The Jervaise Comedy

“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 passion, 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 attitude 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 asserted, 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 attitude suggested to my mind the conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked, I admit, the picture of sturdy virtue as he stood there challenging his late master to permit this test of old Jervaise’s attitude, 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 asserted.

I was listening to the others, but I was watching Banks, and I saw him sneer when that assertion 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.

“I’ll come with you—as far as the car,” Brenda said, and the pair of them went out together.

Jervaise stretched himself with a self-conscious air. “It will take him the best part of an hour getting the car into the garage and all that,” he remarked, looking at me.

I could see, of course, that he wanted me to go; his hint had been, indeed, almost indecently pointed; and I had no wish to intrude myself upon them, if Anne’s desire coincided with his. I got to my feet and stood like an awkward dummy trying to frame some excuse for leaving the room. I could think of nothing that was not absurdly obvious. I was on the point of trying to save the last remnant of my dignity by walking out, when Anne relieved my embarrassment. I knew that she had been watching me, but I was afraid to look at her. I cannot say why, exactly, but I felt that if I looked at her just then I should give myself away before Jervaise.

“I must go and see about Mr. Melhuish’s room,” she said.

She was half-way to the door when Jervaise stopped her.

“I should rather like to speak to you for a minute first,” he remarked, and scowled again at me.

“There’s nothing more to be said until Arthur has seen Mr. Jervaise,” Anne replied, as though any subject other than the affair Brenda, could not conceivably be of interest to her.

“It wasn’t about them,” Jervaise said awkwardly.

“What was it, then?” Anne asked. I dared to look at her, now, and her face was perfectly serious as she added, “Was it about the milk, or eggs, or anything?”

Without doubt there was a delicious strain of minx in her!

Jervaise lost his temper. I believe that if I had offered to fight him, then, he would have welcomed the opportunity.

“Oh! you know what I want to say,” he snorted.

“Then why not say it?” Anne replied.

He turned savagely upon me. “Haven’t you got the common sense…” he began, but Anne cut him short.

“Oh! we don’t suspect our guests of spying,” she said.

I was nearly sorry for Jervaise at that moment. He could not have looked any more vindictive than he looked already, but he positively trembled with anger. He could not endure to be thwarted. Nevertheless, he displayed a certain measure of self-control.

“Very well,” he said as calmly as he could. “If you’re going to take that tone…”

“Yes?” Anne prompted him. She showed no sign of being in any way disconcerted.