"I don't know that I'm a socialist," he returned. "I don't belong to any union, or anything of that kind." He stopped and looked at me with a defiant stare that was quite visible now. "You know who I am, I suppose?" he challenged me.
"Banks, the chauffeur," he said, as if he were giving himself up as a well-known criminal.
I was not entirely unprepared for that reply, but I had no tactful answer to make. I rejected the spontaneous impulse that arose, as I thought quite fantastically, to say "I believe I have met your sister;" and fell back on an orthodox "Well?" I tried to convey the effect that I still waited to be shocked.
"I suppose you're staying up at the Hall?" he said.
"Been a pretty fuss there, I take it?" he said.
He set his resolute-looking mouth and submitted me to cross-examination.
"In a way. Frank Jervaise and I went up to your father's house."
"Who?" I asked. I was thinking of his sister, and could find no application for this question.
"Oh--er--Miss Brenda? No. She hadn't come in when I left the house."
"Not back, eh?" he commented with a soft, low whistle, that mingled, I thought, something of gladness with its surprise.
"You don't know where she is, then?" I ventured.
He turned and looked at me suspiciously. "I don't see why I should help your friends," he said.
I realised that my position was a difficult one. My sympathies were entirely with Banks. I felt that if there was to be any question of making allowances, I wanted to be on the side of Brenda and the Home Farm. But, at the same time, I could not deny that I owed something--loyalty, was it?--to the Jervaises. I pondered that for a few seconds before I spoke again, and by then I had found what I believed to be a tolerable attitude, though I was to learn later that it compromised me no less than if I had frankly thrown in my lot with the Banks faction.
"You are quite right," I said. "And I would sooner you gave me no confidences, now I come to think of it. But I should like you to know, all the same, that I'm not taking sides in this affair. I have no intention, for instance, of telling them at the Hall that I've seen you."
The daylight was flooding up from the North-West, now, in a great stream that had flushed the whole landscape with colour; and I could see the full significance of honest inquiry in my companion's face as he probed me with his stare. But I could meet his gaze without confusion. My purpose was single enough, and if I had had a moment's doubt of him when he failed to respond to my mood of fantasy; I was now fully prepared to accept him without qualification.