Some one said it was twenty-five to one.
Fifty to one against another dance, then, Ronnie barked joyously.
Unless youll offer yourself up as a martyr in a good cause, suggested Nora Bailey.
Offer myself up? How? Ronnie asked.
Take em home in your car, Nora said in a penetrating whisper.
Dead the other way, was Ronnies too patent excuse.
Its only a couple of miles through the Park, you know, Olive Jervaise put in. You might easily run them over to the vicarage and be back again in twenty minutes.
By Jove; yes. So I might, Ronnie acknowledged. That is, if I may really come back, Miss Jervaise. Awfully good of you to suggest it. I didnt bring my man with me, though. Ill have to go and wind up the old buzz-wagon myself, if your fellow cant be found. Do you think could any one
He was looking round, searching for some one who was not there.
Want any help? Hughes asked.
No, thanks. Thats all right. I know where the car is, I mean, Ronnie said, and still hesitated as if he were going to finish the question he had begun in his previous speech.
Olive Jervaise anticipated, I think wrongly, his remark. Theyre in the drawing-room, she said. Will you tell them?
Better get the car round first, hadnt I? Ronnie asked.
The sandy Atkinson youth found an answer for that. He cleared his long, thin throat huskily and said, Might save time to tell em first. Theyd be ready, then, when you came round. His two equally sandy sisters clucked their approval.
All serene, Ronnie agreed.
He was on the bottom step of the stairs when the Hall door was thrown wide open and Frank Jervaise returned.
He stood there a moment, posed for us, searching the ladder of our gallery; and the spirit of the night-stock drifted past him and lightly touched us all as it fled up the stairs. Then he came across the Hall, and addressing his sister, asked, in a voice that overstressed the effect of being casual, I say, Olive, you dont happen to know where Brenda is, do you?
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 Jervaises 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. Sheshe must be somewhere about.
Ronnie, still the cynosure of the swarm, turned himself about and stared at Frank Jervaise. But it was Gordon Hughes who demonstrated his power of quick inference and response, although in doing it he overstepped the bounds of decency by giving a voice to our suspicions.
Is the car in the garage? Your own car? he asked.
Yes. Rather. Of course, Jervaise replied uneasily.
Youve just looked? Hughes insisted.
I know the cars there, was Jervaises huffy evasion, and he took Ronnie by the arm and led him off into the drawing-room.
The Hall door stood wide open, and the tragedy of the night flowed unimpeded through the house.
Although the horror had not been named we all recognised its finality. We began to break up our formation immediately, gabbling tactful irrelevancies about the delightful evening, the delinquent Carter, and the foolishness of Sabbatarianism. Mrs. Atkinson appeared in the Hall, cloaked and muffled, and beckoned to her three replicas. She announced that their omnibus was just coming round.
In the general downward drift of dispersion I saw Grace Tattersall looking up at me with an expression that suggested a desire for the confidential discussion of scandal, and I hastily whispered to Hughes that we might go to the extemporised buffet in the supper-room and get a whisky and seltzer or something. He agreed with an alacrity that I welcomed at the time, but regret, now, because our retirement into duologue took us out of the important movement, and I missed one or two essentials of the development.
The truth is that we were all overcome at the moment by an irresistible desire to appear tactful. We wanted to show the Jervaises that we had not suspected anything, or that if we had, we didnt mind in the least, and it certainly wasnt their fault. Nevertheless, I saw no reason why in the privacy of the supper-roomwe had the place to ourselvesI should not talk to Hughes. I had never before that afternoon met any of the Jervaise family except Frank, and on one or two occasions his younger brother who was in the army and, now, in India; and I thought that this was an appropriate occasion to improve my knowledge. I understood that Hughes was an old friend of the family.
He may have been, although the fact did not appear in his conversation; for I discovered almost immediately that he was, either by nature or by reason of his legal training, cursed with a procrastinating gift of diplomacy.
Awkward affair! I began as soon as we had got our whiskies and lighted cigarettes.
Hughes drank with a careful slowness, put his glass down with superfluous accuracy, and then after another instant of tremendous deliberation, said, What is?
