"Can you find your way up?" he proceeded.
"Alone?" I asked.
"It's only about half a mile," he explained, "You can't miss it. You see,
I want to get the car back to the house. Don't do it any good standing
about here. Besides, it wouldn't do for them to think as I was holding it
over them."
Even the picture of a herculean Banks holding that car over the Jervaises
failed to divert me, just then. I was too much occupied with my new
friend's simple absence of tact. I would sooner have faced a return to the
Hall than an unsupported appearance at the Farm.
"Oh! I'm not going up there alone," I said.
Banks was honestly surprised. "Why not?" he asked. "You met Anne last
night, didn't you? That'll be all right. You tell her I told you to come
up. _She'll_ understand."
I shook my head. "It won't take you long to run up to the Hall and put the
car in," I said. "I'll cut across the Park and meet you in that wood just
below your house--the way that Jervaise and I went last night."
He looked distressed. He could not understand my unwillingness to go
alone, but his sense of what was due to me would not permit him to let me
wait for him in the wood.
"But, I can't see..." he began, and then apparently realising that he was
failing either in respect or in hospitality, he continued, "Oh! well, I'll
just run up with you at once; it won't take us ten minutes, and half an
hour one way or the other won't make any difference."
I accepted his sacrifice without further protestation; and after he had
carefully replaced the tarpaulin over the tonneau of the car, we set off
briskly towards the Farm. About a third of a mile farther on we left the
highroad for a side road, and another three or four minutes' walk up the
hill brought us to the main entrance to the Farm. I saw, now, that I had
come with Jervaise to a side door last night. This front approach was more
imposing--up a drive through an avenue of limes. The house seen from this
aspect looked very sweet and charming. It was obviously of a date not
later than the sixteenth century, and I guessed that the rough-cast
probably concealed a half-timber work structure. In front of it was a good
strip of carefully kept lawn and flower garden. The whole place had an air
of dignity and beauty that I had not expected, and I think Banks must have
noticed my surprise, for he said,--
"Not bad, is it? Used to be a kind of dower house once upon a time, they
say."
"Absolutely charming," I replied. "Now, this is the sort of house I should
like to live in."
"I dare say it'll be to let before long," Banks said with a touch of grim
humour.
"Not to me, though," I said.
He laughed. "Perhaps not," he agreed.
We had paused at the end of the little avenue for me to take in the effect
of the house, and as we still stood there, the sound of a man's voice came
to us through the open window of one of the rooms on the ground floor.
"Your father's home sooner than you expected," I remarked.
"That's not the old man," Banks said in a tone that instantly diverted my
gaze from the beauties of the Home Farm.
"Who is it, then?" I asked.
"Listen!" he said. He was suddenly keen, alert and suspicious. I saw him
no longer as the gentleman's servant, the product of the Jervaise estate,
but as the man who had knocked about the world, who often preferred to
sleep in the open.
"There are two of them there," he said; "Frank Jervaise and that young
fellow Turnbull, if I'm not mistaken." And even as he spoke he began
hurriedly to cross the little lawn with a look of cold anger and
determination that I was glad was not directed against myself.
As I followed him, it came into my mind to wonder whether Frank Jervaise
had taken me with him as a protection the night before? Had he been afraid
of meeting Banks? I had hitherto failed to find any convincing reason for
Jervaise's queer mark of confidence in me.
X