He was whistling Schubert’s setting of “Who is Sylvia?” and as I climbed slowly and as silently as I could towards him, I fitted the music to the words of the second verse:—

Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness.

Only a man in love, I thought, could be whistling that air with such attention and accuracy. He hit that unusual interval—is it an augmented seventh?—with a delicacy that was quite thrilling.

He had the world to himself, as yet. The birds of the morning had not begun their orisons, while the birds of the night, the owls and the corncrakes had, happily, retired before the promise of that weakening darkness which seemed nevertheless to have reached a moment of suspense—indeed, I fancied that it was darker, now, than when I had come out of the Hall a quarter of an hour before.

The whistler had stopped before I reached the crest of the hill, and after trying vainly to locate his whereabouts in the gloom, I leaned up against one of the outermost trunks of the perky little clump of trees, and facing East awaited developments. A thin, cold wind had sprung up, and was quietly stirring the leaves above me to an uneasy sibilance. I heard, now, too, an occasional sleepy twitter as if a few members of the orchestra had come into their places and were indolently testing the tune of their pipes. It came into my mind that the cold stir of air was the spirit of the dying night, fleeing westward before the sun. Also, I found myself wondering what would be the effect on us all if one morning we waited in vain for the sunrise? I tried to picture my own emotions as the truth was slowly borne in upon me that some unprecedented calamity had silently and without any premonition befallen the whole world of men. Would one crouch in a terror of apprehension? I could not see it that way. I believed that I should be trembling with a furious excitement, stirred to the very depths by so inspiring and adventurous a miracle. I had forsaken my speculation and was indulging in the philosophical reflection that a real and quite unaccountable miracle, the more universal the better, would be the most splendid justification of life I could possibly conceive, when the whistler began again, only a few yards away from me.

I could just see him now, sitting propped against the trunk of another tree, but I waited until he had finished what I chose to believe was the third verse of his lyric before I hailed him. It came to me that I might test his quality by continuing the play in proper form, so when he paused, I went on with the speech of the “host” which immediately follows the song in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

“How now?” I said. “Are you sadder than you were before?”

He did not move, not even to turn his head towards me, and I inferred that he was aware of my presence before I spoke.

“You, one of the search party?” he asked.

I went over and sat down by him. I felt that the situation was sufficiently fantastic to permit of free speech. I did not know who he was and I did not care. I only knew that I wanted to deliver myself of the dreams my lack of sleep had robbed from me.

“The only one,” I said, “unless you also belong to the very small and select party of searchers.”

I fancy that he turned his head a little towards me, but I kept my gaze fixed on the indigo masses of the obscure prospect before us.

“Who are you looking for?” he asked.

“Not so much who as what,” I said. “And even then it isn’t so easy to define. I’ve heard men call it beauty and mystery, and things like that; but just now it seemed to me that what I wanted most was a universal miracle—some really inexplicable happening that would upset every law the physicists have ever stated. I was thinking, for instance, how thrilling it would be if the sun did not rise this morning. One would know, then, that all our scientific guesses at laws were just so many baby speculations founded on nothing more substantial than a few thousand years of experience which had, by some chance given always more or less the same results. Like a long run on the red, you know.”

“I know,” he said. “Well? Go on.”

I was greatly stimulated by his encouragement. Here, at last, was the listener I had been waiting for all through the night.

“One gets so infernally sick of everything happening according to fixed rules,” I continued. “And the more you learn the nearer you are to the deadly ability of being able to foretell the future. If we ever do reach that point in our intellectual evolution, I only hope that I shan’t be there to see it. Imagine the awful ennui of a world where the expected always happened, and next year’s happenings were always expected! And yet we go on seeking after knowledge, when we ought surely to avoid it, as the universal kill joy.”

“Hm!” commented my new friend on what I felt to be a note of doubtful agreement.

“You don’t agree with that?” I asked.

“Well, I see what you’re after, in a way,” he acknowledged; “but it doesn’t seem to me that it amounts to very much—practically.”

I was a trifle disappointed. I had not expected any insistence on the practical from a man who could whistle Schubert and Shakespeare to the dawn.

