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"Oh!" was all my comment. I needed no more explanations; and I liked Jervaise even less than I had before. I began to wish that he had not seen fit to confide in me. I had, thoughtlessly, been dramatising the incident in my mind, but, now, I was aware of the unpleasant reality of it all. Particularly Jervaise's part in it. "Can't be absolutely certain, of course," he continued.
For it could be nothing more than that. If they loved each other, they could do no less than follow the shining example of Brenda and Anne's brother. I could see Anne doing that, and with a still more daring spirit than the other couple had so far displayed. I could not see her as Frank Jervaise's mistress.
Miss Tattersall, Olive Jervaise's friend, a rather abundant fair young woman, warmed by excitement to the realisation that she must flirt with some one, also noticed the theatrical sound of that announcement of midnight. She giggled a little nervously as stroke succeeded stroke in an apparently unending succession.
This open defiance was fine and upright. The other attitude suggested to my mind the conception of something cowardly, a little base and underhand. He looked, I admit, the picture of sturdy virtue as he stood there challenging his late master to permit this test of old Jervaise's attitude, but the prize at stake was so inestimably precious to Banks, that it must have altered all his values.
Moreover, I could not believe now, even after that morning's scene in the wood, that she really cared for him. If she did, she must have been an actress of genius, since, so far as I had been able to observe, her attitude towards him during the last half-hour had most nearly approached one of slightly amused contempt. Jervaise's evident perplexity was notably aggravated by Anne's question.
We will take ourselves away, so that no one can point to the calamity of a marriage between a Banks and a Jervaise. It will, I think, break my husband's heart, but we see that there is nothing else to be done." Old Jervaise's expression was certainly one of relief.
I was glad that he should have knocked with such decent restraint, but all the effect of it was instantly shattered by the response. For at his first subdued rap, a dog with a penetratingly strident bark set up a perfectly detestable clamour within the house. It was just as if Jervaise's touch on the door had liberated the spring of some awful rattle.
I suppose our over-soul knew everything in that minute. A tremor of dismay ran up our ranks like the sudden passing of a cold wind. Every one was looking at Ronnie. Olive Jervaise's reply furnished an almost superfluous corroboration. She could not control her voice. She tried to be as casual as her brother, and failed lamentably. "Brenda was here just now," she said.
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.
Although I had never before that afternoon seen Jervaise's home nor any of his people with the exception of the brother now in India, I had known Frank Jervaise for fifteen years. We had been at Oakstone together, and had gone up the school form by form in each other's company. After we left Oakstone we were on the same landing at Jesus, and he rowed "two" and I rowed "bow" in the college boat.
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