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.

“But, look here, father,” Brenda continued, turning to old Jervaise; “why do you want me to come back? We’ve never got on, I and the rest of you. Why can’t you let me go and be done with it?”

Jervaise fidgeted uneasily and looked up with a touch of appeal at his son. He had begun to mumble some opening when Frank interposed.

“Because we won’t,” he said, “and that’s the end of it. There’s nothing more to be said. I’ve told you precisely how the case stands. Either you come back with us without a fuss, or we shall begin an action at once.”

I know now that Frank Jervaise was merely bluffing, and that they could have had no case, since Brenda was over eighteen, and was not being detained against her will. But none of us, probably not even old Jervaise himself, knew enough of the law to question the validity of the threat.

Little Mrs. Banks, however, was not depending on her legal knowledge to defeat her enemies. What woman would? She had been exchanging glances with her husband during the brief interval in which she had entrusted a minor plea to her junior, and I suppose she, now, considered herself free to produce her trump card. Banks had turned his back on the room—perhaps the first time he had ever so slighted his landlord and owner—and was leaning his forehead against the glass of the window. His attitude was that of a man who had no further interest in such trivialities as this bickering and scheming. Perhaps he was dimly struggling to visualise what life in Canada might mean for him?

His wife’s eyes were still shining with the zest of her present encounter. She was too engrossed by that to consider just then the far heavier task she would presently have to undertake. She shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture with her hands that implied the throwing of all further responsibility upon her antagonists. “If you will have it,” she seemed to say, “you must take the consequences.” And old Jervaise, at all events, foresaw what was coming, and at that eleventh hour made one last effort to avert it.

“You know, Frank…” he began, but Mrs. Banks interrupted him.

“It is useless, Mr. Jervaise,” she said. “Mr. Frank has been making love to my daughter and she has shown him plainly how she despises him. After that he will not listen to you. He seeks his revenge. It is the manner of your family to make love in that way.”

“Impertinence will not make things any easier for you, Mrs. Banks,” Frank interpolated.

“Impertinence? From me to you?” the little woman replied magnificently. “Be quiet, boy, you do not know what you are saying. My husband and I have saved your poor little family from disgrace for twenty years, and I would say nothing now, if it were not that you have compelled me.”

She threw one glance of contempt at old Jervaise, who was leaning forward with his hand over his mouth, as if he were in pain, and then continued,—

“But it is as well that you should know the truth, and after all, the secret remains in good keeping. And you understand that it is apropos to that case you are threatening. It might be as well for you to know before you bring that case against us.”

“Well,” urged Frank sardonically. He was, I think, the one person in the room who was not tense with expectation. Nothing but physical fear could penetrate that hide of his.

“Well, Mr. Frank,” she did not deign to imitate him, but she took up his word as if it were a challenge. “Well, it is as well for you to know that Brenda is not your mother’s daughter.” She turned as she spoke to Brenda herself, with a protective gesture of her little hand. “I know it will not grieve you, dear, to hear that,” she continued. “It is not as if you were so attached to them all at the Hall…”

“But who, then…?” Brenda began, evidently too startled by this astonishing news to realise its true significance.

“She was my step-sister, Claire Sévérac, dear,” Mrs. Banks explained. “She was Olive’s governess. Oh! poor Claire, how she suffered! It was, perhaps, a good thing after all that she died so soon after you were born. Her heart was broken. She was so innocent; she could not realise that she was no more than a casual mistress for your father. And then Mrs. Jervaise, whom you have believed to be your mother, was very unkind to my poor Claire. Yet it seemed best just then, in her trouble, that she should go away to Italy, and that it should be pretended that you were Mrs. Jervaise’s true daughter. I arranged that. I have blamed myself since, but I did not understand at the time that Mrs. Jervaise consented solely that she might keep you in sight of your father as a reminder of his sin. She was spiteful, and at that time she had the influence. She threatened a separation if she was not allowed to have her own way. So! the secret was kept and there were so few who remember my poor Claire that it is only Alfred and I who know how like her you are, my dear. She had not, it is true, your beautiful fair hair that is so striking with your dark eyes. But your temperament, yes. She, too, was full of spirit, vivacious, gay—until afterwards.”

She paused with a deep sigh, and I think we all sighed with her in concert. She had held us with her narrative. She had, as a matter of fact, told us little enough and that rather allusively, but I felt that I knew the whole history of the unhappy Claire Sévérac. Anne had not overrated her mother’s powers in this direction. And my sigh had in it an element of relief. Some strain had been mercifully relaxed.

The sound of Frank’s harsh voice came as a gross intrusion on our silence.

“What evidence have you got of all this?” he asked, but the ring of certainty had gone from his tone.