“Oh, practically! Perhaps not,” I replied with a hint of contempt for anything so common.

He gave a little self-conscious laugh. “You can’t get away from the practical in this life,” he said. “Even in—” He seemed to bite off the beginning of confidence with an effort. “You may dream half the night,” he began again, with a thin assumption of making an impersonal statement, “but before the night’s over you’ll come up against the practical, or the practicable, or the proper right thing, or something, that makes you see what a fool you are. The way this world’s run, you can’t avoid it, anyhow.”

I knew that what he said was true, but I found it damping. It fitted all too well with the coming realism of day. The contours of the landscape were slowly resigning themselves to the formal attitudes imposed upon them by expectation. The blood of colour was beginning to run weakly through the monochrome. The nearer slopes of the hill and the leaves of the trees were already professing a resolute green. Moment by moment the familiar was taking prudent shape, preparing itself for the autocrat whose outriders were multitudinously busy about their warnings of his approach. Presently the scene would take on the natural beauty of our desire, but the actual process of transformation rather depressed me that morning. I had been so deeply in love with the night.

I took up my companion’s last sentence—spoken, I fancied, with a suggestion of brooding antagonism.

“You think the world might be ‘run,’ at least, more interestingly?” I put in.

“More sensibly,” he said in a voice that hinted a reserve of violence. “There’s no sense in it, the way we look at things. Only we don’t look at ’em, most of us, not with any intelligence. We just take everything for granted because we happen to be used to it, that’s all.”

“But would any form of socialism…” I tried tentatively.

“I don’t know that I’m a socialist,” he returned. “I don’t belong to any union, or anything of that kind.” He stopped and looked at me with a defiant stare that was quite visible now. “You know who I am, I suppose?” he challenged me.

“No idea,” I said.

“Banks, the chauffeur,” he said, as if he were giving himself up as a well-known criminal.

I was not entirely unprepared for that reply, but I had no tactful answer to make. I rejected the spontaneous impulse that arose, as I thought quite fantastically, to say “I believe I have met your sister;” and fell back on an orthodox “Well?” I tried to convey the effect that I still waited to be shocked.

“I suppose you’re staying up at the Hall?” he said.

“For the week-end only,” I admitted.

“Been a pretty fuss there, I take it?” he said.

“Some,” I acknowledged.

He set his resolute-looking mouth and submitted me to cross-examination.

“Been looking for me?” he began.

“In a way. Frank Jervaise and I went up to your father’s house.”

“What time?”

“Between two and three.”

“Not since?”

“No; we left about half-past two.”

“Is she back?”

“Who?” I asked. I was thinking of his sister, and could find no application for this question.

“Miss Jervaise.”

“Oh—er—Miss Brenda? No. She hadn’t come in when I left the house.”

“What time was that?”

“About four. I came straight here.”

“Not back, eh?” he commented with a soft, low whistle, that mingled, I thought, something of gladness with its surprise.

“You don’t know where she is, then?” I ventured.

He turned and looked at me suspiciously. “I don’t see why I should help your friends,” he said.

I realised that my position was a difficult one. My sympathies were entirely with Banks. I felt that if there was to be any question of making allowances, I wanted to be on the side of Brenda and the Home Farm. But, at the same time, I could not deny that I owed something—loyalty, was it?—to the Jervaises. I pondered that for a few seconds before I spoke again, and by then I had found what I believed to be a tolerable attitude, though I was to learn later that it compromised me no less than if I had frankly thrown in my lot with the Banks faction.

“You are quite right,” I said. “And I would sooner you gave me no confidences, now I come to think of it. But I should like you to know, all the same, that I’m not taking sides in this affair. I have no intention, for instance, of telling them at the Hall that I’ve seen you.”

The daylight was flooding up from the North-West, now, in a great stream that had flushed the whole landscape with colour; and I could see the full significance of honest inquiry in my companion’s face as he probed me with his stare. But I could meet his gaze without confusion. My purpose was single enough, and if I had had a moment’s doubt of him when he failed to respond to my mood of fantasy; I was now fully prepared to accept him without qualification.

