Old Jervaise's expression was certainly one of relief. He would, I am sure, have agreed to that compromise if he had been alone; he might even have agreed, as it was, if he had been given the chance. But Frank realised his father's weakness not less surely than we did, and although this was probably not the precise moment he would have chosen, he instantly took the case into his own hands.
"Oh! no, Mrs. Banks, certainly not," he said. "In the first place we did not come here to bargain with you, and in the second it must be perfectly plain to you that the scandal remains none the less because you have all gone away. We have come to fetch my sister home, that's the only thing that concerns you."
"And if she will not go with you?" asked Mrs. Banks.
"Then we shall bring an action against you for abducting her."
Mrs. Banks smiled gently and pursed her mouth "To avoid a scandal?" she asked.
"If you persist in your absurd demands, there will be a scandal in any case," Frank replied curtly.
"I suppose my wishes don't count at all?" Brenda put in.
"But, look here, father," Brenda continued, turning to old Jervaise; "_why_ do you want me to come back? We've never got on, I and the rest of you. _Why_ can't you let me go and be done with it?"
Jervaise fidgeted uneasily and looked up with a touch of appeal at his son. He had begun to mumble some opening when Frank interposed.
"Because we won't," he said, "and that's the end of it. There's nothing more to be said. I've told you precisely how the case stands. Either you come back with us without a fuss, or we shall begin an action at once."
I know now that Frank Jervaise was merely bluffing, and that they could have had no case, since Brenda was over eighteen, and was not being detained against her will. But none of us, probably not even old Jervaise himself, knew enough of the law to question the validity of the threat.
Little Mrs. Banks, however, was not depending on her legal knowledge to defeat her enemies. What woman would? She had been exchanging glances with her husband during the brief interval in which she had entrusted a minor plea to her junior, and I suppose she, now, considered herself free to produce her trump card. Banks had turned his back on the room--perhaps the first time he had ever so slighted his landlord and owner--and was leaning his forehead against the glass of the window. His attitude was that of a man who had no further interest in such trivialities as this bickering and scheming. Perhaps he was dimly struggling to visualise what life in Canada might mean for him?