Mrs. Banks pointed with a superb gesture at his father.

The old man was leaning forward in his chair with his face in his hands. There was no spirit in him. Probably he was thinking less of the present company than of Claire Sévérac.

Frank Jervaise showed his true quality on that occasion. He looked down at his father with scowling contempt, stared for a moment as if he would finally wring the old man’s soul with some expression of filial scorn, and then flung himself out of the room, banging the door behind him as a proclamation that he finally washed his hands of the whole affair.

Old Jervaise looked up when the door banged and rose rather feebly to his feet. For a moment he looked at Arthur, as though he were prepared, now, to meet even that more recent impeachment of his virtue which he had feared earlier in the day. But Arthur’s face gave no sign of any vindictive intention, and the old man silently followed his son, creeping out with the air of a man who submissively shoulders the burden of his disgrace.

I had been sorry for him that morning, but I was still sorrier for him then. Banks was suffering righteously and might find relief in that knowledge, but this man was reaping the just penalties of his own acts.

XV
Remembrance

I do not believe that any of them saw me leave the room.

As soon as old Jervaise had gone, all of them had turned with an instinct of protection towards the head of the family. He, alone, had been sacrificed. Within an hour his whole life had been changed, and I began to doubt, as Anne had doubted, whether so old a tree would bear transplanting. Whatever tenderness and care could do, would be done for him, but the threat of uprooting had come so suddenly. In any case, I could not help those gentle foresters whose work it would be to conduct the critical operation; and I walked out of the room without offering any perfunctory excuse for leaving them.

I made my way into the garden by the side door through which I had first entered the Home Farm; and after one indeterminate moment, came to a halt at the gate on the slope of the hill. I did not want to go too far from the house. For the time being I was no more to the Banks than an inconvenient visitor, but I hoped that presently some of them—I put it that way to myself—would miss me, and that Arthur or Anne would come and tell me what had been arranged in my absence. I should have been glad to talk over the affair with Arthur, but I hoped that it would not be Arthur who would come to find me.

For a time my thoughts flickered capriciously over the astonishing events of my adventurous week-end. I was pleasantly replete with experience. In all my life I had never before entered thus completely into any of the great movements of life. I recalled my first thrills of anticipation amidst the glowing, excited youth of the resting dancers at the Hall. We had been impatient for further expression. The dragging departure of the Sturtons had been an unbearable check upon the exuberance of our desires. In my thought of the scene I could see the unspent spirit of our vitality streaming up in a fierce fount of energy.

And with me, at least, that fount, unexpectedly penned by the first hints of disaster, had still played furiously in my mind as I had walked with Frank Jervaise through the wood. My intoxicated imagination had created its own setting. I had gone, exalted, to meet my wonderful fate. Through some strange scene of my own making I had strayed to the very feet of enduring romance.

But after that exciting prelude, when the moon had set and slow dawn, like a lifting curtain, had been drawn to reveal the landscape of a world outside the little chamber of my own being, I had been cast from my heights of exaltation into a gloomy pit of disgrace. Fate, with a fastidious particularity, had hauled me back to the things of everyday. I was not to be allowed to dream too long. I was wanted to play my part in this sudden tragedy of experience.

My thought went off at a tangent when I reached that point of my reflection. I had found myself involved in the Banks’s drama, but what hope had I of ever seeing them again after the next day? What, moreover, was the great thing I was called upon to do? I had decided only an hour or two before that my old way of life had become impossible for me, but equally impossible was any way of life that did not include the presence of Anne.

I looked at my watch, and found that it was after ten o’clock, but how long I had been standing at the gate, I had no idea; whether an hour or ten minutes. I had been dreaming again, lost in imaginative delights; until the reminder of this new urgency had brought me back to a reality that demanded from me an energy of participation and of initiative.

I wished that Anne would come—and by way of helping her should she, indeed, have come out to look for me, I strolled back to the Farm, and then round to the front of the house.

The windows of the sitting-room had been closed but the blinds were not drawn. The lamp had been lit and splayed weak fans of yellow light on to the gravel, and the flower-beds of the grass plot. The path of each beam was picked out from the diffused radiance of the moonlight, by the dancing figures of the moths that gathered and fluttered across the prisms of these enchanted rays. But I did not approach the windows. In the stillness of the night I could hear Anne’s clear musical voice. She was still there in the sitting-room, still soothing and persuading her father. Her actual words were indistinguishable, but the modulations of her tone seemed to convey the sense of her speech, as a melody may convey the ideas of form and colour.

I returned to my vigil at the gate and to thoughts of Anne—to romantic thoughts of worship and service; of becoming worthy of her regard; of immense faithfulness to her image when confronted with the most provocative temptations; to thoughts of self-sacrifice and bravado, of humility and boasting; of some transcending glorification of myself that should make me worthy of her love.

