The Jervaise Comedy | Page 2

a
self-conscious voice, as if the sound of the bell had some emotional
effect upon her.
"It's because it's out of place," I said for the sake of saying something;
"theatrical and artificial, you know. It ought to be..." I did not know
quite what it ought to be and stopped in the middle of the sentence. I
was aware of the wide open door, of the darkness beyond, and of the
timid visiting of the brilliant, chattering crowd by the fragrance of

scented night-stock--a delicate, wayward incursion that drifted past me
like the spirit of some sweet, shabby fairy. What possible bell could be
appropriate to that air? I began, stupidly, to recall the names of such
flowers as bluebell, hare-bell, Canterbury-bell. In imagination I heard
their chime as the distant tinkling of a fairy musical-box.
Miss Tattersall, however, took no notice of my failure to find the ideal.
"Yes, isn't it?" she said, and then the horrible striking ceased, and we
heard little Nora Bailey across the Hall excitedly claiming that the
clock had struck thirteen.
"I counted most carefully," she was insisting.
"I can't think why that man doesn't come," Mrs. Sturton repeated in a
raised voice, as if she wanted to still the superstitious qualms that Miss
Bailey had started. "I told him to come round at a quarter to twelve, so
that there shouldn't be any mistake. It's very tiresome." She paused on
that and Jervaise was inspired to the statement that the fly came from
the Royal Oak, didn't it, a fact that Mrs. Sturton had already affirmed
more than once.
"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. I was trying to listen to a little piece that was unfolding in my
mind, a piece that began with the coming of the spirit of the night-stock
into this material atmosphere of heated, excited men and women. I
realised that invasion as the first effort of the wild romantic night to
enter the house; after that.... After that I only knew that the
consequences were intensely interesting and that if I could but let my
thoughts guide me, they would finish the story and make it exquisite.
"Oh! did she?" I commented automatically, and cursed myself for
having conveyed a warmth of interest I certainly did not feel.
"She's so enthusiastic, isn't she? Brenda, I mean," Miss Tattersall went
on, and as I listened I compared her to the stable-clock. She, too, was a
persistent outrage, a hindrance to whatever it was that I was waiting
for.
Mrs. Sturton and her husband were coming back, with an appearance of

unwillingness, into the warmth and light of the Hall. The dear lady was
still at her congratulations on the delightfulness of the evening, but they
were tempered, now, by a hint of apology for "spoiling it--to a certain
extent--I hope I haven't--by this unfortunate contretemps."
The Jervaises were uncomfortably warm in their reassurances. They
felt, no doubt, the growing impatience of all their other visitors
pressing forward with the reminder that if the Sturtons' cab did not
come at once, there would be no more dancing.
Half-way up the stairs little Nora Bailey's high laughing voice was
embroidering her statement with regard to the extra stroke of the
stable-clock.
"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. They were taking refuge in their house.
Presently...
"Given it up?" I remarked with stupid politeness to Miss Tattersall.
"They've sent John round to the stables to inquire," she told me.
I do not know how she knew. "John" was the only man-servant that the
Jervaises employed in the house; butler, footman, valet and goodness
knows what else.
"Mrs. Sturton seems to be afraid of the night-air," Miss Tattersall
remarked with a complacent giggle of self-congratulation on being too
modern for such prejudices. "I simply love the night-air, don't you?"
she continued. "I often go out for a stroll in the garden the last thing."
I guessed her intention, but I was not going to compromise myself by
strolling about the Jervaise domain at midnight with Grace Tattersall.
"Do you?