The Jervaise Comedy Part 27

"Can't you tell me?" I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders as if she had suddenly become tired of my questions, perhaps of myself, also.

"You're so outside it all," she said.

"I know I am," I admitted. "But--I don't want to remain outside."

"I don't know why I've been telling you as much as I have," she returned.

"I can only plead my profound interest," I said.

"In Arthur? Or in us, generally?" she inquired and frowned as if she forbade me to say that my chief interest might be in herself.

"In all of you and in the situation," I tried, hoping to please her. "I was prepared to dislike the Jervaises and all they stood for, before this talk with you. Now..."

"But you're well off, aren't you?" she said with a faint air of contempt.

"_You_ can't be an insurge. You'd be playing against your own side."

"If you think that, why did you give me so much confidence to begin with?"

I retaliated.

"Oh! I'm always doing silly things," she said. "It was silly to play with that foolish Jervaise man this morning. It was silly to offend him this evening. I don't--_think_. I ought to be whipped." She had apparently forgotten her recent distrust of me, for she continued in the tone of one who makes an ultimate confession. "As a matter of fact, I suppose I'm chiefly responsible for the whole thing. I egged them on. Arthur would have gone on adoring Brenda as a kind of divinity for ever, if I hadn't brought them together. He's afraid to touch her, even now. I just didn't think. I never do till it's too late."

"But you're not sorry--about them, are you?" I put in.

"I'm sorry for my father," she said. "Oh! I'm terribly sorry for him." Her eyes were extraordinarily tender and compa.s.sionate as she spoke. I felt that if any lover of Anne's could ever inspire such devotion as showed in her face at that moment, he would indeed be blest.

"He's sixty," she went on in a low, brooding voice, "and he's--he's so--rooted."

"Is there no chance of their letting you stay on, if Arthur and Brenda went to Canada?" I asked.

Her face was suddenly hard again as she replied. "I don't think there's one chance in a million," she said. "The Jervaise prestige couldn't stand such relations as us, living at their very doors. Besides, I know I've upset that horrid Jervaise man. He'll be revengeful. He's so weak, and that sort are always vindictive. He'll be mean and spiteful. Oh! no, it's one of two things, either Arthur will have to go back to Canada without Brenda, or we'll all have to go together."

Her tone and att.i.tude convinced me. If I had been able to consider the case logically and without prejudice, I should probably have scorned this presentation of rigid alternatives as the invention of a romantic mind; I might have recognised in it the familiar device of the dramatist. But I had so far surrendered myself to the charm of Anne's individuality that I accepted her statement without the least shadow of criticism. It was the search to find some mechanical means of influencing the Jervaises'

decision that reminded me of Arthur Banks's hint of an advantage that he might use in a last emergency.

"But your brother told me last night," I said, "that there was some--'pull' or other he had, that might make a difference if it came to desperate measures."

"He didn't tell you what it was?" she asked, and I knew at once that she was, after all, in her brother's confidence.

"No, he gave me no idea," I replied.

"He couldn't ever use that," she said decidedly. "He told me about it this morning, before he went up to the Hall, and I--"

"Dissuaded him?" I suggested, as she paused.

"No! He saw it, himself," she explained.

"It wasn't like Arthur--to think of such a thing, even--at ordinary times.

But after his quarrel with Brenda on the hill--if you could call it a quarrel, when, so far as I can make out, Arthur never said a word the whole time--after that, and Brenda being so eager to face them all out, this morning; he got a little beyond himself."

"Does Brenda know about this--pull?" I asked.

"Of course not!" Anne replied indignantly. "How could we tell her that?"

"I haven't the least notion what it is, you see," I apologised.

"Oh! it's about old Mr. Jervaise," Anne explained without the least show of reluctance. "There's some woman or other he goes to see in town. And once or twice Arthur took him in the car. They forget we're human beings at all, sometimes, you know. They think we're just servants and don't notice things; or if we do notice them, that we shouldn't be so disrespectful as to say anything. I don't know what they think. Anyhow, he let Arthur drive him--twice, I believe it was--and the second time Arthur looked at him when he came out of the house, and Mr. Jervaise must have known that Arthur guessed. Nothing was said, of course, but he didn't ever take Arthur again; but Arthur knows the woman's name and address. It was in some flats, and the porter told him something, too."

I realised that I had wasted my sympathy on old Jervaise. His air of a criminal awaiting arrest had been more truly indicative than I could have imagined possible. He had been expecting blackmail; had probably been willing to pay almost any price to avoid the scandal. I wondered how far the morning interview had relieved his mind?

"That explains Mr. Jervaise's state of nerves this morning," I remarked.

"I could see that he was frightfully upset, but I thought it was about Brenda. I had an idea that he might be very devoted to her."

Anne pushed that aside with a gesture, as quite unworthy of comment.

"But, surely, that really does give your brother some kind of advantage,"

I went on thoughtlessly. I suppose that I was too intent on keeping Anne in England to understand exactly what my speech implied.

She looked at me with a superb scorn. "You don't mean to say," she said, "that you think we'd take advantage of a thing like that? Father--or any of us?"

I had almost the same sense of being unjustly in disgrace that I had had during the Hall luncheon party. I do not quite know what made me grasp at the hint of an omission from her bravely delivered "any of us." I was probably s.n.a.t.c.hing at any straw.

"Your mother would feel like that, too?" I dared in my extremity.

Any ordinary person would have parried that question by a semblance of indignation or by asking what I meant by it. Anne made no attempt to disguise the fact that the question had been justified. Her scorn gave way to a look of perplexity; and when she spoke she was staring out of the window again, as if she sought the spirit of ultimate truth on some, to me, invisible horizon.

"She isn't practical," was Anne's excuse for her mother. "She's so--so romantic."

"I'm afraid I was being unpractical and romantic, too," I apologised, rejoicing in my ability to make use of the precedent.

Anne just perceptibly pursed her lips, and her eyes turned towards me with the beginning of a smile.

"You little thought what a romance you were coming into when you accepted the invitation for that week-end--did you?" she asked.

"My goodness!" was all the comment I could find; but I put a world of feeling into it.

"And I very nearly refused," I went on, with the excitement of one who makes a thrilling announcement.

Anne humoured my eagerness with a tolerant smile. "_Did_ you?" she said encouragingly.

"It was the merest chance that I accepted," I replied. "I was curious about the Jervaise family."

"Satisfied?" Anne asked.

"Well, I've been given an opportunity of knowing them from the inside," I said.

"You'll be writing a play about us," Anne remarked carelessly.