MORNING

I awoke suddenly to the realisation of sound. The world about me was alive

with a murmurous humming. It was as if in passing through the silent

aisles of sleep, some door had been unexpectedly thrown open and let in

the tumultuous roar of life from without--or as if after a brief absence I

had returned and with one movement had re-established all the

communications of my body.

All sense of tiredness had left me. I opened my eyes and saw that the sun

had leapt far up into the sky. The whole population of Jervaise Clump was

plunged into the full bustle of its daily business. Industrious bees were

methodically visiting the buttercups; their bustling, commercial eagerness

in marked contrast to the bluebottles and flies that seemed to choose

their point of alighting with a sham intentness which did not disguise

their lack of any definite purpose. Now and again a feral, domineering

wasp would join the crowd, coming up with the air of a fussy, inquisitive

overseer.

I looked at my watch and found that the time was a quarter past eight. I

had been asleep for nearly three hours. I had no idea what time the

Jervaises had breakfast, but I knew that it was high time I got back to

the Hall and changed my clothes.

I unbuttoned my coat and looked down at my shirt front and thought how

incongruous and silly that absurd garb of evening dress appeared in those

surroundings.

And as I trotted back to the Hall, I found a symbol in my dress for the

drama of the night. It was, I thought, all artificial and unreal, now that

I looked back upon it in the blaze of a brilliant August morning.

Beginning with the foolishness of a dance at that time of year--even a

"tennis-dance" as they called it--the subsequent theatrical quality of the

night's adventure seemed to me, just then, altogether garish and

fantastic. I began to wonder how far I had dramatised and distorted the

actual events by the exercise of a romantic imagination? In the sweet

freshness of the familiar day, I found myself exceedingly inclined to be

rational. Also, I was aware of being quite unusually hungry.

The front door of the Hall was standing wide open, and save for a glimpse

of the discreet John very busy in his shirt-sleeves, I saw no one about. I

was glad to reach my room unobserved. I knew that my feeling was

unreasonable, but entering that sedate house, under the blaze of the

morning sun, I was ashamed of my tawdry dress. A sense of dissipation and

revelry seemed to hang about me--and of an uncivilised dirtiness.

A cold bath and a change of clothes, however, fully restored my

self-respect; and when I was summoned by the welcome sound of a booming

gong, the balance of sensation was kicking the other beam. My sleep in the

open had left me finally with a feeling of superiority. I was inclined to

despise the feeble, stuffy creatures who had been shut up in a house all

night.

I knew the topography of the house fairly well after my night's experience

of it, and inferred the breakfast-room without any difficulty. But when I

reached the door I stood and listened in considerable astonishment.

Luckily, I was not tempted to make the jaunty entrance my mood prompted. I

had not seen a soul as I had made my way from my room in the north wing

down into the Hall. The place seemed to be absolutely deserted. And, now,

in the breakfast-room an almost breathless silence was broken only by the

slow grumbling of one monotonous voice, undulating about the limited range

of a minor third, and proceeding with the steady fluency of a lunatic's

muttering. I suppose I ought to have guessed the reasonable origin of

those sounds, but I didn't, not even when the muttering fell to a pause

and was succeeded by a subdued chorus, that conveyed the effect of a score

of people giving a concerted but strongly-repressed groan. After that the

first voice began again, but this time it was not allowed to mumble

unsupported. A murmured chant followed and caricatured it, repeating as

far as I could make out the same sequence of sounds. They began "Ah! Fah!

Chah! Hen...." That continued for something like a minute before it came

to a ragged close with another groan. Then for a few seconds the original

voice continued its grumbling, and was followed by an immense quiet.

I stared through the open door of the Hall at the gay world of colour

outside and wondered if I was under the thrall of some queer illusion. But

as I moved towards the garden with a vague idea of regaining my sanity in

the open air, the silence in the breakfast-room was broken by the sigh of

a general movement, the door was opened from within, and there poured out

a long procession of servants: a grave woman in black, a bevy of

print-gowned maids, and finally John--all of them looking staid and a

trifle melancholy, they made their way with a kind of hushed timidity

towards the red-baized entrance that led to the freedoms of their proper

condition.

