I fancy, too, that I was subject to an influence other than the heightened self-consciousness due to my awkward situation. I had only just begun to realise that the absence of Brenda must be a horribly insistent fact to her own family. She was so entirely different from the rest of them. Her vivacity, her spirit must have shown amidst the nervous respectability of this dull and fearful household like the gleam of unexpected water in the blankness of a desert. Her absence must have seemed to them a positive thing. Probably every one at the table was thinking of her at that moment. And the result of this combined thought was producing a hallucination of Brenda in my mind, strong enough to hypnotise me. In any case, her apparition stood at the end of every avenue of conversation I could devise. I could think of no opening that did not lead straight up to the subject of her absence.
And even while I was still pondering my problem (I had come to such fantastic absurdities as contemplating an essay on the Chinese gamut, rejecting it on the grounds that Brenda was the only musician in the family), that awful lunch was abruptly closed by a unanimous refusal of the last course. Perhaps the others were as eager as I was to put an end to that ordeal; all of them, that is, with the exception of the spiteful snake who was responsible for my humiliation.
The family managed to get out of the room this time without their usual procrastinating civilities. I went ahead of Frank and Hughes. I intended to spend a lonely afternoon in thinking out some plan for exposing the treachery of Grace Tattersall, but as I was crossing the Hall, Frank Jervaise came up behind me.
I looked. I did more than that; I confronted him. There is just a suspicion of red in my hair, and on occasion the influence of it is shown in my temper. It must have shown then, for Jervaise was visibly uncomfortable.
"It's no damned good being so ratty, Melhuish," he said. "Jolly well your own fault, anyway."
"We can't talk here," he said uneasily. "Let's go down the avenue."
I had an impression that he was going to offer to fight me. I certainly hoped that he would.
But when he spoke again, I realised that it was as a lawyer and not as a fighter. He had, indeed, been preparing a cautious impeachment of me. We had reached the entrance to the avenue before he began, and the cloister of its cool shade seemed a sufficiently appropriate setting for his forensic diplomacy. Outside, in the glare of the brilliant August sun, I should have flared out at him. In the solemnity of that Gothic aisle, I found influences which helped me to maintain a relative composure.