I was arrested in the midst of my ecstatic sentimentalism by the sight of the Hall, the lights of which were distantly visible through the trees. The path by the wood was not the direct line from the Hall to the Farm; the sanctities of the Park were not violated by any public right of way. The sight of the place pulled me up, because I was suddenly pierced by the reflection that perhaps old Jervaise had thus postured to win the esteem of his daughter’s governess. He, it is true, had had dignity and prestige on his side, but surely he must have condescended to win her. Had he, too, dreamed dreams of sacrifice at the height of his passion? Had he alternately grovelled and strutted to attract the admiration of his lady? I found the reflection markedly distasteful. I was sorry again, now, for the old man. He had suffered heavy penalties for his lapse. I remembered Mrs. Banks’s hint that his wife had adopted Brenda in the first place in order that he might have before him a constant reminder of his disgrace. I could believe that. It was just such a piece of chicane as I should expect from that timid hawk, Mrs. Jervaise. But while I pitied the man, I could not look upon his furtive gratifications of passion with anything but distaste.

No; if my love for Anne was to be worthy of so wonderful an object, I must not stupefy myself with these vapours of romance. The ideal held something finer than this, something that I could not define, but that conveyed the notion, however indeterminately, of equality. I thought of my fancy that we had “recognised” each other the night before. Surely that fancy contained the germ of the true understanding, of the conceptions of affinity and remembrance.

No tie of our present earth life could be weighed against that idea of a spirit love, enduring through the ages; a love transcending and immortal, repeating itself in ever ascending stages of rapture. The flesh was but a passing instrument of temporal expression, a gross medium through which the spirit could speak only in poor, inarticulate phrases of its magnificent recognition of an eternal bond. … Oh! I was soon high in the air again, riding my new Pegasus through the loftiest altitudes of lonely exaltation. I was a conqueror while I had the world to myself. But when at last I heard the rustle of a woman’s dress on the path behind me, I was nothing more than a shy, self-conscious product of the twentieth century, all too painfully aware of his physical shortcomings.

She came and stood beside me at the gate, without speaking; and my mind was so full of her, so intoxicated with the splendour of my imaginings, that I thought she must surely share my newfound certainty that we had met once more after an age of separation. I waited, trembling, for her to begin. I knew that any word of mine would inevitably precipitate the bathos of a civilised conversation. I was incapable of expressing my own thought, but I hoped that she, with her magic voice, might accomplish a miracle that was beyond my feeble powers. Indeed, I could imaginatively frame for her, speech that I could not, myself, deliver. I knew what I wanted her to say—or to imply. For it was hardly necessary for her to say anything. I was ready, wholly sympathetic and receptive. If she would but give me the least sign that she understood, I could respond, though I was so unable to give any sign myself.

I came down from my clouds with a feeling of bitter disappointment, a sense of waking from perfect dreams to the realisation of a hard, inimical world, when she said in a formal voice.

“It’s after eleven. My mother and father have gone to bed.”

“Is he—is he in any way reconciled?” I asked, and I think I tried to convey something of resentment by my tone. I still believed that she must guess.

“In a way,” she said, and sighed rather wearily.

“It must have been very hard for him to make up his mind so quickly—to such a change,” I agreed politely.

“It was easier than I expected,” she said. “He was so practical. Just at first, of course, while Mr. Jervaise was there, he seemed broken. I didn’t know what we should do. I was almost afraid that he would refuse to come. But afterwards he—well, he squared his shoulders. He is magnificent. He’s as solid as a rock. He didn’t once reproach us. He seemed to have made up his mind; only one thing frightened him…”

“What was that?” I asked, as she paused.

“That we haven’t any capital to speak of,” she said. “Even after we have sold the furniture here, we shan’t have more than five or six hundred pounds so far as we can make out. And he says it isn’t enough. He says that he and mother are too old to start again from small beginnings. And—oh! a heap of practical things. He is so slow in some ways that it startled us all to find out how shrewd he was about this. It was his own subject, you see.”

“There needn’t be any difficulty about capital,” I said eagerly. I had hardly had patience for her to finish her speech. From her first mention of that word “capital” I had seen my chance to claim a right in the Banks’s fortunes.

“I don’t see…” she began, and then checked herself and continued stiffly, “My father would never accept help of any kind.”

“Arthur might—from a friend,” I said.

“He thinks we’ve got enough—to begin with,” she replied. “They’ve been arguing about it. Arthur’s young and certain. Father isn’t either, and he’s afraid of going to a strange country—and failing.”

“But in that case Arthur must give way,” I said.

