“That’s not the old man,” Banks said in a tone that instantly diverted my gaze from the beauties of the Home Farm.
“Who is it, then?” I asked.
“Listen!” he said. He was suddenly keen, alert and suspicious. I saw him no longer as the gentleman’s servant, the product of the Jervaise estate, but as the man who had knocked about the world, who often preferred to sleep in the open.
“There are two of them there,” he said; “Frank Jervaise and that young fellow Turnbull, if I’m not mistaken.” And even as he spoke he began hurriedly to cross the little lawn with a look of cold anger and determination that I was glad was not directed against myself.
As I followed him, it came into my mind to wonder whether Frank Jervaise had taken me with him as a protection the night before? Had he been afraid of meeting Banks? I had hitherto failed to find any convincing reason for Jervaise’s queer mark of confidence in me.
X
The Home Farm
I must own that I was distinctly uncomfortable as I followed Banks into the same room in which I had sat on my previous visit to the Home Farm. The influence of tradition and habit would not let me alone. I cared nothing for the Jervaises’ opinion, but I resented the unfairness of it and had all the innocent man’s longing to prove his innocence—a feat that was now become for ever impossible. By accepting Banks’s invitation, I had confirmed the worst suspicions the Jervaises could possibly have harboured against me.
Indeed, it seems probable that I was now revealing more shameful depths of duplicity than their most depraved imaginings had been able to picture. As I entered the room, I looked first at Frank, and his dominant emotion, just then, appeared to be surprise. For a moment I had a sense of reprieve. I guessed that he had not been truly convinced of the truth of his own accusations against me. But any relief I may have felt was dissipated at once. I saw Jervaise’s look of surprise give place to a kind of perplexed anger, an expression that I could only read as conveying his amazement that any gentleman (I am sure his thought was playing about that word) could be such a blackguard as I was now proving myself to be.