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She had given me her confidence about her family affairs because she counted me as a new ally, however ineffective, coming in unexpectedly to fight against the Jervaises. She had acknowledged my worship of her because she was too clear-sighted and too honest to shirk my inevitable declaration. But I could not doubt that she rated me as unworthy of her serious attention.
"And I suppose he likes, or at least respects, the Jervaises?" I said. "Not much," she replied. "They've made it very difficult for us in many ways." "Deliberately?" I suggested. "They don't care," she said, warming a little for the first time. "They simply don't think of any one but themselves. For instance, it mayn't seem much to you, but it's part of our agreement with Mr.
And I wanted to do my utmost to produce the best possible impression upon her. "I hope I may call myself your brother's friend," I began lamely. "All my sympathies are with him." "You don't know the Jervaises particularly well?" she inquired. For one moment she glanced down at her poised hands, but almost instantly returned to her rather absent-minded gazing through the open window.
"Not because the Jervaises were so rude to you?" she asked. "I liked him before that; when we met on the hill, very early this morning," I said. "But, perhaps, he didn't tell you." "Yes, he told me," she said. "And was that the beginning of all the trouble between you and the Jervaises?" "In a way, it was," I agreed. "But it's an involved story and very silly.
We're so ruled by the Jervaises here. And it's worse than that. Their their prestige sort of hangs over you everywhere. It's like being at the court of Louis Quatorze. The estate is theirs and they are the estate. Mother often says we are still féodal down here. It seems to me sometimes that we're little better than slaves." I smiled at the grotesqueness of the idea.
"What makes it rather embarrassing for the dear Jervaises," Miss Tattersall confided to me, "is that the other things aren't ordered till one the Atkinsons' 'bus, you know, and the rest of 'em. Brenda persuaded Mrs. Jervaise that we might go on for a bit after the vicar had gone." I wished that I could get away from Miss Tattersall; she intruded on my thoughts.
And he came down to the central cluster of faintly irritated Sturtons and Jervaises, with an evident hesitation that marked the gravity of his message. Every one was watching that group under the electric-lighted chandelier it was posed to hold the stage but I fancy that most of the audience were solely interested in getting rid of the unhappy Sturtons.
"I had a kind of premonition that it was going to, as soon as it began," she was saying. Gordon Hughes was telling the old story of the sentry who had saved his life by a similar counting of the strokes of midnight. And at the back of my mind my dæmon was still thrusting out little spurts of enthralling allegory. The Sturtons and Jervaises had been driven in from the open.
He and I were discussing it, too, as we came back. That sense of everything belonging to some one else, of having no right, hardly the right to breathe without the Jervaises' permission." Her gesture finally confirmed the fact that perfect confidence was established between us. I felt as if she had patted my shoulder.
From what I've heard of him, I should think it's very likely," I added thoughtfully. Jervaise had his hands in his pockets and was staring up at the moon. "He's not a bad chap in some ways," he remarked, "but there's no getting over the fact that he's our chauffeur." I saw that. No badge could be quite so disgraceful in the eyes of the Jervaises as the badge of servitude.
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