Part 15 (1/2)

”But you're right,” she said with a little catch in her breath. ”It is Banks, out of uniform.”

For a moment I hoped that her surprise might cover my slip, but she was much too acute to pa.s.s such a palpable blunder as that.

”It is,” she repeated; ”but how did you know? I thought you had never seen him.”

”Just an intuition,” I prevaricated and tried, I knew at the time how uselessly, to boast a pride in my powers of insight.

The effect upon my companion was neither that I hoped to produce, nor that I more confidently expected. Instead of chaffing me, pressing me for an explanation of the double game I had presumably been playing, she looked at me with doubt and an obvious loss of confidence. Just so, I thought, she might have looked at me if I had tried to take some unfair advantage of her.

”Well, I suppose it's time to get ready for church,” she remarked coldly.

”Are you coming?”

I forget what I replied. She was already slipping into the background of my interest. I was so extraordinarily intrigued by the sight of Arthur Banks, the chauffeur, boldly ringing at the front door of Jervaise Hall.

VII

NOTES AND QUERIES

Miss Tattersall had started for the house and her preparations for church-going, but she paused on the hither side of the drive and pretended an interest in the flower beds, until Banks had been admitted to the Hall.

I could not, at that distance, mark the expression on John's face when he answered the bell, but I noticed that there was a perceptible interval of colloquy on the doorstep before the strange visitor was allowed to enter.

I should have liked to hear that conversation, and to know what argument Banks used in overcoming John's reluctance to carry the astounding message that the chauffeur had ”called” and wished to see Mr. Jervaise. But, no doubt, John's diplomacy was equal to the occasion. Banks's fine effort in self-a.s.sertion was probably wasted. John would not mention the affront to the family's prestige. He would imply that Banks had come in the manner proper to his condition. ”Banks wishes to know if he might speak to you a minute, sir,” was all the warning poor old Jervaise would get of this frontal attack upon his dignities.

So far I felt a certain faith in my ability to guess the hidden action of the drama that was being played in the Hall; but beyond this point my imagination would not carry me. I could not foresee the att.i.tude of either of the two protagonists. I thought over what I remembered of my conversation with Banks on the hill, but the only essential that stuck in my mind was that suggestion of the ”pull,” the admittedly unfair advantage that he might possibly use as a last resource. I was conscious of an earnest wish that that reserve would not be called upon. I felt, intuitively, that it would shame both the chauffeur and his master. I had still less material for any imaginative construction of old Jervaise's part in the scene now being played; a scene that I could only regard as being of the greatest moment. Indeed I believed that the conversation then taking place would reach the climax of the whole episode, and I bitterly regretted that I had apparently no possible chance of ever learning the detail of that confrontation of owner and servant. Worse still, I realised that I might have some difficulty in gathering the upshot. Whether Banks were accepted or rejected the Jervaises would not confide the story to their visitors.

I must admit that my curiosity was immensely piqued; though I flatter myself that my interest was quite legitimate, that it contained no element of vulgar inquisitiveness. Nevertheless, I did want to know--the outcome, at least--and I could decide upon no intermediary who would give me just the information I desired.

Miss Tattersall I ruled out at once. She so persistently vulgarised the affair. I felt that in her mind she regarded the elopement as subject for common gossip; also, that she was not free from a form of generalised jealousy. She did not want Arthur Banks for herself, but she evidently thought him a rather admirable masculine figure and deplored his ”infatuation” for Brenda. Moreover, I had a notion that I had fallen from Miss Tattersall's favour. There was something in her expression when she discovered my deceit in pretending ignorance of the heroic chauffeur that portrayed a sense of personal injury. No doubt she thought that I had squeezed her confidence, while I treacherously withheld my own; and she would certainly regret that confession of having peeped into Brenda's room, even if she did not guess that I had inferred the final shame of using the keyhole. Subsequent evidence showed that my only mistake in this connection was a fatuous underestimation of the lady's sense of injury.

Of the other members of the house-party, Frank Jervaise was the only one who seemed likely or able to post me in the progress of the affair, and I felt considerable hesitation in approaching him. I could not expect a return of that mood of weakness he had exhibited the night before; and I had no intention of courting a direct snub from him.

There remained Banks, himself, but I could not possibly have questioned him, even if my sympathies had still been engaged on his side.

And I must admit that as I paced the lawn in front of the house my sympathies were very markedly with old Jervaise. It hurt me to remember that look of apprehension he had worn at breakfast. I wanted, almost pa.s.sionately, to defend him from the possibly heart-breaking consequences that might arise from no fault of his own.

I was still pondering these feelings of compa.s.sion for my host, when the church-party emerged from the front door of the Hall. If my watch were right they were very late. Mr. Sturton and his congregation would have to wait ten minutes or so in patient expectation before they could begin their devotions. And I would gladly have effaced myself if only to save the Jervaises the vexation of a still further delay. But I was too near the line of their approach. Any attempt at retreat would have been a positive rudeness.

I was framing an apology for not accompanying them to church as they came up--Mrs. Jervaise and her daughter leading, with their three visitors in a bunch behind. But I was spared the necessity to offer what would certainly have been a transparent and foolish excuse for absenting myself from their religious observances. Mrs. Jervaise pulled herself together as the party approached me. She had had her head down even more than usual as they came out of the Hall, as if she were determined to b.u.t.t her way through any further obstacles that might intervene between her and her duty as a Christian. At sight of me, however, she obviously stiffened. She almost held herself erect as she faced me; and her hawk nose jerked up like the head of a pick.

”So you're not coming with us, Mr. Melhuish?” she said.

”I hope you will excuse me,” I replied with, I hope, a proper air of courtesy.

”Of course,” she said stiffly, her nose still balanced, as it were, in preparation to strike. Then she lowered her head with the air of one who carefully replaces a weapon, and mumbling something about being ”dreadfully late as it was,” continued her interrupted plunging into the resistances that separated her from her goal. The others followed, as if they were being trailed in her wake by invisible hawsers. None of them took any notice of me--particularly Miss Tattersall, whose failure to see me was a marked and positive act of omission.

I realised that I had been disapproved and snubbed, but I was not at all distressed by the fact. I put it all down to my failure in piety, begun with my absence from prayers and now accentuated by my absence from church. Olive, Nora Bailey, and Hughes had, I supposed, followed Mrs.