"Trim, yes," she agreed enthusiastically. "My daughter tells me you are an
author. There are three lime trees in the pasture and the cattle have
eaten the branches as high as they can reach, so that now the trees have
the precise shape of a bell. Even the trees in the Park, you see, are
trim--not, it is true, like Versailles, where the poor things are made to
grow according to plan--but all the county is one great landscape garden;
all of England, nearly. Don't you agree with me? One feels that there must
always be a game-keeper or a policeman just round the corner."
She waited for my answer this time, and something in the eagerness of her
expression begged me to play up to her lead.
"I know exactly what you mean," I said, intensely aware of Anne's
proximity. "I was thinking something of the same kind, only this evening,
when I went to meet Arthur in the wood. He and I were discussing it, too,
as we came back. That sense of everything belonging to some one else, of
having no right, hardly the right to breathe without the Jervaises'
permission."
Her gesture finally confirmed the fact that perfect confidence was
established between us. I felt as if she had patted my shoulder. But she
may have been afraid that I might blunder into too obvious a statement, if
I were permitted to continue, for she abruptly changed her tactics by
saying to Brenda,--
"So you ran away in the middle of the dance?"
"Well, we'd finished dancing, as a matter of fact," Brenda explained.
Mr. Banks shifted uneasily in his chair. "Ran away, Miss Brenda?" he
asked. "Did you say you'd run away?"
She flattered him with a look that besought his approval. "I simply
couldn't stand it any longer," she said.
"But you'll be going back?" he returned, after a moment's pause.
She shook her head, still regarding him attentively with an air of appeal
that implied submission to his judgment.
He had stopped eating, and now pushed his chair back a little from the
table as though he needed more space to deal with this tremendous problem.
"You'll be getting us into trouble, Miss Brenda," he warned her gravely.
"It wouldn't do for us to keep you here, if they're wanting you to go back
home."
"Well, Alfred, we've as much right to her as they have," Mrs. Banks put
in.
The effect upon him of that simple speech was quite remarkable. He opened
his fine blue eyes and stared at his wife with a blank astonishment that
somehow conveyed an impression of fear.
"Nancy! Nancy!" he expostulated in a tone that besought her to say no
more.
She laughingly waved her hands at him, using the same gesture with which
she had commanded him to sit down. "Oh! we've got to face it, Alfred," she
said. "Arthur and Brenda believe they're in love with one another, and
that's all about it."
Banks shook his head solemnly, but it seemed to me that his manner
expressed relief rather than the added perturbation I had expected. "No,
no, it won't do. That'd never do," he murmured. "I've been afraid of this,
Miss Brenda," he continued; "but you must see for yourself that it'd never
do--our position being what it is. Your father'd never hear of such a
thing; and you'd get us all into trouble with him if he thought we'd been
encouraging you."
He drew in his chair and returned to his supper as if he regarded the
matter as being now definitely settled. "I don't know what Mr. Melhuish
will be thinking of us," he added as an afterthought.
"Oh! Mr. Melhuish is on our side," Mrs. Banks returned gaily.
"Nancy! Nancy!" he reproved her. "This is too serious a matter to make a
joke about."
I was watching Mrs. Banks, and saw the almost invisible lift of the
eyebrows with which she passed on the conduct of the case to Anne.
"Mother isn't joking, dear," Anne said, accepting the signal without an
instant's hesitation. "Really serious things have been happening while you
were away."
Her father frowned and shook his head. "This isn't the place to discuss
them," he replied.
"Well, father, I'm afraid we must discuss them very soon," Anne returned;
"because Mr. Jervaise might be coming up after supper."
"Mr. Jervaise? Coming here?" Banks's tone of dismay showed that he was
beginning, however slowly, to appreciate the true significance of the
situation.
"Well, we don't know that he is," Arthur put in. "I just thought it was
possible he and Mr. Frank might come up this evening."
"They will certainly come. Have no doubt of that," Mrs. Banks remarked.
The old man turned to his son as if seeking a refuge from the intrigues of
his adored but incomprehensible womenfolk.