Anne was silent for a moment and then said in a horribly formal voice. “Am I to understand, Mr. Melhuish, that you are proposing to lend Arthur this money?”

“On any terms he likes,” I agreed warmly.

“Why?”

I could not mistake her intention. I knew that she expected me to say that it was for her sake. I was no less certain that if I did say that she would snub me. Her whole tone and manner since she had come out to the gate had challenged me.

“Here we are alone in the moonlight,” her attitude had said. “You’ve been trying to hint some kind of admiration for me ever since we met. Now, let us get that over and finished with, so that we can discuss this business of my father’s.”

“Because I like him,” I said. “I haven’t known him long, of course; only a few hours altogether; but…” I stopped because I was afraid she would think that the continuation of the argument might be meant to apply to her rather than to Arthur; and I had no intention of pleading by innuendo. When I did speak, I meant to speak directly, and there was but one thing I had to say. If that failed, I was ready to admit that I had been suffering under a delusion.

“Well?” she prompted me.

“That’s all,” I said.

“Weren’t you going to say that it wasn’t how long you’d known a person that mattered?”

“It certainly didn’t matter in Arthur’s case,” I said. “I liked him from the first moment I saw him. It’s true that we had been talking for some time before there was light enough for me to see him.”

“You like him so much that you’d be willing to lend him all the money he wanted, without security?” she asked.

“Yes, all the money I have,” I said.

“Without any—any sort of condition?”

“I should make one condition,” I replied.

“Which is?”

“That he’d let me come and stay with him, and Brenda, and all of you—on the farm.”

“And, of course, we should all have to be very nice to you, and treat you as our benefactor—our proprietor, almost,” she suggested cruelly.

I was hurt, and for a moment I was inclined to behave much as young Turnbull had behaved that afternoon, to turn away and sulk, and show that I had been grievously misunderstood. I overcame that impulse, however. “I shouldn’t expect you to curtsey!” I said.

She turned to me with one of her instant changes of mood.

“Why don’t you tell me the truth?” she asked passionately.

“The truth you mean hasn’t anything whatever to do with what we’re talking about now,” I said.

“Oh! but it has. It must have,” she protested. “Aren’t you trying to buy my good-will all the time? All this is so heroic and theatrical. Aren’t you being the splendid benefactor of one of your own plays—being frightfully tactful and oh! gentlemanly? It wouldn’t be the right thing, of course, to—to put any sort of pressure on me; but you could put us all under every sort of obligation to you, and afterwards—when you came to stay with us—you’d be very forbearing and sad, no doubt, and be very sweet to my mother—she likes you already—but every one would know just why; and you’d all expect me—to—to do the right thing, too.”

If I had not been truly in love with her I should have been permanently offended by that speech. It stung me. What she implied was woundingly true of that old self of mine which had so recently come under my observation and censure. I could see that; and yet if any one but Anne had accused me I should have gone off in high dudgeon. The hint of red in my hair would not permit me to accept insult with meekness. And while I was still seeking some way to avoid giving expression to my old self whose influence was painfully strong just then, she spoke again.

“Now you’re offended,” she said.

I avoided a direct answer by saying, “What you accused me of thinking and planning might have been true of me yesterday; it isn’t true, now.”

“Have you changed so much since yesterday?” she asked, as if she expected me to confess, now, quite in the familiar manner. She had given me an opportunity for the proper continuation. I refused it.

“I have only one claim on you,” I said boldly.

“Well?” she replied impatiently.

“You recognised me last night.”

It was very like her not to fence over that. She had a dozen possible equivocations, but she suddenly met me with no attempt at disguise.

“I thought I did,” she said. “Just for a minute.”

“And now? You know…?”

She leaned her elbows on the gate and stared out over the moonlit mysteries of the Park.

“You’re not a bit what I expected,” she said.

I misunderstood her. “But you can’t…” I began.

“To look at,” she interrupted me.

I felt a thrill of hope. “But neither are you,” I said.

“Oh!” she commented softly.

“I’ve had romantic visions, too,” I went on; “of what she would look like when I did meet her. But when I saw you, I remembered, and all the visions—oh! scattered; vanished into thin air.”

“If you hadn’t been so successful…” she murmured.

“I’m sorry for that,” I agreed. “But I’m going to make amends. I realised it all this afternoon in the wood when I went to meet Arthur. I’m going to begin all over again, now. I’m coming to Canada—to work.” The whole solution of my problem was suddenly clear, although I had not guessed it until that moment. “I’m going to buy a farm for all of us,” I went on quickly, “and all the money that’s over, I shall give away. The hospitals are always willing to accept money without asking why you give it. They’re not suspicious, they don’t consider themselves under any obligation.”

“How much should you have to give away?” she asked.