Within the breakfast-room a low chatter of voices was slowly rising to the

level of ordinary conversation.

My entrance was anything but jaunty. This was the first intimation I had

received of the Jervaises' piety; and my recognition of the ceremonial of

family worship to which I had so unintuitively listened, had evoked long

undisturbed memories of my boyhood. As I entered the breakfast-room, I

could not for the life of me avoid a feeling of self-reproach. I had been

naughty again. My host, taking the place of my father, would be vexed

because I had missed prayers.

My reception did little to disperse my sense of shame. The air of Sunday

morning enveloped the whole party. Even Hughes and Frank Jervaise were

dressed as for a special occasion in black tail-coats and gray trousers

that boasted the rigidity of a week's pressing. Not only had I been guilty

of cutting family prayers; I was convicted, also of disrespect on another

count. My blue serge and bright tie were almost profane in those

surroundings. The thought of how I had spent the night convicted me as a

thorough-going Pagan.

"I hope you managed to get a little sleep, Mr. Melhuish," Mrs. Jervaise

said tepidly. "We are having breakfast half an hour later than usual, but

you were so very late last night."

I began to mumble something, but she went on, right over me, speaking in a

voice that she obviously meant to carry "And Brenda isn't down even now,"

she said. "In fact she's having breakfast in her own room, and I am not at

all sure that we shan't keep her there all day. She has the beginning of a

nasty cold brought on by her foolishness--and, besides, she has been very,

very naughty and will have to be punished." She gave a touch of grim

playfulness to her last sentence, but I should not in any case have taken

her statement seriously. If I knew anything of our Brenda, it was that she

was not the sort of young lady who would submit to being kept in her own

room as a punishment.

"I hope the cold won't be serious," was all I could find to say.

I looked at Mr. Jervaise, who was standing despondently by the fireplace,

but he did not return my glance. He presented, I thought, the picture of

despair, and I suffered a sharp twinge of reaction from my championship of

the Banks interest at sunrise. Those two protagonists of the drama, Banks

and Brenda, were so young, eager and active. Life held so much promise for

them. This ageing man by the fireplace--he must have been nearly

sixty--had probably ceased to live for his own interests. His ambitions

were now centred in his children. I began to feel an emotional glow of

sympathy for him in his distress. Probably this youngest, most brilliant,

child of his was also the most tenderly loved. It might well be that his

anxiety was for her rather than for himself; that the threat to his pride

of family was almost forgotten in his sincere wish for his daughter's

happiness. It would appear so certain to him that she could never find

happiness in a marriage with Arthur Banks.

And with that thought a suspicion of my late companion of the hill-top

leapt into my mind. He had hinted at some influence or "pull" over

Brenda's father that might perhaps be used in a last emergency, although

the use of it implied the taking of a slightly dishonourable advantage.

Was it not probable, I now wondered, that this influence was to be

obtained by working on Jervaise's too tender devotion to his daughter? Was

she, perhaps, to be urged as a last resource to bear on that gentle

weakness by threat or cajolery?

I began to wish that I had not been quite so friendly with Mr. Banks. I

had been led away by the scent and glamour of the night. Here, in this

Sunday morning breakfast-room, I was able for the first time to appreciate

the tragedy in its proper relation to the facts of life. I saw that

Brenda's rash impulsiveness might impose a quite horrible punishment on

her too-devoted father.

I turned away towards one of the window-seats. Miss Tattersall and Nora

Bailey were sitting together there, pretending a conversation while they

patiently awaited the coming of breakfast. Mrs. Jervaise was talking now

to her elder daughter; Frank was arguing some point with Gordon Hughes,

and as I felt unequal to offering comfort to the lonely head of the house,

so evidently wrapped in his sorrow, I preferred to range myself with the

fourth group. I thought it probable that the sympathies of those two young

women might at the moment most nearly correspond to my own.

