The Jervaise Comedy Part 34

And with me, at least, that fount, unexpectedly penned by the first hints of disaster, had still played furiously in my mind as I had walked with Frank Jervaise through the wood. My intoxicated imagination had created its own setting. I had gone, exalted, to meet my wonderful fate. Through some strange scene of my own making I had strayed to the very feet of enduring romance.

But after that exciting prelude, when the moon had set and slow dawn, like a lifting curtain, had been drawn to reveal the landscape of a world outside the little chamber of my own being, I had been cast from my heights of exaltation into a gloomy pit of disgrace. Fate, with a fastidious particularity, had hauled me back to the things of everyday. I was not to be allowed to dream too long. I was wanted to play my part in this sudden tragedy of experience.

My thought went off at a tangent when I reached that point of my reflection. I had found myself involved in the Banks's drama, but what hope had I of ever seeing them again after the next day? What, moreover, was the great thing I was called upon to do? I had decided only an hour or two before that my old way of life had become impossible for me, but equally impossible was any way of life that did not include the presence of Anne.

I looked at my watch, and found that it was after ten o'clock, but how long I had been standing at the gate, I had no idea; whether an hour or ten minutes. I had been dreaming again, lost in imaginative delights; until the reminder of this new urgency had brought me back to a reality that demanded from me an energy of partic.i.p.ation and of initiative.

I wished that Anne would come--and by way of helping her should she, indeed, have come out to look for me, I strolled back to the Farm, and then round to the front of the house.

The windows of the sitting-room had been closed but the blinds were not drawn. The lamp had been lit and splayed weak fans of yellow light on to the gravel, and the flower-beds of the gra.s.s plot. The path of each beam was picked out from the diffused radiance of the moonlight, by the dancing figures of the moths that gathered and fluttered across the prisms of these enchanted rays. But I did not approach the windows. In the stillness of the night I could hear Anne's clear musical voice. She was still there in the sitting-room, still soothing and persuading her father. Her actual words were indistinguishable, but the modulations of her tone seemed to convey the sense of her speech, as a melody may convey the ideas of form and colour.

I returned to my vigil at the gate and to thoughts of Anne--to romantic thoughts of worship and service; of becoming worthy of her regard; of immense faithfulness to her image when confronted with the most provocative temptations; to thoughts of self-sacrifice and bravado, of humility and boasting; of some transcending glorification of myself that should make me worthy of her love.

I was arrested in the midst of my ecstatic sentimentalism by the sight of the Hall, the lights of which were distantly visible through the trees.

The path by the wood was not the direct line from the Hall to the Farm; the sanct.i.ties of the Park were not violated by any public right of way.

The sight of the place pulled me up, because I was suddenly pierced by the reflection that perhaps old Jervaise had thus postured to win the esteem of his daughter's governess. He, it is true, had had dignity and prestige on his side, but surely he must have condescended to win her. Had he, too, dreamed dreams of sacrifice at the height of his pa.s.sion? Had he alternately grovelled and strutted to attract the admiration of his lady?

I found the reflection markedly distasteful. I was sorry again, now, for the old man. He had suffered heavy penalties for his lapse. I remembered Mrs. Banks's hint that his wife had adopted Brenda in the first place in order that he might have before him a constant reminder of his disgrace. I could believe that. It was just such a piece of chicane as I should expect from that timid hawk, Mrs. Jervaise. But while I pitied the man, I could not look upon his furtive gratifications of pa.s.sion with anything but distaste.

No; if my love for Anne was to be worthy of so wonderful an object, I must not stupefy myself with these vapours of romance. The ideal held something finer than this, something that I could not define, but that conveyed the notion, however indeterminately, of equality. I thought of my fancy that we had "recognised" each other the night before. Surely that fancy contained the germ of the true understanding, of the conceptions of affinity and remembrance.

No tie of our present earth life could be weighed against that idea of a spirit love, enduring through the ages; a love transcending and immortal, repeating itself in ever ascending stages of rapture. The flesh was but a pa.s.sing instrument of temporal expression, a gross medium through which the spirit could speak only in poor, inarticulate phrases of its magnificent recognition of an eternal bond. ... Oh! I was soon high in the air again, riding my new Pegasus through the loftiest alt.i.tudes of lonely exaltation. I was a conqueror while I had the world to myself. But when at last I heard the rustle of a woman's dress on the path behind me, I was nothing more than a shy, self-conscious product of the twentieth century, all too painfully aware of his physical shortcomings.

