Part 7 (1/2)
”It's obvious,” he returned. ”There can be only one. They were expecting us.”
”Do you mean that Miss Banks was deliberately lying to us all the time?” I challenged him with some heat.
”Why that?” he asked.
”Well, if she were expecting us...”
”Which she never denied.”
”And had warned all her people...”
”As she had a perfect right to do.”
”It makes her out a liar, in effect,” I protested. ”I mean, she implied, if she didn't actually state, that she knew nothing whatever of your sister's movements.”
”Which may have been true,” he remarked in the complacent tone of one who waits to formulate an unimpeachable theory.
”Good Lord! How?” I asked.
”Brenda may have been expected and not have arrived,” he explained, condescending, at last, to point out all the obvious inferences I had missed. ”In which case, my friend, Miss Banks's _suppressio veri_ was, in my judgment, quite venial. Indeed, she was, if the facts are, as I suppose, perfectly honest in her surprise. Let us a.s.sume that she had arranged to let Brenda in, at say twelve-thirty, and having her father and mother under her thumb, had warned them to take no notice if Racquet started his cursed s.h.i.+ndy in the middle of the night. The servant may have been told that Mr. Arthur might be coming. You will notice, also, that Miss Banks had not, at one-thirty, gone to bed, although we may infer that she had undressed. Furthermore, it is a fair a.s.sumption that she saw us coming, and having, by then given up, it may be, any hope of seeing Brenda, she was, no doubt, considerably at a loss to account for our presence. Now, does that or does it not cover the facts, and does it acquit Miss Banks of the charge of perjury?”
I was forced, something reluctantly, to concede an element of probability in his inferences, although his argument following the legal tradition was based on a kind of average law of human motive and took no account of personal peculiarities. He did not try to consider what Anne would do in certain circ.u.mstances, but what would be done by that vaguely-conceived hermaphrodite who figures in the Law Courts and elsewhere as ”Anyone.” I could hear Jervaise saying, ”I ask you, gentlemen, what would you have done, what would Anyone have done in such a case as this?”
”Hm!” I commented, and added, ”It still makes Miss Banks appear rather--double-faced.”
”Can't see it,” Jervaise replied. ”Put yourself in her place and see how it works!”
”Oh! Lord!” I murmured, struck by the grotesque idea of Jervaise attempting to see life through the eyes of Anne. Imagine a rhinoceros thinking itself into the experiences of a skylark!
Jervaise bored ahead, taking no notice of my interruption. ”a.s.suming for the moment the general probability of my theory,” he said, ”mayn't we hazard the further a.s.sumption that Brenda was going to the farm in the first instance to meet Banks? His sister, we will suppose, being willing to sanction such a more or less chaperoned a.s.signation. Then, when the pair didn't turn up, she guesses that the meeting is off for some reason or another, but obviously her friends.h.i.+p for Brenda--to say nothing of loyalty to her brother--would make her conceal the fact of the proposed a.s.signation from us. Would you call that being 'double-faced'? I shouldn't.”
”Oh! yes; it's all very reasonable,” I agreed petulantly. ”But how does it affect the immediate situation? Do you, for instance, expect to find your sister at home when we get back?”
”I do,” a.s.sented Jervaise definitely. ”I believe that Miss Banks had some good reason for being so sure that we should find her there.”
I am not really pig-headed. I may not give way gracefully to such an opponent as Jervaise, but I do not stupidly persist in a personal opinion through sheer obstinacy. And up to Jervaise's last statement, his general deductions were, I admitted to myself, not only within the bounds of probability but, also, within distance of affording a tolerable explanation of Anne's diplomacy during our interview. But--and I secretly congratulated myself on having exercised a subtler intuition in this one particular, at least--I did not believe that Anne expected us to find Brenda at the Hall on our return. I remembered that anxious pucker of the brow and the pathetic insistence on the belief--or might it not better be described as a hope?--that Brenda had done nothing final.
”You haven't made a bad case,” I conceded; ”but I differ as to your last inference.”
”You don't think we shall find Brenda at home?”
”I do not,” I replied aggressively.
I expected him to bear me down under a new weight of argument founded on the psychology of Anyone, and I was startled when he suddenly dropped the lawyer and let out a whole-hearted ”d.a.m.nation,” that had a ring of fine sincerity.
I changed my tone instantly in response to that agreeably human note.
”I may be quite mistaken, of course,” I said. ”I hope to goodness I am. By the way, do you know if she has taken any luggage with her?”
”Can't be sure,” Jervaise said. ”Olive's been looking and there doesn't seem to be anything missing, but we've no idea what things she brought down from town with her. If she'd been making plans beforehand...”
We came out of the wood at that point in our discussion, and almost at the same moment the last barrier of cloud slipped away from before the moon.