The Jervaise Comedy Part 23

Brenda must have realised that, too; but, no doubt, she shrank from wounding him mortally in public. The ten years of familiar intercourse between her and Ronnie were not to be obliterated in a day, not even by the fury of her pa.s.sion for Arthur Banks.

"I know," she said. "But you _are_ interrupting, Ronnie. Do go!"

"And leave you here?" He was suddenly encouraged again by her tone. He looked down at her, now; pleading like a great puppy, beseeching her to put a stop to this very painful game.

"Surely, Ronnie, you must realise that I--mean it, this time," she said.

"Not that you're going to ... going to Canada," he begged.

"Yes. Yes. Definitely and absolutely finally yes," she said.

"With--him?"

"Yes."

"But, _Brenda_!" The long-drawn appeal of her name showed that the full bitterness of the truth was coming home to him at last.

"I'm sorry," she said, and the sound of it was in some way painfully final.

"It isn't because..." he began, but she antic.i.p.ated his well-known reasons by saying,--

"It's nothing to do with you or with anything you've done, nothing whatever. I'm sorry, Ronnie, but it's fate--just fate. Do go, now. I'll see you again before--before we go."

And still he stood for an instant undecided; and I could see the struggle that was going on in him, between the influence of Harrow and Oxford and those of the honest, simple primitive man. He knew that the right, conventional thing for him to do was to be magnanimous; to admit that he was the defeated lover, and to say something that would prove how splendid he could be in the moment of disaster. The traditions of Harrow, Oxford, and the melodrama united to give him an indication of the proper conduct of the situation, and against them was ranged nothing more than one feral impulse to take Banks by the throat and settle his blasphemous a.s.sumption of rivalry off-hand.

But it was, I think, a third influence that decided the struggle for that time. His glare of wrath at Banks had been followed by one last yearning look at Brenda, and some sentimental realisation of his loss rose and choked him, temporarily superseding the powers both of make-believe and instinct. One lesson he had learnt at Harrow and Oxford so thoroughly that he re-acted to it even in this supreme crisis of his life. He might give expression to brutal pa.s.sion, but in no circ.u.mstances whatever must he break down and weep in public.

He turned quickly and blundered out of the room with a stumbling eagerness to be alone that was extraordinarily pathetic.

"You'll admit, B., that it's cursedly hard lines on Ronnie after all these years," Frank said with what sounded like genuine emotion.

She took that up at once. "I know it is," she said. "It's going to be hard lines on lots of people, but there's no way out of it. You may think it's silly tosh to talk about Fate; but it _is_ Fate."

And then she looked at Banks with something in her expression that was surely enough to compensate him for any pain or sacrifice he might have to endure for her.

"_We_ can't help it, can we, Arthur?" she said.

He was too moved to answer. He set his lips tightly together and shook his head, gazing at her with a look of adoration and confidence that was almost violent in its protestation of love.

Jervaise turned round and leaned his forehead against the high mantelpiece. I looked out of the window. Anne remained hidden in the corner of the settle. We all, no doubt, had the same feeling that this love-affair was showing itself as something too splendid to be interfered with. Whether or not it had the qualities that make for endurance, it had a present force that dwarfed every other emotion. Those two lovers ruled us by their perfect devotion to each other. I felt ashamed of my presence there, as if I had intruded upon some fervent religious ceremony. They were both so sincere, so gallant, and so proud.

It was Banks who re-started the conversation. The solitude we had permitted to the lovers was at once too little and too much for them. What had pa.s.sed between them by an exchange of signals in the brief interval, I could only guess; they certainly had not spoken, but Banks's new subject suggested that they had somehow agreed to divert the interest momentarily from themselves.

"I've brought Mr. Melhuish back with me," he said. "He's going to stay the night with us." He may have been addressing Brenda in answer to some look of inquiry that had indicated my resolutely unconscious back.

Since Turnbull had gone, I was more than ever the outsider and intruder, and I was all too keenly aware of that fact as I turned back towards the room. My embarra.s.sment was not relieved by the slightly perplexed astonishment the announcement had evoked in the faces of the two women.

"But I thought you were staying at the Hall," Brenda said, looking at me with that air of suspicion to which I was rapidly growing accustomed.

"I was," I said; "but for reasons that your brother may be able to explain, I'm staying there no longer."

She looked at Jervaise, then, but he had no reply ready. I had put him in a difficult position. I had a chance to revenge myself at last.

"I don't understand, Frank," Brenda prompted him; and Anne began to come to life for the first time since I had entered the room--there was a new effect of mischief about her, as if she had partly guessed the cause of my expulsion from the Hall.

"It's a long story," Jervaise prevaricated.

"But one that I think you ought to tell," I said, "in justice to me."

"We found that Melhuish had been, most unwarrantably, interfering in--in this affair of yours, B.," he grumbled; "and, in any case, it's no business of his."

Brenda's dark eyebrows lifted with that expression of surprised questioning to which she could give such unusual effect. I suppose it emphasised that queer contrast--unique in my experience--between her naturally fair hair, and her black eyebrows and eyelashes. I have to emphasise the fact that the straw gold of her abundant vital hair was its _natural_ colour. She had often, I believe, threatened to dye it, in order to avoid the charge of having already done so.

"What piffle!" she remarked. "How has Mr. Melhuish interfered? Why, this is the first time I've seen him since last night at the dance. Besides,"

she glanced at me with a half-whimsical touch of apology, "I hardly know him."

"Oh! it's some romantic rot of his, I suppose," Jervaise returned sullenly. "I never thought it was serious."

"But," Anne interposed, "it sounds very serious...if Mr. Melhuish has had to leave the Hall in the middle of his visit--and come to us." I inferred that she was deliberately overlooking my presence in the room for some purpose of her own. She certainly spoke as if I were not present.

"Partly a misunderstanding," Jervaise said. "No reason why he shouldn't come back with me now if he wants to."

"You would in that case explain, of course, how the misunderstanding arose?" I put in.

"_I_ don't know what your game is," he returned allusively.

"I never had one," I said.

"Looked infernally suspicious," was his grudging answer.

The two girls exchanged a look of understanding, but I had no notion what they intended by it. I had not learnt, then, how cleverly they played up to each other.

"Yes, but suspicious of what, Mr. Jervaise?" Anne said, taking up the cross-examination.

"Spying upon us," Jervaise growled.

"Upon you or me?" asked Brenda.

"Both," Jervaise said.

"But why?" asked Anne.

"Lord knows," Jervaise replied.

I made no effort to interrupt them. The two girls were clearing my character for me by the simple obvious method that I had not had the wit to adopt for myself. I might have argued and protested for hours, and the only result would have been to confirm Jervaise's suspicions. Confronted by an innocent demand for explanation, he had not a leg to stand on.

Brenda's eyebrows went up again, with that slightly bizarre, exotic air which was so arresting. She spoke to me this time.