“Well, there are two questions that must be resolved before we can get any further,” I commented. “The first is whether your sister has gone back—she may have been safe in bed for the last hour and a half for all we know. And the second is whether she is honestly in love with Banks. From what I’ve heard of him, I should think it’s very likely,” I added thoughtfully.
Jervaise had his hands in his pockets and was staring up at the moon. “He’s not a bad chap in some ways,” he remarked, “but there’s no getting over the fact that he’s our chauffeur.”
I saw that. No badge could be quite so disgraceful in the eyes of the Jervaises as the badge of servitude. Our talk there, by the wood, had begun to create around us all the limitations of man’s world. I was forgetting that we were moving in the free spaces of a planetary republic. And then I looked up and saw the leaning moon, whimsically balanced on the very crown of the topknot that gave a touch of impudence to the pudding-basin hill.
“What’s the name of that hill?” I asked.
He looked at it absently for a moment before he said, “The people about here call it ‘Jervaise Clump.’ It’s a landmark for miles.”
There was no getting away from it. The Jervaises had conquered all this land and labelled it. I watched the sharp edge of the tree-clump slowly indenting the rounded back of the moon; and it seemed to me that Jervaise-Clump was the solid permanent thing; the moon a mere incident of the night.
“Oh! Lord! Lord! What bosh it all is!” I exclaimed.
“All what?” Jervaise asked sharply.
“This business of distinctions; of masters and servants; of families in possession and families in dependence,” I enunciated.
“It isn’t such dangerous bosh as socialism,” Jervaise replied.