Well, this, I returned gravely.
Meaning? he asked judicially.
Of course it may be too soon to draw an inference, I said.
Especially with no facts to draw them from, he added.
All the same, I went on boldly, it looks horribly suspicious.
What does?
I began to lose patience with him. Im not suggesting that the Sturtons man from the Royal Oak has been murdered, I said.
He weighed that remark as if it might cover a snare, before he scored a triumph of allusiveness by replying, Fellow called Carter. Hes got a blue nose.
Despite my exasperation I tried once more on a note of forced geniality, What sort of man is this chauffeur of the Jervaises? Do you know him at all?
Wears brown leather gaiters, Hughes answered after another solemn deliberation.
I could have kicked him with all the pleasure in life. His awful guardedness made me feel as if I were an inquisitive little journalist trying to ferret out some unsavoury scandal. And he had been the first person to point the general suspicion a few minutes earlier, by his inquiry about the motor. I decided to turn the tables on him, if I could manage it.
I asked because you seemed to suggest just now that he had gone off with the Jervaises motor, I remarked.
Hughes stroked his long thin nose with his thumb and forefinger. It seemed to take him about a minute from bridge to nostril. Then he inhaled a long draught of smoke from his cigarette, closed one eye as if it hurt him, and threw back his head to blow out the smoke again with a slow gasp of relief.
One never knows, was all the explanation he vouchsafed after this tedious performance.
Whether a chauffeur will steal his masters motor? I asked.
Incidentally, he said.
But, good heavens, if hes that sort of man I suggested.
Im not saying that he is, Hughes replied.
I realised then that his idea of our conversation was nothing more nor less than that of a game to be played as expertly as possible. He had all the makings of a cabinet minister, but as a companion he was, on this occasion, merely annoying. I felt that I could stand no more of him, and I was trying to frame a sentence that would convey my opinion of him without actual insult, when Frank Jervaise looked in at the door.
He stared at us suspiciously, but his expression commonly conveyed some aspect of threat or suspicion. Been looking all over the place for you, he said.
He stared at us suspiciously, but his expression commonly conveyed some aspect of threat or suspicion. Been looking all over the place for you, he said.
For me? Hughes asked.
Jervaise shook his head. No, I want Melhuish, he said, and stood scowling.
Well, here I am, I prompted him.
If Im in the way Hughes put in, but did not attempt to get himself out of it.
Jervaise ignored him. Look here, Melhuish, he said. I wonder if youd mind coming up with me to the Home Farm?
Oh! no; rather not, I agreed gladly.
I felt that Hughes had been scored off; but I instantly forgot such small triumphs in the delight of being able to get out into the night. Out there was romance and the smell of night-stock, all kinds of wonderment and adventure. I was so eager to be in the midst of it that I never paused to consider the queerness of the expedition.
As we left the Hall, the theatrical stable-clock was just striking one.
II
Anne
The moon must have been nearly at the full, but I could not guess its position behind the even murk of cloud that muffled the whole face of the sky. Yet, it was not very dark. The broad masses of the garden through which Jervaise led me, were visible as a greater blackness superimposed on a fainter background. I believed that we were passing through some kind of formal pleasance. I could smell the pseudo-aromatic, slightly dirty odour of box, and made out here and there the clipped artificialities of a yew hedge. There were standard roses, too. One rose started up suddenly before my face, touching me as I passed with a limp, cool caress, like the careless, indifferent encouragement of a preoccupied courtesan.
At the end of the pleasance we came to a high wall, and as Jervaise fumbled with the fastening of a, to me, invisible door, I was expecting that now we should come out into the open, into a paddock, perhaps, or a grass road through the Park. But beyond the wall was a kitchen garden. It was lighter there, and I could see dimly that we were passing down an aisle of old espaliers that stretched sturdy, rigid arms, locked finger to finger with each other in their solemn grotesque guardianship of the enciente they enclosed. No doubt in front of them was some kind of herbaceous border. I caught sight of the occasional spire of a hollyhock, and smelt the acid insurgence of marigolds.