"What for?" he asked brusquely.
"To take her back to the Hall," Arthur said with the least possible
inclination of his head towards Brenda.
Banks required a few seconds to ponder that, and his wife and daughter
waited in silence for his reply. I had a sense of them as watching over,
and at once sheltering and directing him. Nevertheless, though I admired
their gentle deftness, I think that at that point of the discussion some
forcible male element in me sided very strongly with old Banks. I was
aware of the pressure that was so insensibly surrounding him as of a
subtly entangling web that seemed to offer no resistance, and yet was
slowly smothering him in a million intricate intangible folds. And, after
all, why should he be torn away from his root-holds, exiled to some
forlorn unknown country where his very methods of farming would be
inapplicable? Brenda and Arthur were young and capable. Let them wait, at
least until she came of age. Let her be tried by an ordeal of patient
resistance. If she were worthy she could fight her family for those
thirteen months and win her own triumph without injuring poor Banks.
And whether because I had communicated my thought to her by some change of
attitude or because she intuitively shared my sympathy for her father,
Anne turned to me just before she spoke, with a quick little, impatient
gesture as if beseeching me not to interfere. I submitted myself to her
wish with a distinct feeling of pleasure, but made no application of my
own joy in serving her to the case of her father.
He was speaking again, now, with a solemn perplexity, as if he were
confusedly challenging the soft opposition of his women's influence.
"But, of course, she must go back to the Hall," he said. "You wouldn't
like to get us into trouble, would you, Miss Brenda? You see," he pushed
his chair back once more, in the throes of his effort to explain himself,
"your father would turn me out, if there was any fuss."
He was going on, but his wife, with a sudden magnificent violence,
scattered the web she and her daughter had been weaving.
"And that might be the best thing that could happen to us, Alfred," she
said. "Oh! I'm so sick and tired of these foolish Jervaises. They are like
the green fly on the rose trees. They stick there and do nothing but suck
the life out of us. You are a free man. You owe them nothing. Let us break
with them and go out, all of us, to Canada with Arthur and Brenda. As for
me, I would rejoice to go."
"Nancy! Nancy!" he reproached her for the third time, with a humouring
shake of his head. They were past the celebration of their silver wedding,
but it was evident that he still saw in her the adorable foolishness of
one who would never be able to appreciate the final infallibility of
English standards. He loved her, he would make immense personal sacrifices
for her, but in these matters she was still a child, a foreigner. Just so
might he have reproached Anne at three years old for some infantile
naughtiness.
"It may come to that," Arthur interjected, gloomily.
"You're talking like a fool, Arthur," his father said. "What'd I do at my
age--I'll be sixty-one next month--trapesing off to Canada?" He felt on
safer ground, more sure of his authority in addressing his son. He was
English. He might be rebellious and need chastisement, but he would not be
swayed by these whimsical notions that sometimes bewitched his mother and
sister.
"But, father, we may _have_ to go," Anne softly reminded him.
"Have to? Have to?" he repeated, with a new note of irritability sounding
in his voice. "He hasn't been doing anything foolish, has he? Nothing as
can't be got over?"
It was his wife who replied to that. "We've had our time, Alfred," she
said. "We have to think of them now. We must not be selfish. They are
young and deeply in love, as you and I were once. We cannot separate them
because we are too lazy to move. And sixty? Yes, it is true that you are
sixty, but you are strong and your heart is still young. It is not as if
you were an old man."
Arthur and Brenda looked acutely self-conscious. Brenda blushed and seemed
inclined to giggle. Arthur's face was set in the stern lines of one who
hears his own banns called in church.
Banks leaned back in his chair and stared apprehensively at his wife.
"D'ye mean it, Nancy...?" he asked, and something in his delivery of the
phrase suggested that he had come down to a familiar test of decision. I
could only infer that whenever she had confessed to "meaning it" in the
past, her request had never so far been denied. I guessed, also, that
until now she had never been outrageous in her demands.
"What else can be done, dear?" she replied gently. "There is no choice
otherwise, except for them to separate."
