The Jervaise Comedy Part 22

"But it is--partly," Brenda put in.

"My dear girl, do let's have the thing clear," her brother returned, but she diverted his apparent intention of making a plain statement by an impatient,--

"Oh! it's all _clear_ enough."

"But it isn't, by any means," Jervaise said.

"To us it is," Banks added, meaning, I presume, that he and Brenda had no doubts as to their intentions.

"You're going to persist in the claim you made this morning?" Jervaise asked.

Banks smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Don't be silly, Frank," Brenda interpreted. "You must know that we can't do anything else."

"It's foolish to say you _can't_," he returned irritably, "when so obviously you _can_."

"Well, anyway, we're going to," Banks affirmed with a slight inconsequence.

"And do you purpose to stay on here?" Jervaise said sharply, as if he were posing an insuperable objection.

"Not likely," Banks replied. "We're going to Canada, the whole lot of us."

"Your father and mother, too?"

"Yes, if I can persuade 'em; and I can," Banks said.

"You haven't tried yet?"

"No, I haven't."

"Don't they know anything about this? Anything, I mean, before last night's affair?"

"Practically nothing at all," Banks said. "Of course, nothing whatever about last night."

"And you honestly think..." began Jervaise.

"That'll be all right, won't it, Anne?" Banks replied.

But Anne, still leaning back in the corner of the settle, refused to answer.

Jervaise turned and looked down at her. "If you all went...?" he said, giving his incomplete sentence the sound of a question.

"Oh! I should certainly go, too," she replied.

Jervaise frowned moodily. I could see that he was caught in an awkward dilemma, but I was not absolutely sure as to the form it took. Had Anne made conditions? Her remark seemed, I thought, to hint a particular stipulation. Had she tried to coerce him with the threat of accompanying her brother to Canada unless the engagement to Brenda was openly sanctioned by the family?

"But you must see how impossible it is," Jervaise said, still looking at Anne.

"_We_ don't think so," Brenda put in.

"You don't understand," her brother returned savagely.

"_You_ don't," Brenda replied.

Jervaise snorted impatiently, but he had enough control of himself to avoid the snare of being drawn into a bickering match.

"It isn't as if the decision rested with me," he went on, looking down at the hearth-rug, but still, I fancy, addressing himself almost exclusively to Anne. "I can't make my father and mother see things as you do. No one could. Why can't you compromise?"

"Oh! _How_?" Brenda broke out with a fierce contempt.

"Agree to separate--for a time," Jervaise said. "Let Banks go to Canada and start a farm or something, and afterwards you could join him without any open scandal."

"Any mortal thing to save a scandal, of course," Brenda commented scornfully.

"Would _you_ be prepared to do that?" Jervaise asked, turning to Banks.

I thought Banks seemed a trifle irresolute, as though the bribe of finally possessing Brenda was tempting enough to outweigh any other consideration.

But he looked at her before replying, and her contemptuous shake of the head was completely decisive. He could not question any determination of hers.

"No, I wouldn't," he said.

"But look here, Brenda, why..." Jervaise began on a note of desperate reasonableness.

"Because I'm going out _with_ him," Brenda said. They might have chased that argument round for half an hour if Ronnie had not once more interposed.

His dudgeon had been slowly giving place to a shocked surprise. It was being borne in upon his reluctant mind that Brenda and Banks honestly intended to get married. And here was Frank Jervaise, for some mistaken purpose of his own, calmly admitting the possibility of the outrage, instead of scorning the bare idea of it with violence.

"I think you're making a ghastly mistake, Frank," he said with a composure that was intended to be extremely ominous.

Jervaise clutched at the interruption, probably to give himself a little more time. The women were proving so unamenable to his excellent reasoning. One simply contradicted him, and the other refused to speak.

"What's a mistake, Ronnie?" he asked.

"Listening to them at all," Turnbull said, with a preposterous attempt to be dignified. He would not look at Brenda as he continued, but he was certainly aware that she had turned towards him when he spoke, and the consciousness that she was watching him steadily increased his embarra.s.sment. "It's perfectly absurd, I mean, to talk as if you and your people would allow the thing to go on--under any circ.u.mstances--perfect rot! Why can't you say at once that it's got to stop--absolutely, and--Good Lord!--I don't care what any one thinks--if I were in your place I'd jolly well sling Banks off the premises--I tell you I would--" he got to his feet, his vehemence was increasing, as if he would shout down Brenda's silent disdain--"I'd confoundedly well kick him out of the county..." He looked almost equal to the task as he stood there roaring like a young bull-calf; but although he could have given his rival a good three stone in weight there was, I fancy, a difference in the quality of their muscles that might have left the final advantage with Banks in a rough-and-tumble engagement.

But despite, or perhaps on account of his complete inept.i.tude, I had a feeling of sympathy for Turnbull. It must have been very exasperating for him to stand there, roaring out his sincerest convictions and to be received by every one of us with a forbearing contempt.

Even Brenda expressed something of pity for him.

"My dear Ronnie, don't be absolutely idiotic," she said, forbearingly, but rather as though she warned him that he had said quite enough.

He breathed heavily, resentfully, but still declined to look at her. "Of course if you'd sooner I went away altogether..." he remarked.

"I don't see that you can help us by staying," Brenda said.

"I mean for good," he explained tragically.

I heard afterwards that he had been in love with Brenda since she was nine years old, but I might have inferred the fact from his present att.i.tude.

He simply could not believe, as yet, that she would let him go--for good, as he said. No doubt she had tricked and plagued him so often in the past that the present situation seemed to him nothing more than the repet.i.tion of a familiar experience.