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.”