The Jervaise Comedy | Page 8

and the States and all
kinds of weird places. He's hard as nails; and keen. His mother was a
Frenchwoman; been a governess."
"Is she dead?" I asked.
"Lord, no. Why should she be?" Jervaise replied peevishly.
I thought of explaining that he had made the implication by his use of
the past tense, but gave up the idea as involving a waste of energy.
"How old is this chap, Banks; the son?" I asked.
"I don't know," Jervaise said. "About twenty-five."
"And his sister?" I prodded him.
"Rather younger than that," he said, after an evident hesitation, and
added: "She's frightfully pretty."
I checked my natural desire to comment on the paradox; and tried the
stimulation of an interested "Is she?"
"Rather." He tacked that on in the tone of one who deplores the
inevitable; and went on quickly, "You needn't infer that I've made an
ass of myself or that I'm going to. In our position..." He abandoned that
as being, perhaps, too obvious. "What I mean to say is," he continued,
"that I can't understand about Brenda. And it was such an infernally
silly way of going about things. Admitted that there was no earthly
chance of the pater giving his consent or anything like it; she needn't in
any case have made a damned spectacle of the affair. But that's just like
her. Probably did it all because she wanted to be dramatic or some rot."

It was then that I expressed my appreciation of the dramatic quality of
the incident, and was snubbed by his saying,--
"I suppose you realise just what this may mean, to all of us."
I had a vivid impression, in the darkness, of that sudden scowl which
made him look so absurdly like a youthful version of Sir Edward
Carson.
I was wondering why it should mean so much to all of them? Frank
Jervaise had admitted, for all intents and purposes, that he was in love
with the chauffeur's sister, so he, surely, need not have so great an
objection. And, after all, why was the family of Jervaise so much better
than the family of Banks?
"I suppose it would be very terrible for you all if she married this
chap?" I said.
"Unthinkable," Jervaise replied curtly.
"It would be worse in a way than your marrying the sister?"
"I should never be such an infernal fool as to do a thing like that," he
returned.
"Has she ... have there been any tender passages between you and Miss
Banks?" I asked.
"No," he snapped viciously.
"You've been too careful?"
"As a matter of fact, I don't think she likes me," he said.
"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.
"But if she did like you?" I suggested.
"I've got to be very careful who I marry," he explained. "We aren't
particularly well off. All our property is in land, and you know what
sort of an investment that is, these days."
I tried another line. "And if you find your sister up at the Home Farm;
and Banks; what are you going to do?"
"Kick him and bring her home," he said decidedly.
"Nothing else for it, I suppose?" I replied.

"Obviously," he snarled.
We had come into a wood and it was very dark under the trees. I
wondered why I should restrain the impulse to strangle him and leave
him there? He was no good, and, to me, quite peculiarly objectionable.
It seemed, in what was then my rather fantastic state of mind, that it
would be a triumph of whimsicality. I should certainly have resisted the
impulse in any case, but my attention was diverted from it at that
moment by a sudden pattering of feet along the leaves of the great trees
under which we were walking--light, clean, sharp, little dancing feet,
springing from leaf to leaf--dozens of them chasing each other, rattling
ecstatically up and down the endless terraces of wide foliage.
"Damn it all, it's beginning to rain like blazes," remarked the foolish
Jervaise.
"How much farther is it?" I asked.
He said we were "just there."
* * * * *
I saw the Home Farm first as a little square haze of yellow light far up
in the sky. I didn't realise the sharp rise in the ground immediately in
front of us, and that rectangular beacon, high in the air, seemed a
fantastically impossible thing. I pointed it