The Jervaise Comedy

“For the week-end only,” I admitted.

“Been a pretty fuss there, I take it?” he said.

“Some,” I acknowledged.

He set his resolute-looking mouth and submitted me to cross-examination.

“Been looking for me?” he began.

“In a way. Frank Jervaise and I went up to your father’s house.”

“What time?”

“Between two and three.”

“Not since?”

“No; we left about half-past two.”

“Is she back?”

“Who?” I asked. I was thinking of his sister, and could find no application for this question.

“Miss Jervaise.”

“Oh—er—Miss Brenda? No. She hadn’t come in when I left the house.”

“What time was that?”

“About four. I came straight here.”

“Not back, eh?” he commented with a soft, low whistle, that mingled, I thought, something of gladness with its surprise.

“You don’t know where she is, then?” I ventured.

He turned and looked at me suspiciously. “I don’t see why I should help your friends,” he said.

I realised that my position was a difficult one. My sympathies were entirely with Banks. I felt that if there was to be any question of making allowances, I wanted to be on the side of Brenda and the Home Farm. But, at the same time, I could not deny that I owed something—loyalty, was it?—to the Jervaises. I pondered that for a few seconds before I spoke again, and by then I had found what I believed to be a tolerable attitude, though I was to learn later that it compromised me no less than if I had frankly thrown in my lot with the Banks faction.

“You are quite right,” I said. “And I would sooner you gave me no confidences, now I come to think of it. But I should like you to know, all the same, that I’m not taking sides in this affair. I have no intention, for instance, of telling them at the Hall that I’ve seen you.”

The daylight was flooding up from the North-West, now, in a great stream that had flushed the whole landscape with colour; and I could see the full significance of honest inquiry in my companion’s face as he probed me with his stare. But I could meet his gaze without confusion. My purpose was single enough, and if I had had a moment’s doubt of him when he failed to respond to my mood of fantasy; I was now fully prepared to accept him without qualification.

He was not like his sister in appearance. He favoured the paternal stock, I inferred. He was blue-eyed and fairer than Anne, and the tan of his face was red where hers was dusky. Nevertheless, I saw a likeness between them deeper than some family trick of expression which, now and again, made me feel their kinship. For Banks, too, gave me the impression of having a soul that came something nearer the surface of life than is common in average humanity—a look of vitality, zest, ardour—I fumbled for a more significant superlative as I returned his stare. And yet behind that ardour there was, in Arthur Banks, at least, a hint of determination and shrewdness that I felt must be inherited from the sound yeoman stock of his father.

Our pause of mutual investigation ended in a smile. He held out his hand with a pleasant frankness that somehow proclaimed the added colonial quality of him.

“That’s all right,” he said, “but anyway I couldn’t give you any confidences, yet. I don’t know myself, you see.”

“Are you going back to the Hall?” I asked.

“I don’t know that, either,” he said, and added, “I shan’t go back as the chauffeur, anyway.”

And, indeed, there was little of the chauffeur in his appearance, just then. He was wearing a light tweed suit and brown brogues, and his clothes sat upon him with just that touch of familiarity, of negligence, that your professional servant’s mufti can never accomplish.

There was a new air of restlessness about him since he had put me under cross-examination. He looked round him in the broadening day as if he were in search of something, or some one, hopefully yet half-despairingly expected.

“Look here—if you’d sooner I went…” I began.

He had risen to his feet after his last statement and was looking back towards the Hall, but he faced me again when I spoke.

“Oh, no!” he said with a hint of weariness.

“It isn’t likely that…” He broke off and threw himself moodily down on the grass again before he continued, “It’s not that I couldn’t trust you. But you can see for yourself that it’s better I shouldn’t. When you get back to the Hall, you might be asked questions and for your own sake it’d look better if you didn’t know the answers.”

“Oh, quite,” I agreed, and added, “I’ll stay and see the sun rise.”

“You won’t see the sun for some time,” he remarked. “There’ll be a lot of cloud and mist for it to break through. It’s going to be a scorcher to-day.”