He was not like his sister in appearance. He favoured the paternal stock, I inferred. He was blue-eyed and fairer than Anne, and the tan of his face was red where hers was dusky. Nevertheless, I saw a likeness between them deeper than some family trick of expression which, now and again, made me feel their kinship. For Banks, too, gave me the impression of having a soul that came something nearer the surface of life than is common in average humanity—a look of vitality, zest, ardour—I fumbled for a more significant superlative as I returned his stare. And yet behind that ardour there was, in Arthur Banks, at least, a hint of determination and shrewdness that I felt must be inherited from the sound yeoman stock of his father.

Our pause of mutual investigation ended in a smile. He held out his hand with a pleasant frankness that somehow proclaimed the added colonial quality of him.

“That’s all right,” he said, “but anyway I couldn’t give you any confidences, yet. I don’t know myself, you see.”

“Are you going back to the Hall?” I asked.

“I don’t know that, either,” he said, and added, “I shan’t go back as the chauffeur, anyway.”

And, indeed, there was little of the chauffeur in his appearance, just then. He was wearing a light tweed suit and brown brogues, and his clothes sat upon him with just that touch of familiarity, of negligence, that your professional servant’s mufti can never accomplish.

There was a new air of restlessness about him since he had put me under cross-examination. He looked round him in the broadening day as if he were in search of something, or some one, hopefully yet half-despairingly expected.

“Look here—if you’d sooner I went…” I began.

He had risen to his feet after his last statement and was looking back towards the Hall, but he faced me again when I spoke.

“Oh, no!” he said with a hint of weariness.

“It isn’t likely that…” He broke off and threw himself moodily down on the grass again before he continued, “It’s not that I couldn’t trust you. But you can see for yourself that it’s better I shouldn’t. When you get back to the Hall, you might be asked questions and for your own sake it’d look better if you didn’t know the answers.”

“Oh, quite,” I agreed, and added, “I’ll stay and see the sun rise.”

“You won’t see the sun for some time,” he remarked. “There’ll be a lot of cloud and mist for it to break through. It’s going to be a scorcher to-day.”

“Good,” I replied; and for a few minutes we discussed weather signs like any other conventional Englishmen. A natural comparison led us presently to the subject of Canada. But through it all he bore himself as a man with a preoccupation he could not forget; and I was looking for a good opening to make an excuse of fatigue and go back to the Hall, when something of the thought that was intriguing him broke through the surface of his talk.

“I’m going back there as soon as I can,” he said with a sudden impatience. “There’s room to turn round in Canada without hitting up against a notice board and trespassing on the preserves of some landed proprietor. I’d never have come home if it hadn’t been for the old people. They thought chauffering for Mr. Jervaise would be a chance for me! Anyhow my father did. He’s got the feeling of being dependent. It’s in his bones like it is with, all of ’em—on the estate. It’s a tradition. Lord, the old man would be horrified, if he knew! The Jervaises are a sort of superior creation to him. We’ve been their tenants for God knows how many hundred years. And serfs before that, I suppose. I get the feeling myself, sometimes. It’s infectious. When you see every one kow-towing to old Jervaise as if he were the angel Gabriel, you begin to feel as if there must be something in it.”

The full day had come, and the cold draught of air that had preceded the sunrise came now from behind me as if the spirits of the air had discovered that their panic-stricken flight had been a mistake and were tentatively returning to inquire into the new conditions. The birds were fully awake now, and there was a tremendous gossiping and chattering going on, that made me think of massed school-children in a railway station, twittering with the excitement of their coming excursion. In the North-East the gray wall of mist was losing the hardness of its edge, and behind the cloud the sky was bleaching to an ever paler blue.

“And yet,” I said, as my companion paused, “the Jervaises aren’t anything particular as a family. They haven’t done anything, even in the usual way, to earn ennoblement or fame.”

