Had Mr Ffolliot been a man of his hands he would have fallen upon Buz and boxed his ears there and then; as it was, he replied bitterly:
"I am not interested in your opinion, boy, on this or any other subject. Leave the room at once."
But Buz, to his father's amazement, stood his ground.
"You must hear me, father, else you can't understand."
"If you've come to say anything about Grantly you may spare yourself the pains, he has told me himself."
"About Grantly," Buz repeated stupidly, "why should I want to talk about Grantly?—it's about him and me I want to talk."
"Him and you?" Mr Ffolliot echoed desperately.
"Yes, I rotted him that night and he was awfully decent——"
"What night?"
"The night I broke my arm—they said at the Infirmary that if he hadn't been so careful of me it would have been much worse."
"You refer, I suppose, to Gallup?"
"Yes, father, and it really was decent of him, because I went dressed up as a suffragette and had no end of a rag; he might have been awfully shirty, and he wasn't—he never told a soul. Don't you think we ought to ask him?"
"Does your mother know about this?"
"Of course not, nobody knew except Uz and," Buz added truthfully,"Adèle."
"Leave me," said Mr Ffolliot feebly, "I've had about as much as I can bear this afternoon—Go."
"You do see, sir, that it makes a difference," pleaded the persistentBuz.
"Go," thundered the exasperated Squire.
"All right, father, I'm going, but youdosee, don't you?" said Buz from the door.
Mr Ffolliot was really a much-tried man. Those interviews with Grantly and Buz caused his nerves to vibrate most unpleasantly.
So unhinged was he that for quite half an hour after Buz's departure he kept looking nervously at the door, fully expectant that it would open to admit Uz, primed with some fresh reason why Eloquent Gallup should be asked to dinner; and that he would be followed by Ger and the Kitten bent on a similar errand.
However, no one else invaded his privacy. The Manor House was very still; the only occasional sound being the soft swish of a curtain stirred by the breeze through the open window.
Mr Ffolliot neither readGaston Latournor did he write, though his monograph on Ercole Ferrarese was not yet completed.
Wrapped in thought he sat quite motionless in his deep chair, and the subject that engrossed him was his own youth; comparing what he remembered of it with these queer, careless sons of his, who seemed born to trouble other people, Mr Ffolliot could not call to mind any occasion when he had been a nuisance to anybody. He honestly tried and wholly failed.
Such persons as have been nourished in early youth on Mr Thackeray's inimitableThe Rose and The Ringwill remember how at the christening of Prince Giglio, the Fairy Blackstick, who was his godmother, said, "My poor child, the best thing I can send you is a little misfortune!"
Now the Fairy Blackstick had evidently absented herself from Hilary Ffolliot's christening, for his youth was one long procession of brilliant successes. It is true that his father, an easy-going, amiable clergyman, died during his first term at Harrow, but that did not affect Hilary's material comfort in any way. It left his mother perfectly free to devote her entire attention to him.
He was a good-looking, averagely healthy boy, who carried all before him at preparatory school. Easily first in every class he entered, he was quite able to hold his own in all the usual games, and he left for Harrow in a blaze of glory, having obtained the most valuable classical scholarship.
Throughout his career at school he never failed to win any prize he tried for, and when he left, it was with scholarships that almost covered the expenses of his time at Cambridge. Moreover, he was head of his house and a member of the Eleven.
His mother, a gentle and unselfish lady, felt that she could not do enough to promote the comfort of so brilliant and satisfactory a son. Hilary's likes and dislikes in the matter of food, Hilary's preference for silk underwear, Hilary's love of art and music, were all matters of equal and supreme importance to Mrs Ffolliot, and in every way she fostered the strain of selfishness that exists even in the best of us.
At the university he did equally well. He took a brilliant degree, and then travelled for a year or so, devoting himself to the study of Italian art and architecture; and finally accepted (he never seemed to try for things like other people) a clerkship in the Foreign Office.
When he was eight and twenty his uncle died, and he inherited Redmarley.
His conduct had always been blameless. He shared the ordinary pleasures of upper-class young men without committing any of their follies. He was careful about money, and never got into debt. He accepted kindnesses as his right, and felt under no obligation to return them.
He could not be said ever to have worked hard, for all the work he had hitherto undertaken came so easily to him. He possessed a large circle of agreeable acquaintances, and no intimate friends.
He met Marjory Grantly in her second season, and for the first time in his life fell ardently and hopelessly in love.
Now was the chance for the Fairy Blackstick!
But she evidently took no interest in Hilary Ffolliot, for Marjory, instead of sending him about his business, and perhaps thus rendering him for a space the most miserable of men, fell in love with him, and they were married in three months.
The General, it is true, had misgivings, and remarked to Mrs Grantly that Ffolliot seemed too good to be true. But there was no disproving it; and Hilary was so much in love that for a while, for nearly a year, he thought more about Marjory's likes and dislikes than his own.
And Marjory's likes included such a vast number of other people.
But the chance, the hundred-to-one chance, of turning him into an ordinary human being—loving, suffering, understanding—was lost.
Once more in Life's Market he had got what he wanted at his own price, and with the cessation of competitive examinations all ambition seemed dead in him.
And what of Marjory?
Nobody, not even her father and mother who loved her so tenderly, ever knew what Marjory felt. She had chosen her lot. She would abide by it. No doubt she saw her husband as he was, but as time went on she realised how few chances he had had to be anything different. She was an only child herself. She, too, had adoring parents, but their adoration took a different form from the somewhat abject and wholly blind devotion of Hilary's mother. General and Mrs Grantly saw to it from the very first that they should love their daughter because she was lovable, and not only because she was theirs. They had troops of friends, and exercised a large hospitality that entailed a constant giving out of sympathy for and interest in other people. That there was much suffering, and sadness, and sin in the world was never concealed from Marjory in her happy girlhood; that it had not touched her personally was never allowed to foster the belief that it did not exist. That there was also much happiness, and gaiety, and kindness was abundantly manifest in her own home, and every scope was given her for the development of the social instincts which were part of her charm. She went to her husband at twenty "handled and made," and twenty years of married life had only perfected the work.
As a girl she was perhaps intellectually intolerant. Stupid people annoyed her, and she possessed all youth's enthusiastic admiration for achievement, for people who did things, who had arrived. