The Jervaise Comedy

“Oh! look here, Melhuish,” he said, with a return to his bullying manner. “You’re only making things look worse for yourself by all this beating about the bush. It’s evident that you didn’t sleep in the house, and I want to know why.”

“Is sleeping in the house a condition of your hospitality?” I asked.

“Not in ordinary circumstances,” he said. “But the circumstances are not ordinary. I suppose you haven’t forgotten that something happened last night which very seriously affects us?”

“I haven’t, but I don’t see what the deuce it’s got to do with me,” I returned.

“Nor I; unless it’s one of your idiotic, romantic tricks,” he retorted; “but I have very good evidence, all the same, that you were concerned in it.”

“Oh! is that what you’re accusing me of?” I said.

“It is,” Jervaise replied.

“Then I can put your mind at rest,” I said. “I am ready to swear by any oath you like that I had nothing whatever to do with your sister’s elopement, and that I know…” I was going to add “nothing more about it than you do yourself,” but remembering my talk with Banks, I decided that that was not perfectly true, and with the layman’s respect for the sanctity of an oath I concluded, “and that I know very little more about it than you do.”

“It’s that little bit more that is so important,” Jervaise commented sardonically.

After all, a legal training does count for something. I was not his match in this kind of give and take, and I decided to throw down my hand. I was not incriminating Banks. I knew nothing about his movements of the night, and in that morning interview with old Jervaise the most important admission of all must almost certainly have been made.

“Well, you have a right to know that,” I began, “although I don’t think you and your family had any right whatever to be so damnably rude to me at lunch, on the mere spiteful accusations of Miss Tattersall.”

“Miss Tattersall?” Jervaise put in, with a very decent imitation of surprise.

“Oh! I’m going to be perfectly honest with you,” I returned. “Can’t you drop that burlesque of the legal manner and be equally honest with me?”

“Simply dunno what you’re driving at,” he said.

“Very well, then, answer the question you shirked just now,” I retorted. “Why did your mother rush to tell you that I hadn’t slept in the house last night?”

“The mater’s in an awful state of nerves,” he said.

Incidentally I had to admit to myself that I had not made sufficient allowance for that indubitable fact, but I chose to disregard it at the moment. I wanted to be sure of the treachery of Grace Tattersall.

“You asked me not to beat about the bush, a minute ago,” I said, “and now you’re trying to dodge all my questions with the most futile and palpable evasions.”

“For instance?” he replied calmly, with a cunning that nearly trapped me. For when I tried to recall, as I thought I could, a specific and convincing instance of his evasion, I realised that to cite a case would only draw us into an irrelevant bickering over side issues.

“Your last three or four answers were all obvious equivocations,” I said, and raising my voice I went straight on over his attempt to expostulate by adding, “And if Mrs. Jervaise’s state of nerves is an excuse for her confiding in you, it isn’t, in my opinion, any excuse for her confiding in Miss Tattersall and Nora Bailey and Hughes, and setting them on to—ostracise me.”

“Oh! come,” Jervaise protested, a little taken aback. I had put him in a quandary, now. He had to choose between an imputation on his mother’s good taste, savoir faire, breeding—and an admission of the rather shameful source of the present accusation against me.

“As a matter of fact, it’s absolutely clear to me that Grace Tattersall is at the bottom of all this,” I continued, to get this point settled. “I’m perfectly sure your mother would not have treated me as she did unless her mind had been perverted in some way.”

“But why should she—Miss Tattersall—I mean she seemed rather keen on you…”

“I can explain that,” I interrupted him. “She wanted to gossip with me about the whole affair this morning, and she made admissions that I suppose she was subsequently ashamed of. And after that she discovered by an accident that I had met Banks, and jumped to the totally false conclusion that I had been drawing her out for my own disreputable purposes.”

“Where did you meet Banks?” was Jervaise’s only comment on this explanation.

“I’m going to tell you that,” I said. “I told you that I meant to be perfectly honest with you, but I want to know first if I’m not right about Miss Tattersall.”

“She has been a bit spiteful about you,” he admitted.

“So that’s settled,” I replied by way of finally confirming his admission. “Now, I’ll tell you exactly what happened last night.”

I made a fairly long story of it; so long that we reached the lodge at the Park gates before I had finished, and turned back again up the avenue. I was careful to be scrupulously truthful, but I gave him no record of any conversation that I thought might, however indirectly, inculpate Banks.

Jervaise did not once interrupt me, but I saw that he was listening with all his attention, studying my statement as he might have studied a complicated brief. And when I had done, he thrust out his ugly underlip with an effect of sneering incredulity that I found almost unendurably irritating.

“Do you mean to say that you don’t believe me?” I asked passionately.

