Part 16 (1/2)

My first impression of the curious change in demeanour shown towards me by the Jervaises and their friends at lunch was that it had no existence outside my own recently embittered mind. I thought that I was avoiding them, not that they were avoiding me. It was not until I condescended to come down from my pinnacle of conscious superiority that I realised my own disgrace.

My effort at conversation with Mrs. Jervaise was a mere act of politeness.

”I'm afraid you were rather late this morning,” I said. It was not, perhaps, a tactful remark, but I could think of nothing else. All the church-party were stiff with the slightly peevish righteousness of those who have fulfilled a duty contrary to their real inclinations.

Mrs. Jervaise lifted her nose savagely. No doubt her head went with it, but only the nose was important.

”Very late, Mr. Melhuish,” she said, stared at me as if debating whether she would not instantly give me the coup de grace, and then dipped again to the threat of the imaginary doorway.

”Mr. Sturton give you a good sermon?” I continued, still suffering from the delusion that I was graciously overlooking their obvious inferiority to myself.

”He is a very able man; very able,” Mrs. Jervaise said, this time without looking up.

”You are lucky to have such a good man as vicar,” I said. ”Sometimes there is--well, a lack of sympathy between the Vicarage and the Hall. I remember--the case isn't quite parallel, of course, but the moral is much the same--I remember a curate my father had once...”

Now, my story of that curate is thoroughly sound. It is full of incident and humour and not at all derogatory to the prestige of the church. I have been asked for it, more than once, by hostesses. And though I am rather sick of it myself, I still fall back on it in cases of such urgency as I judged the present one to be. I thought that I had been lucky to get so easy an opening to produce the anecdote with relevance, and I counted on it for a good five minutes relief from the constraint of making polite conversation.

Mrs. Jervaise's response began to open my eyes to the state of the new relations that now existed between myself and the rest of the party. She did not even allow me to begin. She ignored my opening entirely, and looking down the table towards her husband said, ”Mr. Sturton preached from the tenth of Hebrews, 'Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering.' Quite a coincidence, wasn't it?”

”Indeed? Yes, quite a coincidence,” Mr. Jervaise replied without enthusiasm. He did not look as cheerful as I had antic.i.p.ated, but he wore the air of a man who has had at least a temporary reprieve.

”Olive and I were quite struck by it; weren't we, dear?” Mrs. Jervaise continued, dragging in her daughter's evidence.

”Yes, it was very odd,” Olive agreed tepidly.

I never knew what the coincidence was, but I judge from Mrs. Jervaise's insistence that it was something perfectly futile.

I glanced across at Hughes, and guessed that he was not less bored than I was myself, but when I caught his eye he looked hastily away.

I was beginning to wonder what I had done, but I valiantly tried again.

”Don't you think it possible that many cases of apparent coincidences are probably due to telepathy?” I said genially, addressing the dangerous-looking profile of my hostess.

She gave an impatient movement of her head that reminded me of a parrot viciously digging out the kernel of a nut.

”I really can't say,” she said, pointedly turned to Gordon Hughes, who was on her other side, and asked him if he had played much tennis lately.

I looked round the table for help, but none of the party would meet my eyes, avoiding my glance with a determination that could not be mistaken.

I might have suffered from some loathsome deformity. Frank, alone, appeared unaware of my innocent appeal for an explanation. He was bending gloomily over his plate, apparently absorbed in his own thoughts--though how any man could be gloomy after his recent experience it was beyond me to imagine.

My astonishment flamed into a feeling of acute annoyance. If any one had spoken to me at that moment, I should have been unforgivably rude. But no one had the least intention of speaking to me, and I had just sense enough to restrain myself from demanding an apology from the company at large.

That was my natural inclination. I had been insulted; outraged. I was the Jervaises' guest, and whatever they imagined that I had done, they owed it to me and to themselves to treat me with a reasonable courtesy.

It was a detestable situation, and I was completely floored by it for the moment. We were not half-way through lunch, and I felt that I could not endure to sit there for another twenty minutes, avoided, proscribed, held fast in a pillory, a b.u.t.t for the sneers of any fool at the table. On the other hand, if I got up and marched out of the room, I should be acknowledging my defeat--and my guilt of whatever crime I was supposed to have committed. If I ever wished to justify my perfect innocence, I should forfeit my chances, at once, by accepting the snub I had received. To do that would be to acknowledge my sense of misbehaviour.

I leaned a little forward and glanced at Miss Tattersall who was sitting just beyond Nora Bailey on my side of the table. And I saw that my late confidante, the user of keyholes, was faintly smiling to herself with an unmistakable air of malicious satisfaction.

I wished, then, that I had not looked. I was no longer quite so conscious of outraged innocence. It is true that I was guiltless of any real offence, but I saw that the charge of complicity with the chauffeur--a charge that had certainly not lost in substance or in its suggestion of perfidy by Miss Tattersall's rendering--was one that I could not wholly refute. I was in the position of a man charged with murder on good circ.u.mstantial evidence; and my first furious indignation began to give way to a detestable feeling of embarra.s.sment, momentarily increased by the necessity to sit in silence while the inane chatter of the luncheon table swerved past me. If I had had one friend with whom I could have talked, I might have been able to recover myself, but I defy any one in my situation to maintain an effective part with no active means of expression.