“But look here, Brenda, why…” Jervaise began on a note of desperate reasonableness.
“Because I’m going out with him,” Brenda said. They might have chased that argument round for half an hour if Ronnie had not once more interposed.
His dudgeon had been slowly giving place to a shocked surprise. It was being borne in upon his reluctant mind that Brenda and Banks honestly intended to get married. And here was Frank Jervaise, for some mistaken purpose of his own, calmly admitting the possibility of the outrage, instead of scorning the bare idea of it with violence.
“I think you’re making a ghastly mistake, Frank,” he said with a composure that was intended to be extremely ominous.
Jervaise clutched at the interruption, probably to give himself a little more time. The women were proving so unamenable to his excellent reasoning. One simply contradicted him, and the other refused to speak. “What’s a mistake, Ronnie?” he asked.
“Listening to them at all,” Turnbull said, with a preposterous attempt to be dignified. He would not look at Brenda as he continued, but he was certainly aware that she had turned towards him when he spoke, and the consciousness that she was watching him steadily increased his embarrassment. “It’s perfectly absurd, I mean, to talk as if you and your people would allow the thing to go on—under any circumstances—perfect rot! Why can’t you say at once that it’s got to stop—absolutely, and—Good Lord!—I don’t care what any one thinks—if I were in your place I’d jolly well sling Banks off the premises—I tell you I would—” he got to his feet, his vehemence was increasing, as if he would shout down Brenda’s silent disdain—“I’d confoundedly well kick him out of the county…” He looked almost equal to the task as he stood there roaring like a young bull-calf; but although he could have given his rival a good three stone in weight there was, I fancy, a difference in the quality of their muscles that might have left the final advantage with Banks in a rough-and-tumble engagement.
But despite, or perhaps on account of his complete ineptitude, I had a feeling of sympathy for Turnbull. It must have been very exasperating for him to stand there, roaring out his sincerest convictions and to be received by every one of us with a forbearing contempt.
Even Brenda expressed something of pity for him.
“My dear Ronnie, don’t be absolutely idiotic,” she said, forbearingly, but rather as though she warned him that he had said quite enough.
He breathed heavily, resentfully, but still declined to look at her. “Of course if you’d sooner I went away altogether…” he remarked.