Chapter 14

"What did you say, Nancy?" he asked with a puzzled air. He was still standing at the head of the table and staring with obvious embarrassment at his wife.

She waved her hands at him. "Sit down, Alfred," she commanded him, and in her pronunciation of his name I noticed for the first time the ripple of a French "r." Possibly her manner of speaking his name was a form of endearment. "All in good time, you shall hear about it directly. Now, we are all very hungry and waiting for you." And without the least hint of a pause she turned to me and glided over an apology for the nature of the meal. "We call it supper," she said, "and it is just a farm-house supper, but better in its way, don't you think, than a formal dinner?" She took me utterly into her confidence with her smile as she added, "Up at the Hall they make so much ceremony, all about nothing. I am not surprised that you ran away. But it was very original, all the same." She introduced me to the first course without taking breath, "Eggs and bacon. So English. Isn't there a story of a man who starved to death on a walking-tour because he could no longer endure to eat eggs and bacon? And when you have eaten something you must tell us what you have all four been doing while my husband and I were away. So far as I can understand you have turned the universe completely inside out. We came back believing that we return to the Farm, but I think it has become a Fortress...."

I ventured a glance at her husband. These flickering allusions of hers to the tragedy that was threatening him, seemed to me indiscreet and rather too frivolous. But when I saw his look of puzzled wonder and admiration, I began to appreciate the subtlety and wisdom of her method. Using me as a convenient intermediary, she was breaking the news by what were, to him, almost inappreciable degrees. He took in her hints so slowly. He was not sure from moment to moment whether or not she was in earnest. Nevertheless, I recognised, I thought, at least one cause for perturbation. He had been perceptibly ruffled and uneasy at the reference to an understanding between his son and Brenda. Probably the fear of that complication had been in his mind for some time past.

Mrs. Banks had slid away to the subject of local scenery.

"It is beautiful in its own way," she was saying, "but I feel with Arthur that it has an air of being so--preserved. It is so proper, well-adjusted, I forget the English word ..."

I suggested "trim" as a near translation of "propre" and "bien-ajusté."

"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.

XIV

MRS. BANKS

The insulting attack upon the front door was made again with even greater violence while we still waited, united, as I believe, in one sympathetic resolve to shield the head of the house from any unnecessary distress. He alone was called upon to make sacrifice; it was our single duty and privilege to encircle and protect him. And if my own feelings were representative, we fairly bristled with resentment when this vulgar demand for admittance was repeated. These domineering, comfortable, respectability-loving Jervaises were the offenders; the sole cause of our present anxiety. We had a bitter grievance against them and they came swaggering and bullying, as if the threat to their silly prestige were the important thing.

"You'd better go, dear," Mrs. Banks said with a nod to Anne. The little woman's eyes were bright with the eagerness for battle, but she continued to talk automatically on absurdly immaterial subjects to relieve the strain of even those few seconds of waiting.

"Our maid is out, you see, Mr. Melhuish," she explained quickly, and turning to Brenda, continued without a pause, "So Anne has even had to lend you a dress. You're about of a height, but you're so much slighter. Still, with very little alteration, her things would fit you very well. If we should be obliged ..." She broke off abruptly as Anne returned, followed by Mr. Jervaise and the glowering, vindictive figure of his son.

Anne's manner of entrance alone would have been sufficient to demonstrate her attitude to the intruders, but she elected to make it still more unmistakable by her announcement of them.

"The Jervaises, mother," she said, with a supercilious lift of her head. She might have been saying that the men had called for the rent.

Little Mrs. Banks looked every inch an aristocrat as she received them. The gesture of her plump little white hands as she indicated chairs was almost regal in its authority.

Old Jervaise, obviously nervous, accepted the invitation, but Frank, after closing the door, stood leaning with his back against it. The position gave him command of the whole room, and at the same time conveyed a general effect of threat. His attitude said, "Now we've got you, and none of you shall leave the room until you've paid in full for your impertinence." I had guessed from his knock that he had finally put his weakness for Anne away from him. He was clever enough to realise just how and why she had fooled him. His single object, now, was revenge.

