The Jervaise Comedy. J. D. Beresford
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an absurd weakness for the beauties of a midnight wood.
And if I had been a witness to his oath, I was, now, a witness to his foreswearing.
He began well enough on the note proper to the heir of Jervaise. He had the aplomb to carry that off. He stood on the hearthrug, austere and self-controlled, consciously aristocrat, heir and barrister.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Banks. Almost inexcusable to disturb you at this time of night.” He stopped after that beginning and searched his witness with a stare that ought to have set her trembling.
Anne had sat down and was resting her forearms on the table. She looked up at him with the most charming insouciance when he paused so portentously at the very opening of his address. Her encouraging “yes” was rather in the manner of a child waiting for the promised story.
Jervaise frowned and attempted the dramatic. “My sister, Brenda, has run away,” he said.
“When?”
“This evening at the end of the Cinderella. You knew we were giving a dance?”
“But where to?”
“Oh! Precisely!” Jervaise said.
“But how extraordinary!” replied Miss Banks.
“Is she here?” asked Jervaise. He ought to have snapped that out viciously, and I believe that was his intention. But Anne’s exquisitely innocent, absorbed gaze undid him; and his question had rather the sound of an apology.
“No, certainly not! Why ever should she come here?” Anne said with precisely the right nuance of surprise.
“Is your brother here?”
“No!”
It looks such an absurd little inexpressive word on paper, but Anne made a song of it on two notes, combining astonishment with a sincerity that was absolutely final. If, after that, Jervaise had dared to say, “Are you sure?” I believe I should have kicked him.
How confounded he was, was shown by the change of attitude evident in his next speech.
“It’s horribly awkward,” he said.
“Oh! horribly,” Anne agreed, with a charming sympathy. “What are you going to do?”
“You see, we can’t find your brother, either,” Jervaise tried tactfully.
“I don’t quite see what that’s got to do with Brenda,” Anne remarked with a sweet perplexity.
Apparently Jervaise did not wish to point the connection too abruptly. “We wanted the car,” he said; “and we couldn’t find him anywhere.”
“Oh! he’s almost sure to have gone to sleep up in the woods,” Anne replied. “Arthur’s like that, you know. He sort of got the habit in Canada or somewhere. He often says that sometimes he simply can’t bear to sleep under a roof.”
I had already begun to feel a liking for Anne’s brother, and that speech of hers settled me. I knew that “Arthur” was the right sort—or, at least, my sort. I would have been willing, even then, to swap the whole Jervaise family with the possible exception of Brenda, for this as yet unknown Arthur Banks.
Jervaise’s diplomacy was beginning to run very thin.
“You don’t think it conceivable that Brenda …” he began gloomily.
“That Brenda what?”
“I was going to say …”
“Yes?” She leaned a little forward with an air of expectancy that disguised her definite refusal to end his sentences for him.
“It’s a most difficult situation, Miss Banks,” he said, starting a new line; “and we don’t in the least know what to make of it. What on earth could induce Brenda to run off like this, with no apparent object?”
“But how do you know she really has?” asked Anne. “You haven’t told me anything, yet, have you? I mean, she may have gone out into the Park to get cool after the dance, or into the woods or anything. Why should you imagine that she has—run away?”
I joined in the conversation, then, for the first time. I had not even been introduced to Anne.
“That’s very reasonable, surely, Jervaise,” I said. “And wouldn’t it—I hardly know her, I’ll admit—but wouldn’t it be rather like your sister?”
So far as I was concerned, Anne’s suggestion carried conviction. I was suddenly sure that our suspicions were all a mistake.
Jervaise snubbed me with a brief glance of profoundest contempt. He probably intended that commentary on my interruption to go no further; but his confounded pose of superiority annoyed me to the pitch of exasperation.
“You see, my dear chap,” I continued quickly, “your unfortunate training as a lawyer invariably leads you to suspect a crime; and you overlook the obvious in your perfectly unreasonable and prejudiced search for the incriminating.”
Jervaise’s expression admirably conveyed his complete boredom with me and my speeches.
“You don’t know anything about it,” he said, with a short gesture of final dismissal.
“But, Mr. Jervaise,” Anne put in, “what can you possibly suspect, in this case?”
“He’d suspect anything of anybody for the sake of making a case of it,” I said, addressing Anne. I wanted to make her look at me, but she kept her gaze fixed steadily on Jervaise, as if he were the controller of all destinies.
I accepted my dismissal, then, so far as to keep silence, but I was annoyed, now, with Anne, as well as with Jervaise. “What on earth could she see in the fellow?” I asked myself irritably. I was the more irritated because he had so obviously already forgotten my presence.
“Have you no reason to suspect anything yourself, Miss Banks?” he asked gravely.
“If you’re suggesting that Brenda and Arthur have run away together,” she said, “I’m perfectly, perfectly certain that you’re wrong, Mr. Jervaise.”
“Do you mean that you know for certain that they haven’t?” he returned.
She nodded confidently, and I thought she had perjured herself, until Jervaise with evident relief said, “I’m very glad of that; very. Do you mind telling me how you know?”
“By intuition,” she said, without a trace of raillery in her face or her tone.
I forgave her for ignoring me when she said that. I felt that I could almost forgive Jervaise; he was so deliciously sold.
“But you’ve surely some other grounds for certainty besides—intuition?” he insisted anxiously.
“What other grounds could I possibly have?” Anne asked.
“They haven’t, either of them, confided in you?”
“Confided? What sort of things?”
“That there was, or might be, any—any sort of understanding between them?”
“I know that they have met—occasionally.”
“Lately! Where?”
“Brenda has been having lessons in driving the motor.”
“Oh! yes, I know that. You didn’t mean that they had been meeting here?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” Anne said definitely. All through that quick alternation of question and answer she had, as it were, surrendered her gaze to him; watching him with a kind of meek submission as if she were ready to do anything she could to help him in his inquiry. And it was very plain to me that Jervaise was flattered and pleased by her attitude. If I had attempted Anne’s method, he would