I was surprised to be greeted by Miss Tattersall with what had all the

appearance of a discreetly covert wink, and I raised my eyebrows with that

air of half-jocular inquiry which I fancied she would expect from me. She

evaded the implied question, however, by asking me what time I "really got

to bed, after all."

"The sun was up before I went to sleep," I replied, to avoid the possible

embarrassment of her comments should I admit to having slept in the open

air; and then John and a female acolyte came in with the long-desired

material of breakfast.

"Good!" I commented softly. "I'm simply ravenous."

"Are you?" Miss Tattersall said. "You deserve to go without breakfast for

having missed prayers," and added in precisely the same undertone of

conventional commonplace, "I don't believe she came back at all last

night."

But, having thus piqued my curiosity, she gave me no opportunity to

gratify it. She checked the question that my change of expression must

have foreshadowed by a frown which warned me that she could not give any

reason for her suspicion in that company.

"Later on," she whispered, and got up from her seat in the window, leaving

me to puzzle over the still uncertain mystery of Brenda's disappearance.

Miss Bailey had not, apparently, overheard the confidence. She did not, in

any case, relinquish for an instant that air of simple, attentive

innocence which so admirably suited the fresh prettiness of her style.

There was little conversation over the breakfast table. We were all glad

to find an excuse for silence either in the pretence or reality of hunger.

Old Jervaise's excuse was, quite pathetically, only a pretence; but he

tried very hard to appear engrossed in the making of a hearty meal. His

manner had begun to fascinate me, and I had constantly to check myself

from staring at him. I found it so difficult to account satisfactorily for

the effect of dread that he in some way conveyed. It was, I thought, much

the effect that might have been produced by a criminal in danger of

arrest.

But all of us, in our different ways, were more than a little

uncomfortable. The whole air of the breakfast-table was one of

dissimulation. Gordon Hughes made occasional efforts in conversation that

were too glaringly irrelevant to the real subject of our thoughts. And

with each beginning of his, the others, particularly Olive, Mrs. Jervaise,

and little Nora Bailey, plunged gallantly into the new topic with

spasmodic fervour that expended itself in a couple of minutes, and

horribly emphasised the blank of silence that inevitably followed. We

talked as people talk who are passing the time while they wait for some

great event. But what event we could be awaiting, it was hard to

imagine--unless it were the sudden return of Brenda, with or without

Banks.

And, even when we had all finished, and were free to separate, we still

lingered for unnecessary minutes in the breakfast-room, as if we were

compelled to maintain our pretence until the last possible moment.

Old Jervaise was the first to go. He had made less effort to disguise his

preoccupation than any of us, and now his exit had something of

abruptness, as if he could no longer bear to maintain any further

semblance of disguise. One could only infer from the manner of his going

that he passionately desired either solitude or the sole companionship of

those with whom he could speak plainly of his distress.

We took our cue from him with an evident alacrity. Every one looked as if

he or she were saying something that began with a half-apologetic

"Well..."; and Mrs. Jervaise interpreted our spirit when she remarked to

the company in general, "Well, it's very late, I'm afraid, and I dare say

we've all got a lot to do before we start for church. We shall have to

leave soon after half-past ten," she explained.

Frank had already left the room when she said that, she herself went out

with her elder daughter, and the four of us who remained, all visitors,

were left to pair with each other as we chose. It was Miss Tattersall who

determined the arrangement. She cleverly avoided the submissive glance of

little Nora Bailey, and asked me unequivocally if I would care to take a

"stroll" with her in the garden.

I agreed with a touch of eagerness and followed her, wondering if her

intriguing sentence before breakfast had been nothing more than a clever

piece of chicane, planned to entice me into a tête-à-tête.

(I admit that this may sound like a detestable symptom of vanity on my

part, but, indeed, I do not mean to imply that she cared a snap of the

fingers for me personally. She was one of those women who must have some

man in tow, and it happened that I was the only one available for that

week-end. Frank was supposed to be in love with Miss Bailey; Gordon Hughes

was engaged to some girl in the north, and used that defence without shame

when it suited him.)