None of this was at all the mischievous, taunting fairyland that I had anticipated, but rather the gaunt, intimidating home of ogres, rank and more than a trifle forbidding. It had an air of age that was not immortal, but stiffly declining into a stubborn resistance against the slow rigidity of death. These espaliers made me think of rheumatic veterans, obstinately faithful to ancient dutiesveterans with knobbly arthritic joints.
At the end of the aisle we came to a high-arched opening in the ten-foot wall, barred by a pair of heavy iron gates.
Hold on a minute, Ive got the key, Jervaise said. This was the first time he had spoken since we left the house. His tone seemed to suggest that he was afraid I should attempt to scale the wall or force my way through the bars of the gates.
He had the key but he could not in that darkness fit it into the padlock; and he asked me if I had any matches. I had a little silver box of wax vestas in my pocket, and struck one to help him in his search for the keyhole which he found to have been covered by the escutcheon. Before I threw the match away I held it up and glanced back across the garden. The shadows leaped and stiffened to attention, and I flung the match away, but it did not go out. It lay there on the path throwing out its tiny challenge to the darkness. It was still burning when I looked back after passing through the iron gates.
As we came out of the park, Jervaise took my arm.
Im afraid this is a pretty rotten business, he said with what was for him an unusual cordiality.
Although I had never before that afternoon seen Jervaises 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 others 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. And since we had come down I had met him constantly in London, often as it seemed by accident. Yet we had never been friends. I had never really liked him.
Even at school he had had the beginning of the artificially bullying manner which now seemed natural to him. He had been unconvincingly blunt and insolent. His dominant chin, Roman nose, and black eyebrows were chiefly responsible, I think, for his assumption of arrogance. He must have been newly invigorated to carry on the part every time he scowled at himself in the glass. He could not conceivably have been anything but a barrister.
But, to-night, in the darkness, he seemed to have forgotten for once the perpetual mandate of his facial angle. He was suddenly intimate, almost humble.
Of course, you dont realise how cursedly awkward it all is, he said with the evident desire of opening a confidence.
Tell me as little or as much as you like, I responded. You know that I
Yes, rather, he agreed warmly, and added, Id sooner Hughes didnt know.
He guesses a lot, though, I put in. I suppose they all do.
Oh! well, theyre bound to guess something, he said, but Im hoping well be able to put that right, now.
Who are we going to see? I asked.
He did not reply at once, and then snapped out, Anne Banks; friend er Brendas.
My foolishly whimsical imagination translated that queer medley of sounds into the thought of a stable-pump. I heard the clank of the handle and then the musical rush of water into the pail.
Sounds just like a pump, I said thoughtlessly.
He half withdrew his arm from mine with an abrupt twitch that indicated temper.
Oh! dont for Gods sake play the fool, he said brutally.
A spasm of resentment shook me for a moment. I felt annoyed, remembering how at school he would await his opportunity and then score off me with some insulting criticism. He had never had any kind of sympathy for the whimsical, and it is a manner that is apt to look inane and ridiculous under certain kinds of censure. I swallowed my annoyance, on this occasion. I remembered that Jervaise had a reasonable excuse, for once.
Sorry, I said. I didnt mean to play the fool. But you must admit that it had a queer sound. I repeated the adjectival sentence under my breath. It really was a rather remarkable piece of onomatopœia. And then I reflected on the absurdity of our conversation. How could we achieve all this ordinary trivial talk of everyday in the gloom of this romantic adventure?
Oh! all serene, Jervaise returned, still with the sound of irritation in his voice, and continued as if the need for confidence had suddenly overborne his anger. As a matter of fact shes his sister.
Whose sister? I asked, quite at a loss.
Oh! Bankss, of course, he said.
But who in the name of goodness is Banks? I inquired irritably. The petulant tone was merely an artifice. I realised that if I were meek, he would lose more time in abusing my apparent imbecility. I know that the one way to beat a bully is by bullying, but I hate even the pretence of that method.
Jervaise grunted as if the endeavour to lift the weight of my ignorance required an almost intolerable physical effort.
Why, this fellowour chauffeur, he said in a voice so threateningly restrained that he seemed on the point of bursting.