On the other hand...? I had no idea what awaited me on the other hand. I could see that I should have to accept the stigma that had been put upon me; that I should be thrown into the company of a young woman whose personality had extraordinarily attracted me, who probably detested me, and who might now be engaged to a man I very actively disliked; that I should involve myself in an affair that had not fully engaged my sympathy (I still retained my feeling of compa.s.sion for old Jervaise); that I should, in short, be choosing the path of greatest resistance and unpleasantness, with no possibility of getting any return other than scorn and disgrace.

I saw these alternatives in a flash, and no sane man would have hesitated between them for one moment.

"But look here, Banks," I said. "What would your mother and--and your sister say to having an unknown visitor foisted upon them without notice?"