Part 9 (2/2)

Those avowals of their real and altogether desperate cause for distress raised the emotional tone of the two Jervaise women, and for the first time since I had come into the Hall, they looked at me with a hint of suspicion. They made me feel that I was an outsider, who might very well take this opportunity to withdraw.

I was on the point of accepting the hint when Frank Jervaise dragged me into the conclave.

”What do you think, Melhuish?” he asked, and then they all turned to me as if I might be able in some miraculous way to save the situation. Even old Jervaise paused in his melancholy pacing and waited for my answer.

”There is so little real evidence, at present,” I said, feeling their need for some loophole and searching my mind to discover one for them.

”It really does seem almost impossible that Brenda should have--run away with that man,” Mrs. Jervaise pleaded with the beginning of a gesture that produced the effect of wanting to wring her hands.

”She's under age, too,” Frank put in.

”Does that mean they can't get married?” asked Ronnie.

”Not legally,” Frank said.

”It's such madness, such utter madness,” his mother broke out in a tone between lament and denunciation. But she pulled herself up immediately and came back to my recent contribution as presenting the one possible straw that still floated in this drowning world. ”But, as Mr. Melhuish says,”

she went on with a little gasp of annoyance, ”we really have very little evidence, as yet.”

”It has occurred to me to wonder,” I tried, ”whether Miss Jervaise might not have been moved by a sudden desire to drive the car by moonlight...” I was going on to defend my suggestion by pleading that such an impulse would, so far as I could judge, be quite in character, but no further argument was needed. I had created a sensation. My feeble straw had suddenly taken the form of a practicable seaworthy raft, big enough to accommodate all the family--with the one exception of Frank, who, as it were, grasped the edge of this life-saving apparatus of mine, and tested it suspiciously. His preliminary and perfectly futile opening to the effect that the moon had already set, was, however, smothered in the general acclamation.

”Oh! of _course_! So she may!” Mrs. Jervaise exclaimed.

”Well, we might have thought of that, certainly,” Olive echoed. ”It would be so _like_ Brenda.”

While Ronnie hopefully murmured ”That _is_ possible, quite possible,” as a kind of running accompaniment.

Then Mr. Jervaise began to draw in to the family group, with what seemed to me quite an absurd air of meaning to find a place on the raft of the big rug by the fireplace. Indeed, they had all moved a little closer together. Only Frank maintained his depressing air of doubt.

”Been an infernally long time,” he said. ”What's it now? Half-past three?”

”She may have had an accident,” Olive suggested cheerfully.

”Or gone a lot farther than she originally meant to,” Ronnie subst.i.tuted; the suggestion of an accident to Brenda obviously appearing less desirable to him than it apparently did to Brenda's sister.

”It seems to me,” Mr. Jervaise said, taking the lead for the first time, ”that there may very well be half a dozen reasons for her not having returned; but I can't think of one that provides the semblance of an excuse for her going in the first instance. Brenda must be--severely reprimanded. It's intolerable that she should be allowed to go on like this.”

”She has always been spoilt,” Olive said in what I thought was a slightly vindictive aside.

”She's so impossibly headstrong,” deplored Mrs. Jervaise.

Her husband shook his head impatiently. ”There is a limit to this kind of thing,” he said. ”She must be made to understand--_I_ will make her understand that we draw the line at midnight adventures of this kind.”

Mrs. Jervaise and Olive agreed warmly with that decision, and the three of them drew a little apart, discussing, I inferred, the means that were to be adopted for the limiting of the runaway, when she returned. But I was puzzled to know whether they were finally convinced of the truth of the theory they had so readily adopted. Were they deceiving, or trying very hard, indeed, to deceive themselves into the belief that the whole affair was nothing but a prank of Brenda's? I saw that my casual suggestion had a general air of likelihood, but if I had been in their place, I should have demanded evidence before I drew much consolation from so unsupported a conclusion.

I joined young Turnbull.

”Good idea of yours, Melhuish,” Ronnie said.

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