VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea | Page 9

did so.
'Of all the funking, skunking, silly cowardly devils----'
The General took him by the arm with a commanding grip.
'You forget, my good Jervase, you forget--my daughter is present, and she is not accustomed to have her ears assailed by that sort of language.'
'I beg your pardon,' said Jervase, suddenly cooling down. 'I beg ten thousand pardons--I beg Miss Irene's pardon most of all. I forgot myself, and I apologise.'
He bowed to the girl and fell to pacing up and down the room, casting glances of wrath at the messenger of ill news.
The General, fearing a new outburst, turned to the old lady with his courtliest air.
'We are all a little agitated for the moment by the strange tidings Mr. Jervoyce has brought us, and they involve some matters of business about which it will be better for us to hold a consultation between ourselves. Will you be so very kind as to take Irene elsewhere for a little while? 'His voice and manner were perfectly composed, and his face lit up with one of his rare sweet smiles as he added: 'I do not believe, my dear Mrs. Jervase, that I have ever, in the whole course of my three-score years, so far transgressed as to drive a lady from her own parlour, until now.'
'We will go,' said Mrs. Jervase, and the General stepping to the door threw it open, and stood for his hostess and his daughter to go by. Irene looked first at young Polson Jervase with a glance of fear and inquiry, and the young fellow responded to it only by a curt nod of the head, as much as to say 'Go! 'She looked into her father's face as she passed through the doorway, and the old man smiled down on her reassuringly.
'This will all be over in a few minutes, dear,' he said, 'and then I will send for you.' He closed the door gently, and tinned to face the trio in the room.
'I have apologised to the ladies,' said Jervase, 'already; but I owe an apology to you, General. I'm very sorry that my temper carried me back to my old seafaring manners; but,' with a savage look at his cousin, 'a coward's my loathing. I hate the sight of a coward worse than I hate the smell of a rotten egg.'
'Let us try to understand things,' said the General. 'Mr. James has brought his tidings in such a manner that they are evidently very serious to his mind. Had he brought them coolly I should have smiled at them. As it is, I think we must come to an explanation.'
'Certainly, General,' Jervase answered. 'Let us come to an explanation. Get on, James. Who's this suborned rascal you have been telling us about?'
James began to pull off his dripping overcoat, which by this time had left a little pond of water on the carpet round about him, and to fumble in the inner breast pocket of it. 'There are three of them,' he answered, and for a while he said no more. The General looked from him to John Jervase, and back again, and if his face were at all an index to his mind, he saw something which did not please him. His stooping shoulders straightened, and one hand went up to stroke the grey moustache. His brows straightened, his mild grey-blue eye grew stern, and his mouth was ruled into a straight line. The fact was that the General had had an almost lifelong experience in the great art of reading men, and though he had preserved a child-like simplicity in his dealings with the world, the fact was due a thousand times more to the charity of his heart than to any want of penetration. He was one of those who suspect nothing until suspicion is actually shaken awake, and who then see with a piercing clearness signs which would escape many who pride themselves upon their shrewdness. And when James Jervoyce faltered out the words, 'There are three of them! 'John Jervase gave a start and a look which indicated an instant understanding.
'He knows those three,' said General Boswell to himself.
'De Blacquaire's lawyer gave me their names to-day,' said Jervoyce, who had by this time found what he had been fumbling for in the pocket of his overcoat. 'Here they are.'
He reached out a crumpled piece of paper to his cousin, who took it from him, and, after a single glance at it, started again, and, pale as he was already, grew still paler.
'He knows those three,' said the General, voicelessly, and without a spoken word reached forward and took the crumpled page from Jervase's unresisting hand.
CHAPTER III
There was what seemed like a long silence, though in reality it endured only for a few seconds, whilst General Boswell searched for