As we came out of the park, Jervaise took my arm.
“I’m afraid this is a pretty rotten business,” he said with what was for him an unusual cordiality.
Although I had never before that afternoon seen Jervaise’s home nor any of his people with the exception of the brother now in India, I had known Frank Jervaise for fifteen years. We had been at Oakstone together, and had gone up the school form by form in each other’s company. After we left Oakstone we were on the same landing at Jesus, and he rowed “two” and I rowed “bow” in the college boat. And since we had come down I had met him constantly in London, often as it seemed by accident. Yet we had never been friends. I had never really liked him.
Even at school he had had the beginning of the artificially bullying manner which now seemed natural to him. He had been unconvincingly blunt and insolent. His dominant chin, Roman nose, and black eyebrows were chiefly responsible, I think, for his assumption of arrogance. He must have been newly invigorated to carry on the part every time he scowled at himself in the glass. He could not conceivably have been anything but a barrister.
But, to-night, in the darkness, he seemed to have forgotten for once the perpetual mandate of his facial angle. He was suddenly intimate, almost humble.
“Of course, you don’t realise how cursedly awkward it all is,” he said with the evident desire of opening a confidence.
“Tell me as little or as much as you like,” I responded. “You know that I…”
“Yes, rather,” he agreed warmly, and added, “I’d sooner Hughes didn’t know.”
“He guesses a lot, though,” I put in. “I suppose they all do.”