“They’ve squatted,” Banks said, “that’s what they’ve done. Set themselves down here in the reign of Henry II., and sat tight ever since—grabbing commons and so on, now and again, in the usual way, of course. The village is called after them, Thorp-Jervaise, and the woods and the hills, and half the labourers in the neighbourhood have got names like Jarvey and Jarvis. What I mean is that the Jervaises mayn’t be of any account in London, or even in the county, alongside of families like Lord Garthorne’s; but just round here they’re the owners and always have been since there have been any private owners. Their word’s law. If you don’t like it, you can get out, and that’s all there is about it.” He gazed thoughtfully in front of him and thrust out his lower lip. “I’ve got to get out,” he added, “unless…”

I hesitated to prompt him, fearing the possibly inquisitive sound of the most indirect question, and after what I felt was a very pregnant silence, he continued rather in the manner of one allusively submitting a case.

“But you get to a point where you feel as if no game’s worth winning if you can’t play it fair and open.”

“So long as the other side play fair with you,” I commented.

“They can afford to,” he returned. “They get every bit of pull there is to have. I told you we’ve been tenants of the Home Farm ever since there’s been a Home Farm, but old Jervaise could turn my father out any time, at six months’ notice. Would, too. Probably have to, for the sake of public opinion. Well, would you call that playing fair?”

“I shouldn’t,” I said with emphasis.

“Most people would,” he replied gloomily. I was wondering what his own “pull” might be, the pull he would not use because the use of it conflicted with his ideal of playing the game. I was inclined, with a foolish romanticism to toy with the notion of some old blood relationship between the families of Jervaise and Banks—some carefully hidden scandal that might even throw a doubt on the present owner’s right of proprietorship. I was still rebuilding that foolish, familiar story of the lost heir, when my new friend put an end to further speculation by saying,—

“But what’s the good of thinking about that—yet? Why, I don’t even know…”

I could not resist a direct question this time. “Don’t even know what?” I asked.

“I was forgetting,” he said. He got to his feet again, looked round for a moment, and then gave a yawn which seemed to spring from a nervous rather than a muscular origin.

“No good my compromising you, just now,” he said with a friendly smile. “You’ve probably guessed more, already, than’ll be altogether convenient for you when you see the family at breakfast. Perhaps, we’ll meet again some day.”

“I’m staying here till Monday,” I said.

“But I don’t know if I am,” he replied with a whimsical twist of his firm mouth. “Well, so long,” he went on quickly. “Glad to have met you, anyway.” He nodded with a repetition of that frank, engaging smile of his, and turned away.

He did not take the road by which I had found Jervaise Clump, but descended the hill on the opposite side; and, after he had gone for five minutes or so, I got up and took a view of the prospect in that direction. I had no thought of spying upon him. I just wished to see if the Home Farm lay over there, as I guessed it must from my memory of the general lie of the land during our moonlit return to the Hall.

I was right. The farm was clearly visible from the northern slope of the hill—an L-shaped, low, white house with a high, red-tiled roof. It stood on another little tumulus about a mile away, a small replica of Jervaise Clump; and the whole house was visible above the valley wood that lay between us.

At first I could not decide why the effect of the place gave me an impression of being unusual, and finally decided that this apparent air of individuality was due to the choice of site. In that country all the farms were built in the lower lands, crouching under the lee of woods and hills, humbly effacing themselves before the sovereignty of the Hall. The Home Farm alone, as far as I could see, presented a composed and dignified face to its overlord.

“There is a quality about these Bankses,” I thought, and then corrected the statement by adding, “about the children, at least.” From what Arthur Banks had said, I gathered that his father conformed to the faith of the estate, both in act and spirit.

I stared at the Farm for a few minutes, wondering what that French wife might be like. I found it difficult to picture the ci-devant governess in those surroundings, and more particularly as the mother of these two fascinating children. They, like their home, produced an effect of being different from the common average….

I became aware that the green of woods and grass had leapt to attention, and that sprawling shadows had suddenly come into being and were giving a new solidity to the landscape. Also, I felt a touch of unexpected warmth on my right cheek.

I returned to the place where Banks and I had talked, and sat down again facing the glorious light of the delivered sun. And almost at once I was overcome by an intense desire to sleep. My purpose of walking back to the Hall, undressing and going to bed had become impossible. I stretched myself full length on the turf, and surrendered myself, exquisitely, to the care of the sunlight.

VI
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.”