We were just opposite the side road that I had taken the night before, the road that led through the thickest part of the spinney before it came out into the open within a quarter of a mile of Jervaise Clump. And as if both our minds had been unconsciously occupied with the same thought, the need for a still greater privacy, we turned out of the avenue with an air of deliberate intention and a marked increase of pace. It seemed as though this secluded alley had, from the outset, been the secret destination of our walk.

He did not reply to my challenging question for perhaps a couple of minutes. We were walking quite quickly, now. Until the heat of our rising anger could find some other expression, we had to seek relief in physical action. I had no doubt that Jervaise in his own more restrained way was as angry as I was myself. His sardonic sneer had intensified until it took the shape of a fierce, brooding anger.

We were out of sight of the junction of the side road with the avenue, when he stopped suddenly and faced me. He had manifestly gathered himself together for a great effort that was, as it were, focussed in the malignant, dominating scowl of his forbidding face. The restraint of his language added to the combined effect—consciously studied, no doubt—of coarse and brutal authority.

“And why did you spy on me this morning?” he asked. “Why did you follow me up to the Home Farm, watch me while I was talking to Miss Banks, and then slink away again?”

I have two failings that would certainly have disqualified me if I had ever attempted to adopt the legal profession. The first is a tendency to blush violently on occasion. The second is to see and to sympathise with my opponent’s point of view. Both these failings betrayed me now. The blush seemed to proclaim my guilt; my sudden understanding of Jervaise’s temper confirmed it.

For, indeed, I understood precisely at that moment how enraged he must be against me. He, like Miss Tattersall, had been playing an underhand game, though his was different in kind. He had been seduced (my bitterness against Anne found satisfaction in laying the blame at her door!) into betraying the interests of his own family. I did not, in a sense, blame him for that; I had, the night before, been more than a little inclined to honour him for it; but I saw how, from the purely Jervaise point of view, his love-making would appear as something little short of criminal. And to be caught in the act, for I had caught him, however unwillingly, must have been horribly humiliating for him. Little wonder that coming home, hot and ashamed from his rendezvous, and being confronted with all the tale of my duplicity, he had flamed into a fury of resentment against me. I understood that beyond any question. Only one point still puzzled me. How had he been able until this moment to restrain his fury? I could but suppose that there was something cold-blooded, calculating, almost reptilian in his character; that he had planned cautiously and far-sightedly what he regarded as the best means for bringing about my ultimate disgrace.

And now my blush and my powers of sympathy had betrayed me. I felt like a convicted criminal as I said feebly, “Oh! that was an accident, absolutely an accident, I assure you. I had no sort of idea where you were when I went up to the Home Farm….”

“After keeping an eye on the front of the house all the morning,” he put in viciously.

A sense of awful frustration overcame me. Looking back on the past fifteen hours, I saw all my actions ranged in a long incriminating series. Each one separately might be explained, but regarded as a consequent series, those entirely inconsequent doings of mine could bear but one explanation: I was for some purpose of my own, whether idiotically romantic or not, on the side of Banks and Brenda. I had never lifted a finger to help them; I was not in their confidence; and since the early morning I had withdrawn a measure of my sympathy from them. But I could not prove any of these things. I could only affirm them, and this domineering bully, who stood glowering at me, wanted proof or nothing. He was too well accustomed to the methods of criminals to accept explanations.

“You don’t believe me?” I said.

“Candidly, I don’t,” he replied.

And at that my temper finally blazed. I could not bear any longer either that awful sense of frustration or the sight of Frank Jervaise’s absurdly portentous scowl.

I did not clench my fists, but I presume my purpose showed suddenly in my face, for he moved quickly backwards with a queer, nervous jerk of the head that was the precise counterpart of the parrot-like twist his mother had given at the luncheon table. It was an odd movement, at once timid and vicious, and in an instant I saw the spirit of Frank Jervaise revealed to me. He was a coward, hiding his weakness under that coarse mask of the brooding, relentless hawk. He had winced and retreated at my unspoken threat, as he had winced at the thought of his thrashing at school. He had taken his punishment stoically enough then, and might take another with equal fortitude now; though he had been weakened in the past five or six years by the immunity his frowning face had won for him. But he could not meet the promise of a thrashing. I saw that he would do anything, make any admission, to avoid that.

“Look here, Melhuish…” he began, but I cut him short.

“Oh! go to hell,” I said savagely.

I was disappointed. I wanted to fight him. I knew now that since the scene I had witnessed in the wood the primitive savage in me had been longing for some excuse to break out in its own primitive, savage way. And once again I was frustrated. I was just too civilised to leap at him without further excuse.

He gave me none.

“If you’re going to take that tone…” he said with a ridiculous affectation of bravado, and did not complete his sentence. His evasion was, perhaps, the best that he could have managed in the circumstances. It was so obvious that only the least further incentive was required to make me an irresponsible madman. And he dared not risk it.