Banks brooded, rather neglected and overlooked in a corner by the window. He appeared to have accepted his doom as assured, and being plunged into the final gulf of despair, he had, now, no heart even to be apologetic. The solid earth of his native country was slipping away from him; nothing else mattered.

There was one brief, tense interval of silence before old Jervaise began to speak. We all waited for him to state the case; Frank because he meant to reserve himself for the dramatic moment; we others because we preferred to throw the onus of statement upon him. (I do believe that throughout that interview it is fair to speak of "we others," of the whole six of us, almost as of a single mind with a single intention. We played our individual parts in our own manners, but we were subject to a single will which was, I firmly believe, the will of Mrs. Banks. Even her husband followed her lead, if he did it with reluctance, while the rest of us obeyed her with delight.)

Old Jervaise fumbled his opening. He looked pale and tired, as if he would be glad to be out of it.

"We have called," he began, striving for an effect of magisterial gravity; "we have come here, Mrs. Banks, to fetch my daughter. I understand that you've been away from home--you and your husband--and you're probably not aware of what has taken--has been going on in your absence."

"Oh! yes, we know," Mrs. Banks put in disconcertingly. She was sitting erect and contemptuous in her chair at the foot of the table. For one moment something in her pose reminded me of Queen Victoria.

"Indeed? You have heard; since your return?" faltered old Jervaise. "But I cannot suppose for one moment that either you or your husband approve of--of your son's gross misbehaviour." He got out the accusation with an effort; he had to justify himself before his son. But the slight stoop of his shoulders, and his hesitating glances at Mrs. Banks were propitiatory, almost apologetic. It seemed to me that he pleaded with her to realise that he could say and do no less than what he was saying and doing; to understand and to spare him.

"But that is new to me," Mrs. Banks replied. "I have heard nothing of any gross misbehaviour."

She was so clearly mistress of the situation that I might have been sorry for old Jervaise, if it had not been for the presence of that scowling fool by the door.

"I--I'm afraid I can describe your son's conduct as--as nothing less than gross misbehaviour," the old man stammered, "having consideration to his employment. But, perhaps, you have not been properly informed of the--of the offence."

"Is it an offence to love unwisely, Mr. Jervaise?" Mrs. Banks shot at him with a sudden ferocity.

He blustered feebly. "You _must_ see how impossible it is for your son to dream of marrying my daughter," he said. The blood had mounted to his face; and he looked as if he longed to get up and walk out. I wondered vaguely whether Frank had had that eventuality in mind when he blockaded the door with his own gloomy person.

"Tchah!" ejaculated Mrs. Banks with supreme contempt. "Do not talk that nonsense to me, but listen, now, to what I have to say. I will make everything quite plain to you. We have decided that Arthur and Brenda shall be married; but we condescend to that amiable weakness of yours which always demands that there shall be no scandal. It must surely be your motto at the Hall to avoid scandal--at any cost. So we are agreed to make a concession. The marriage we insist upon; but we are willing, all of us, to emigrate. We will take ourselves away, so that no one can point to the calamity of a marriage between a Banks and a Jervaise. It will, I think, break my husband's heart, but we see that there is nothing else to be done."

Old Jervaise's expression was certainly one of relief. He would, I am sure, have agreed to that compromise if he had been alone; he might even have agreed, as it was, if he had been given the chance. But Frank realised his father's weakness not less surely than we did, and although this was probably not the precise moment he would have chosen, he instantly took the case into his own hands.

"Oh! no, Mrs. Banks, certainly not," he said. "In the first place we did not come here to bargain with you, and in the second it must be perfectly plain to you that the scandal remains none the less because you have all gone away. We have come to fetch my sister home, that's the only thing that concerns you."

"And if she will not go with you?" asked Mrs. Banks.

"She must," Frank returned.

"And still, if she will not go?"

"Then we shall bring an action against you for abducting her."

Mrs. Banks smiled gently and pursed her mouth "To avoid a scandal?" she asked.

"If you persist in your absurd demands, there will be a scandal in any case," Frank replied curtly.

"I suppose my wishes don't count at all?" Brenda put in.

"Obviously they don't," Frank said.