The Jervaise Comedy Part 24

"And do you mean to say that they were all so horrid to you that you had to come away?" she asked.

"Precisely that," I said.

"But you don't tell us what Mr. Melhuish has _done!_" Anne persisted, continuing her cross-examination of Jervaise.

"Well, for one thing, he went out to meet your brother at three o'clock this morning," he replied grudgingly.

"Didn't come out to meet me," Banks put in. "We did meet all right, but it was the first time we'd ever seen each other."

We all four looked at Jervaise, awaiting his next piece of evidence with the expectant air of children watching a conjurer.

He began to lose his temper. "I can't see that this has got anything to do with what we're discussing..." he said, but I had no intention of letting him off too easily. He had saved me the trouble of making tedious explanations, and my character had been cleared before Anne and Brenda, which two things were all that I really cared about in this connection; but I wanted, for other reasons, to make Jervaise appear foolish. So I interrupted him by saying,--

"Hadn't you better tell them about Miss Tattersall?"

He turned on me, quite savagely. "What the devil has this affair of ours got to do with you, Melhuish?" he asked.

"Nothing whatever," I said. "You dragged me into it in the first instance by bringing me up here last night, but since then I haven't interfered one way or the other. What does affect me, however, is that you and your family have--well--insulted me, and for that you do owe me, at least, an explanation."

"What made you come up here, now?" he asked with that glowering legal air of his; thrusting the question at me as if I must, now, be finally confuted.

"After you ran away from me in the avenue," I said promptly, "it seemed that the only thing left for me to do was to walk to Hurley Junction; but a quarter of a mile from the Park gate I found your car drawn up by the side of the road. And as I had no sort of inclination to walk fourteen miles on a broiling afternoon, I decided to wait by the car until some one came to fetch it. And when presently Banks came, I tried my best to persuade him to take me to the station in it. He refused on the grounds that he wanted to take the car back at once to the garage; but when I explained my difficulty to him, his hospitable mind prompted him to offer me temporary refuge at the Home Farm. He brought me back to introduce me, and we found you here. Simple, isn't it?"

Jervaise scowled at the hearth-rug. "All been a cursed misunderstanding from first to last," he growled.

"But what was that about Grace Tattersall?" Brenda asked. "If you'd accused _her_ of spying, I could have understood it. She was trying to pump me for all she was worth yesterday afternoon."

"I've admitted that there must have been some misunderstanding," Jervaise said. "For goodness' sake, let's drop this question of Melhuish's interference and settle the more important one of what we're going to do about--you."

"I resent that word 'interference,'" I put in.

"Oh! resent it, then," Jervaise snarled.

"Really, I think Mr. Melhuish is perfectly justified," Brenda said. "I feel horribly ashamed of the way you've been treating him at home. I should never have thought that the mater..."

"Can't you understand that she's nearly off her head with worrying about you?" Jervaise interrupted.

"No, I can't," Brenda returned. "If it had been Olive, I could. But I should have thought they would all have been jolly glad to see the last of me. They've always given me that impression, anyhow."

"Not in this way," her brother grumbled.

"What do you mean by that exactly?" Anne asked with a great seriousness.

I think Jervaise was beginning to lose his nerve. He was balanced so dangerously between the anxiety to maintain the respectability of the Jervaises and his pa.s.sion, or whatever it was, for Anne. Such, at least, was my inference; although how he could possibly reconcile his two devotions I could not imagine, unless his intentions with regard to Anne were frankly shameful. And Jervaise must, indeed, be an even grosser fool than I supposed him to be if he could believe for one instant that Anne was the sort of woman who would stoop to a common intrigue with him. For it could be nothing more than that. If they loved each other, they could do no less than follow the shining example of Brenda and Anne's brother. I could see Anne doing that, and with a still more daring spirit than the other couple had so far displayed. I could not see her as Frank Jervaise's mistress. Moreover, I could not believe now, even after that morning's scene in the wood, that she really cared for him. If she did, she must have been an actress of genius, since, so far as I had been able to observe, her att.i.tude towards him during the last half-hour had most nearly approached one of slightly amused contempt.

Jervaise's evident perplexity was notably aggravated by Anne's question.

"Well, naturally, my father and mother don't want an open scandal," he said irritably.

"But why a scandal?" asked Anne. "If Arthur and Brenda were married and went to Canada?"

"I don't say that _I_ think it would be a scandal," he said. "I'm only telling you the way that _they'd_ certainly see it. It might have been different if your brother had never been in our service. You must see that. _We_ know, of course, but other people don't, and we shall never be able to explain to them. People like the Turnbulls and the Atkinsons and all that lot will say that Brenda eloped with the chauffeur. It's no good beating about the bush--that's the plain fact we've got to face."

"Then, hadn't we better face it?" Anne returned with a flash of indignation. "Or do you think you can persuade Arthur to go back to Canada, alone?"

Jervaise grunted uneasily.

"You know it's no earthly, Frank," Brenda said. "Why can't you be a sport and go back and tell them that they might as well give in at once?"

"Oh! my dear girl, you must know perfectly well that they'll _never_ give in," her brother replied.

"Mr. Jervaise might," Banks put in.

Frank turned to him sharply. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"He'd have given in this morning, if it hadn't been for you," Banks said, staring with his most dogged expression at Jervaise.

"What makes you think so?" Jervaise retaliated.

"What he said, and the way he behaved," Banks a.s.serted, the English yeoman stock in him still very apparent.

"You're mistaken," Jervaise snapped.

"Give me a chance to prove it, then," was Banks's counter.

"How?"

"I've got to take that car back. Give me a chance for another talk with Mr. Jervaise; alone this time."

I looked at Banks with a sudden feeling of anxiety. I was afraid that he meant at last to use that "pull" he had hinted at on the hill; and I had an intuitive shrinking from the idea of his doing that. This open defiance was fine and upright. The other att.i.tude suggested to my mind the conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked, I admit, the picture of st.u.r.dy virtue as he stood there challenging his late master to permit this test of old Jervaise's att.i.tude, but the prize at stake was so inestimably precious to Banks, that it must have altered all his values. He would, I am sure, have committed murder for Brenda--any sort of murder.

Frank Jervaise did not respond at once to the gage that had been offered.

He appeared to be moodily weighing the probabilities before he decided his policy. And Brenda impatiently prompted him by saying,--

"Well, I don't see what possible objection you can have to that."

"Only want to save the pater any worry I can," Jervaise said. "He has been more cut up than any one over this business."

"The pater has?" queried Brenda on a note of amazement. "I shouldn't have expected him to be half as bad as the mater and Olive."

"Well, he is. He's worse--much worse," Jervaise a.s.serted.

I was listening to the others, but I was watching Banks, and I saw him sneer when that a.s.sertion was made. The expression seemed to have been forced out of him against his will; just a quick jerk downwards of the corners of his mouth that portrayed a supreme contempt for old Jervaise's distress. But that sneer revealed Banks's opinion to me better than anything he had said or done. I knew then that he was aware of something concerning the master of the Hall that was probably unknown either to Brenda or Frank, something that Banks had loyally hidden even from his sister. He covered his sneer so quickly that I believe no one else noticed it.

"But, surely, it would be better for the pater to see Arthur and have done with it," Brenda was saying.

"Oh! I dare say," Jervaise agreed with his usual air of grudging the least concession. "Are you ready to go now?" he asked, addressing Banks.

Banks nodded. "I'll pick up the car on the way," he said.