He turned away with a pretence of dignity, the craven brag of a schoolboy who says, “I could lick you if I wanted to, but I don’t happen to want to.” I watched him as he walked back towards the avenue with a deliberation that was so artificial, I could swear that when he reached the turn he would break into a run.

I stood still in the same place long after he was out of sight. As my short-lived passion evaporated, I began to realise that I was really in a very awkward situation. I could not and would not return to the Hall. I had offended Frank Jervaise beyond all hope of reconciliation. He would never forgive me for that exposure of his cowardice. And if I had not had a single friend at the house before, I could, after the new report of my treachery had been spread by Frank, expect nothing but the bitterness of open enemies. No doubt they would essay a kind of frigid politeness, their social standards would enforce some show of outward courtesy to a guest. But I simply could not face the atmosphere of the Hall again. And here I was without my luggage, without even a hat, and with no idea where I could find refuge. The only idea I had was that of walking fifteen miles to Hurley Junction on the chance of getting a train back to town.

It was an uncommonly queer situation for a perfectly innocent man, week-ending at a country house. I should have been ashamed to face the critics if I had made so improbable a situation the crux of a play. But the improbability of life constantly outruns the mechanical inventions of the playwright and the novelist. Where life, with all its extravagances, fails, is in its refusal to provide the apt and timely coincidence that shall solve the problem of the hero. As I walked on slowly towards Jervaise Clump, I had little hope of finding the peculiarly appropriate vehicle that would convey me to Hurley Junction; and I did not relish the thought of that fifteen mile walk, without a hat.

I kept to the road, skirting the pudding basin hill, and came presently to the fence of the Park and to what was evidently a side gate—not an imposing wrought-iron erection between stone pillars such as that which announced the front entrance, but just a rather high-class six-barred gate.

I hesitated a minute or two, with the feelings of one who leaves the safety of the home enclosure for the unknown perils of the wild, and then with a sigh of resignation walked boldly out on to the high road.

I had no notion in which direction Hurley Junction lay, but luck was with me, so far. There was a fourth road, opposite the Park gate, and a sign-post stood at the junction of what may once have been the main cross-roads—before some old Jervaise land-robber pushed the park out on this side until he was stopped by the King’s highway.

On the sign-post I read the indication that Hurley Junction was distant 14-1/2 miles, and that my direction was towards the north; but I felt a marked disinclination to begin my walk.

It was very hot, and the flies were a horrible nuisance. I stood under the shadow of the hedge, flapped a petulant handkerchief at the detestably annoying flies, and stared down the road towards the far, invisible distances of Hurley. No one was in sight. The whole country was plunged in the deep slumber of a Sunday afternoon, and I began to feel uncommonly sleepy myself. I had, after all, only slept for a couple of hours or so that morning.

I yawned wearily and my thoughts ran to the refrain of “fourteen and a half miles; fourteen and a half miles to Hurley Junction.”

“Oh! well,” I said to myself at last. “I suppose it’s got to be done,” and I stepped out into the road, and very lazily and wearily began my awful tramp. The road ran uphill, in a long curve encircling the base of the hill, and I suppose I took about ten minutes to reach the crest of the rise. I stayed there a moment to wipe my forehead and slap peevishly at my accompanying swarm of flies. And it was from there I discovered that I had stumbled upon another property of the Jervaise comedy. Their car—I instantly concluded that it was their car—stood just beyond the rise, drawn in on to the grass at the side of the road, and partly covered with a tarpaulin—it looked, I thought, like a dissipated roysterer asleep in the ditch.

I decided, then, without the least compunction, that this should be my heaven-sent means of reaching the railway. The Jervaises owed me that; and I could leave the car at some hotel at Hurley and send the Jervaises a telegram. I began to compose that telegram in my mind as I threw off the tarpaulin preparatory to starting the car. But Providence was only laughing at me. The car was there and the tank was full of petrol, but neither the electric starter nor the crank that I found under the seat would produce anything but the most depressing and uninspired clanking from the mechanism that should have responded with the warm, encouraging thud of renewed life.

I swore bitterly (I can drive, but I’m no expert), climbed into the tonneau, pulled back the tarpaulin over me like a tent to exclude those pestilent flies, and settled myself down to draw one or two deep and penetrating inductions.

My first was that Banks had brought the car here the night before with the fixed intention of abducting Brenda Jervaise.

My second was that the confounded fellow had cautiously removed some essential part of the car’s mechanism.

My third, that he would have to come back and fetch the car sometime, and that I would then blackmail him into driving me to Hurley Junction.

I did not trouble to draw a fourth induction. I was cool and comfortable under the shadow of the cover. The flies, although there were many openings for them, did not favour the darkness of my tent. I leaned well back into the corner of the car and joined the remainder of the county in a calm and restful sleep.