She came and stood beside me at the gate, without speaking; and my mind was so full of her, so intoxicated with the splendour of my imaginings, that I thought she must surely share my newfound certainty that we had met once more after an age of separation. I waited, trembling, for her to begin. I knew that any word of mine would inevitably precipitate the bathos of a civilised conversation. I was incapable of expressing my own thought, but I hoped that she, with her magic voice, might accomplish a miracle that was beyond my feeble powers. Indeed, I could imaginatively frame for her, speech that I could not, myself, deliver. I knew what I wanted her to say--or to imply. For it was hardly necessary for her to say anything. I was ready, wholly sympathetic and receptive. If she would but give me the least sign that she understood, I could respond, though I was so unable to give any sign myself.

I came down from my clouds with a feeling of bitter disappointment, a sense of waking from perfect dreams to the realisation of a hard, inimical world, when she said in a formal voice.

"It's after eleven. My mother and father have gone to bed."

"Is he--is he in any way reconciled?" I asked, and I think I tried to convey something of resentment by my tone. I still believed that she must guess.

"In a way," she said, and sighed rather wearily.

"It must have been very hard for him to make up his mind so quickly--to such a change," I agreed politely.

"It was easier than I expected," she said. "He was so practical. Just at first, of course, while Mr. Jervaise was there, he seemed broken. I didn't know what we should do. I was almost afraid that he would refuse to come.

But afterwards he--well, he squared his shoulders. He is magnificent. He's as solid as a rock. He didn't once reproach us. He seemed to have made up his mind; only one thing frightened him..."

"What was that?" I asked, as she paused.

"That we haven't any capital to speak of," she said. "Even after we have sold the furniture here, we shan't have more than five or six hundred pounds so far as we can make out. And he says it isn't enough. He says that he and mother are too old to start again from small beginnings.

And--oh! a heap of practical things. He is so slow in some ways that it startled us all to find out how shrewd he was about this. It was his own subject, you see."

"There needn't be any difficulty about capital," I said eagerly. I had hardly had patience for her to finish her speech. From her first mention of that word "capital" I had seen my chance to claim a right in the Banks's fortunes.

"I don't see..." she began, and then checked herself and continued stiffly, "My father would never accept help of any kind."

"Arthur might--from a friend," I said.

"He thinks we've got enough--to begin with," she replied. "They've been arguing about it. Arthur's young and certain. Father isn't either, and he's afraid of going to a strange country--and failing."

"But in that case Arthur must give way," I said.

Anne was silent for a moment and then said in a horribly formal voice. "Am I to understand, Mr. Melhuish, that you are proposing to lend Arthur this money?"

"On any terms he likes," I agreed warmly.

"Why?"

I could not mistake her intention. I knew that she expected me to say that it was for her sake. I was no less certain that if I did say that she would snub me. Her whole tone and manner since she had come out to the gate had challenged me.

"Here we are alone in the moonlight," her att.i.tude had said. "You've been trying to hint some kind of admiration for me ever since we met. Now, let us get that over and finished with, so that we can discuss this business of my father's."

"Because I like him," I said. "I haven't known him long, of course; only a few hours altogether; but..." I stopped because I was afraid she would think that the continuation of the argument might be meant to apply to her rather than to Arthur; and I had no intention of pleading by innuendo.

When I did speak, I meant to speak directly, and there was but one thing I had to say. If that failed, I was ready to admit that I had been suffering under a delusion.

"Well?" she prompted me.

"That's all," I said.

"Weren't you going to say that it wasn't how long you'd known a person that mattered?"

"It certainly didn't matter in Arthur's case," I said. "I liked him from the first moment I saw him. It's true that we had been talking for some time before there was light enough for me to see him."

"You like him so much that you'd be willing to lend him all the money he wanted, without security?" she asked.

"Yes, all the money I have," I said.

"Without any--any sort of condition?"

"I should make one condition," I replied.

"Which is?"

"That he'd let me come and stay with him, and Brenda, and all of you--on the farm."

"And, of course, we should all have to be very nice to you, and treat you as our benefactor--our proprietor, almost," she suggested cruelly.

I was hurt, and for a moment I was inclined to behave much as young Turnbull had behaved that afternoon, to turn away and sulk, and show that I had been grievously misunderstood. I overcame that impulse, however. "I shouldn't expect you to curtsey!" I said.

She turned to me with one of her instant changes of mood.

"Why don't you tell me the truth?" she asked pa.s.sionately.

"The truth _you_ mean hasn't anything whatever to do with what we're talking about now," I said.

"Oh! but it has. It must have," she protested. "Aren't you trying to buy my good-will all the time? All this is so heroic and theatrical. Aren't you being the splendid benefactor of one of your own plays--being frightfully tactful and oh! _gentlemanly_? It wouldn't be the right thing, of course, to--to put any sort of pressure on me; but you could put us all under every sort of obligation to you, and afterwards--when you came to stay with us--you'd be very forbearing and sad, no doubt, and be very sweet to my mother--she likes you already--but every one would know just why; and you'd all expect me--to--to do the right thing, too."