“Good,” I replied; and for a few minutes we discussed weather signs like any other conventional Englishmen. A natural comparison led us presently to the subject of Canada. But through it all he bore himself as a man with a preoccupation he could not forget; and I was looking for a good opening to make an excuse of fatigue and go back to the Hall, when something of the thought that was intriguing him broke through the surface of his talk.

“I’m going back there as soon as I can,” he said with a sudden impatience. “There’s room to turn round in Canada without hitting up against a notice board and trespassing on the preserves of some landed proprietor. I’d never have come home if it hadn’t been for the old people. They thought chauffering for Mr. Jervaise would be a chance for me! Anyhow my father did. He’s got the feeling of being dependent. It’s in his bones like it is with, all of ’em—on the estate. It’s a tradition. Lord, the old man would be horrified, if he knew! The Jervaises are a sort of superior creation to him. We’ve been their tenants for God knows how many hundred years. And serfs before that, I suppose. I get the feeling myself, sometimes. It’s infectious. When you see every one kow-towing to old Jervaise as if he were the angel Gabriel, you begin to feel as if there must be something in it.”

The full day had come, and the cold draught of air that had preceded the sunrise came now from behind me as if the spirits of the air had discovered that their panic-stricken flight had been a mistake and were tentatively returning to inquire into the new conditions. The birds were fully awake now, and there was a tremendous gossiping and chattering going on, that made me think of massed school-children in a railway station, twittering with the excitement of their coming excursion. In the North-East the gray wall of mist was losing the hardness of its edge, and behind the cloud the sky was bleaching to an ever paler blue.

“And yet,” I said, as my companion paused, “the Jervaises aren’t anything particular as a family. They haven’t done anything, even in the usual way, to earn ennoblement or fame.”

“They’ve squatted,” Banks said, “that’s what they’ve done. Set themselves down here in the reign of Henry II., and sat tight ever since—grabbing commons and so on, now and again, in the usual way, of course. The village is called after them, Thorp-Jervaise, and the woods and the hills, and half the labourers in the neighbourhood have got names like Jarvey and Jarvis. What I mean is that the Jervaises mayn’t be of any account in London, or even in the county, alongside of families like Lord Garthorne’s; but just round here they’re the owners and always have been since there have been any private owners. Their word’s law. If you don’t like it, you can get out, and that’s all there is about it.” He gazed thoughtfully in front of him and thrust out his lower lip. “I’ve got to get out,” he added, “unless…”

I hesitated to prompt him, fearing the possibly inquisitive sound of the most indirect question, and after what I felt was a very pregnant silence, he continued rather in the manner of one allusively submitting a case.

“But you get to a point where you feel as if no game’s worth winning if you can’t play it fair and open.”

“So long as the other side play fair with you,” I commented.

“They can afford to,” he returned. “They get every bit of pull there is to have. I told you we’ve been tenants of the Home Farm ever since there’s been a Home Farm, but old Jervaise could turn my father out any time, at six months’ notice. Would, too. Probably have to, for the sake of public opinion. Well, would you call that playing fair?”

“I shouldn’t,” I said with emphasis.

“Most people would,” he replied gloomily. I was wondering what his own “pull” might be, the pull he would not use because the use of it conflicted with his ideal of playing the game. I was inclined, with a foolish romanticism to toy with the notion of some old blood relationship between the families of Jervaise and Banks—some carefully hidden scandal that might even throw a doubt on the present owner’s right of proprietorship. I was still rebuilding that foolish, familiar story of the lost heir, when my new friend put an end to further speculation by saying,—

“But what’s the good of thinking about that—yet? Why, I don’t even know…”

I could not resist a direct question this time. “Don’t even know what?” I asked.

“I was forgetting,” he said. He got to his feet again, looked round for a moment, and then gave a yawn which seemed to spring from a nervous rather than a muscular origin.

“No good my compromising you, just now,” he said with a friendly smile. “You’ve probably guessed more, already, than’ll be altogether convenient for you when you see the family at breakfast. Perhaps, we’ll meet again some day.”