I did not, however, permit Miss Tattersall to see my eagerness when we

were alone on the terrace together. If she was capable of chicane, so was

I; and I knew that if she had anything to tell me, she would not be able

to keep it to herself for long. If, on the other hand, I began to ask

questions, she would certainly take a pleasure in tantalising me.

"What's this about going to church?" was my opening.

"Didn't you know?" she replied. "We all go in solemn procession. We

walk--for piety's sake--it's over a mile across the fields--and we are

rounded up in lots of time, because it's a dreadful thing to get there

after the bell has stopped."

"Interrupting the service," I put in with the usual inanity that is

essential to the maintenance of this kind of conversation.

"It's worse than that," Miss Tattersall explained gaily; "because Mr.

Sturton waits for the Jervaises, to begin. When we're late we hold up the

devotions of the whole parish."

"Good Lord!" I commented; sincerely, this time; and with a thought of my

socialist friend Banks. I could still sympathise with him on that score,

even though I was now strongly inclined to side with the Jervaises in the

Brenda affair.

"Yes, isn't it?" Miss Tattersall agreed. "Of course, they _are_ the only

important people in the place," she added thoughtfully.

"So important that it's slightly presumptuous to worship God without the

sanction of their presence in church," I remarked. And then, feeling that

this comment was a trifle too strong for my company, I tried to cover it

by changing the subject.

"I say, do you think we _ought_ to stay on here over the week-end?" I

asked. "Wouldn't it be more tactful of us to invent excuses and leave them

to themselves?"

"Certainly it would. Have you only just thought of it?" Miss Tattersall

said pertly. "Nora and I agreed about that before we came down to prayers.

But there's a difficulty that seems, for the moment, insuperable."

"Which is?" I prompted her.

"No conveyance," she explained. "There aren't any Sunday trains on the

loop line, Hurley Junction is fifteen miles away, and the Jervaises' car

is Heaven knows where and the only other that is borrowable, Mr.

Turnbull's, is derelict just outside the Park gates."

I thought she was rather inclined to make a song of it all, genuinely

thankful to have so sound an excuse for staying to witness the dramatic

developments that might possibly be in store for us. I do not deny that I

appreciated her feeling in that matter.

"And the horses?" I suggested.

"Too far for them, in the omnibus," she said. "And nothing else would be

big enough for four people and their luggage. But, as a matter of fact,

Nora and I talked it all over with Mrs. Jervaise before prayers, and she

said we weren't to think of going--especially as it was all right, now,

about Brenda."

"I'm glad it is all right, if only for old Jervaise's sake," I said,

craftily.

She looked up at me, trying to guess how far I was honest in that remark.

"But you don't really believe..." she said.

"I don't see why not," I returned.

"That Brenda _has_ come back?"

"Mrs. Jervaise said..."

"Had to, of course," Miss Tattersall replied curtly.

I pursed my mouth and shook my head. "It would be too risky to deceive us

as crudely as that," I said. "Make it so much more significant if we

discovered that they had been lying about her."

Miss Tattersall looked obstinate, putting on that wooden enduring

expression peculiar to fair people with pale eyes.

"I don't believe she has come back," she said.

I continued to argue. I guessed that she had some piece of evidence in

reserve; also, that for some reason she was afraid to produce it. And at

last, as I had hoped, my foolish, specious arguments and apparent

credulity irritated her to a pitch of exasperation.

"Oh! you can talk till all's blue," she broke in with a flash of temper,

"but she hasn't come back."

"But..." I began.

"I know she hasn't," Miss Tattersall said, and the pink of her cheeks

spread to her forehead and neck like an overflowing stain.

"Of course if you know..." I conceded.

"I do," she affirmed, still blushing.

I realised that the moment had come for conciliation. "This is

tremendously interesting," I said.

She looked up at me with a question in her face, but I did not understand

until she spoke, that what had been keeping back her confession was not

doubt of my trustworthiness but her fear of losing my good opinion.

"I expect you'll think it was horrid of me," she said.