The Jervaise Comedy. John Davys Beresford

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СКАЧАТЬ snubbed me with a brief glance of profoundest contempt. He probably intended that commentary on my interruption to go no further; but his confounded pose of superiority annoyed me to the pitch of exasperation.

      “You see, my dear chap,” I continued quickly, “your unfortunate training as a lawyer invariably leads you to suspect a crime; and you overlook the obvious in your perfectly unreasonable and prejudiced search for the incriminating.”

      Jervaise’s expression admirably conveyed his complete boredom with me and my speeches.

      “You don’t know anything about it,” he said, with a short gesture of final dismissal.

      “But, Mr. Jervaise,” Anne put in, “what can you possibly suspect, in this case?”

      “He’d suspect anything of anybody for the sake of making a case of it,” I said, addressing Anne. I wanted to make her look at me, but she kept her gaze fixed steadily on Jervaise, as if he were the controller of all destinies.

      I accepted my dismissal, then, so far as to keep silence, but I was annoyed, now, with Anne, as well as with Jervaise. “What on earth could she see in the fellow?” I asked myself irritably. I was the more irritated because he had so obviously already forgotten my presence.

      “Have you no reason to suspect anything yourself, Miss Banks?” he asked gravely.

      “If you’re suggesting that Brenda and Arthur have run away together,” she said, “I’m perfectly, perfectly certain that you’re wrong, Mr. Jervaise.”

      “Do you mean that you know for certain that they haven’t?” he returned.

      She nodded confidently, and I thought she had perjured herself, until Jervaise with evident relief said, “I’m very glad of that; very. Do you mind telling me how you know?”

      “By intuition,” she said, without a trace of raillery in her face or her tone.

      I forgave her for ignoring me when she said that. I felt that I could almost forgive Jervaise; he was so deliciously sold.

      “But you’ve surely some other grounds for certainty besides—intuition?” he insisted anxiously.

      “What other grounds could I possibly have?” Anne asked.

      “They haven’t, either of them, confided in you?”

      “Confided? What sort of things?”

      “That there was, or might be, any—any sort of understanding between them?”

      “I know that they have met—occasionally.”

      “Lately! Where?”

      “Brenda has been having lessons in driving the motor.”

      “Oh! yes, I know that. You didn’t mean that they had been meeting here?”

      “No, I didn’t mean that,” Anne said definitely. All through that quick alternation of question and answer she had, as it were, surrendered her gaze to him; watching him with a kind of meek submission as if she were ready to do anything she could to help him in his inquiry. And it was very plain to me that Jervaise was flattered and pleased by her attitude. If I had attempted Anne’s method, he would have scowled and brow-beaten me unmercifully, but now he really looked almost pleasant.

      “It’s very good of you to help me like this, Miss Banks,” he said, “and I’m very grateful to you. I do apologise, most sincerely for dragging you out of bed at such an unholy hour, but I’m sure you appreciate my—our anxiety.”

      “Oh! of course,” she agreed, with a look that I thought horribly sympathetic.

      I began to wonder if my first estimate of her—based to a certain extent, perhaps, on Jervaise’s admission that she did not like him—had not been considerably too high. She might, after all, be just an ordinary charming woman, enlivened by a streak of minx, and eager enough to catch the heir of Jervaise if he were available. How low my thought of her must have sunk at that moment! But they were, now, exchanging courtesies with an air that gave to their commonplaces the effect of a flirtation.

      I distracted my attention. I couldn’t help hearing what they said, but I could refrain from looking at Anne. She was becoming vivacious, and I found myself strangely disliking her vivacity. It was then that I began to take note of the furnishing of the room which, when I considered it, was so peculiarly not in the manner of the familiar English farm-house. Instead of the plush suite, the glass bell shades, the round centre table, and all the other stuffy misconceptions so firmly established by the civilisation of the nineteenth century, I discovered the authentic marks of the old English æsthetic—whitewashed walls and black oak. And the dresser, the settles, the oblong table, the rush-bottomed chairs, the big chest by the side wall, all looked sturdily genuine; venerably conscious of the boast that they had defied the greedy collector and would continue to elude his most insidious approaches. Here, they were in their proper surroundings. They gave the effect of having carelessly lounged in and settled themselves; they were like the steady group of “regulars” in the parlour of their familiar inn.

      I came out of my reflection on the furniture to find that Jervaise was going, at last. He was smiling and effusive, talking quickly about nothing, apologising again for the unseemliness of our visit. Anne was pathetically complacent, accepting and discounting his excuses, and professing her willingness to help in any way she possibly could. “But I really and truly expect you’ll find Brenda safe at home when you get back,” she said, and I felt that she honestly believed that.

      “I hope so; I hope so,” Jervaise responded, and then they most unnecessarily shook hands.

      I thought that it was time to assert myself above the clatter of their farewells.

      “We might add, Miss Banks,” I put in, “that we’ve been making a perfectly absurd fuss about nothing at all. But, no doubt, you’re used to that.”

      She looked at me, then, for the first time since I had come into the house; and I saw the impulse to some tart response flicker in her face and die away unexpressed. We stood and stared at one another for a long half-second or so; and when she looked away I fancied that there was something like fear in her evasion. It seemed to me that I saw the true spirit of her in the way her glance refused me as some one with whom she did not care to sport. Her voice, too, dropped, so that I could not catch the murmur of her reply.

      We had, indeed, recognised each other in that brief meeting of our eyes. Some kind of challenge had passed between us. I had dared her to drop that disguise of trickery and show herself as she was; and her response had been an admission that she acknowledged not me, but my recognition of her.

      How far the fact that I had truly appraised her real worth might influence her, in time, to think gently of me, I could not guess; but I hoped, even a little vaingloriously, that she would respond to our mutual appreciation of truth. I had shown her, I believed, how greatly I admired the spirit she had been at such pains to conceal during that talk in the honest sitting-room of the Home Farm. And I felt that her failure to resent the impertinence of my “No doubt, you’re used to that,” had been due to an understanding of something she and I had in common against the whole solid, stolid, aristocratic family of Jervaise.

      Moreover, she gave me what I counted as two more causes for hopefulness before we left the house. The first was her repetition, given, now, with a more vibrating sincerity, of the belief that we should find Brenda safely at home when we got back to the Hall.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