He looked at the culprits with an expression of bewilderment. Why should
their little love affair be regarded as being of such tragic consequence,
he seemed to ask. What did they mean to him and his wife and daughter? Why
should they be considered worthy of what he could only picture as a
supreme, and almost intolerable sacrifice? These young people were always
having love affairs.
He thrust his inquiry bluntly at Brenda. "Are you in earnest, then, Miss
Brenda?" he asked. "D'you tell me that you want to marry him--that you're
set on it?"
"I mean to marry him whatever happens," Brenda replied in a low voice. She
was still abashed by this public discussion of her secrets. And it was
probably with some idea of diverting him from this intimate probing of her
desires that she continued more boldly. "We would go off together, without
your consent, you know, if we thought it would do any good. But it
wouldn't, would it? They'd probably be more spiteful still, if we did
that. Even if they could keep it dark, they'd never let you stay on here.
But do you really think it would be so awful for us all to go to Canada
together? It's a wrench, of course, but I expect it would be frightfully
jolly when we got there. Arthur says it is."
He turned from her with the least hint of contempt to look at his son.
"You've lost _your_ place a'ready, I suppose?" he said, trying to steady
himself by some familiar contact, an effort that would have been absurd if
it had not been so pathetic.
Arthur nodded, as stolid as an owl.
His father continued to search him with the same half-bewildered stare.
"What are you going to do, then?" he asked.
"She and I are going back, whatever happens." Arthur said.
"And suppose they won't let her go?"
"They'll have to."
"Have to!" Banks recited, raising his voice at the repetition of this
foolish phrase. "And how in the world are you going to make 'em?"
"The Jervaises aren't everybody," Arthur growled.
"You'll find they're a sight too strong for the like of us to go against,"
Banks affirmed threateningly.
Arthur looked stubborn and shook his head. "They aren't what you think
they are, father," he began, and then, seeing the incredulity on the old
man's face, he went on in a slightly raised voice, "Well, I know they
aren't. I've been up there twice to-day. I saw Mr. Jervaise this morning;
went to the front door and asked for him, and when I saw him I put it to
him straight that I meant to--that we were going to get married."
"You did," murmured Banks in an undertone of grieved dismay.
"I did, father," Arthur proceeded; "and if it hadn't been for young Mr.
Frank, we'd have come to some sort of understanding. Mr. Jervaise didn't
actually say 'No,' as it was."
"And you went up again this evening?" Banks prompted him.
"Yes; I only saw Mr. Frank, then," Arthur replied, "and he was in such a
pad, there was no talking to him. Anne can tell you why."
Banks did not speak but he turned his eyes gravely to his daughter.
Anne lifted her head with the movement of one who decides to plunge and be
done with it. "He'd been making love to me in the morning," she said; "and
I--played with him for Arthur's sake. I thought it might help, and
afterwards I showed him that I'd been letting him make a fool of himself
for nothing, that's all."
The old man made no audible comment, but his head drooped a little forward
and his body seemed to shrink a little within the sturdy solidity of his
oak armchair. Anne, also, had betrayed him. Perhaps, he looked forward and
saw the Home Farm without Anne--she could not stay after that--and
realised that the verdict of his destiny was finally pronounced.
I turned my eyes away from him, and I think the others, too, feigned some
preoccupation that left him a little space of solitude. We none of us
spoke, and I knew by the sound of the quick intake of her breath that Mrs.
Banks was on the verge of weeping.
I looked up, almost furtively, when I heard the crash of footsteps on the
gravel outside, and I found that the other three with the same instinctive
movement of suspense were turning towards Mrs. Banks.
She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief and nodded to Anne, a nod
that said plainly enough, "It's them--the Jervaises."
And then we were all startled by the sound of the rude and unnecessary
violence of their knock at the front door. No doubt, Frank was still "in a
pad."
Yet no one moved until the old man at the head of the table looked up with
a deep sigh, and said,--
"They'd better come in and be done with it, Nancy."
His glance was slowly travelling round the room as if he were bidding
those familiar things a reluctant farewell. All his life had been lived in
that house.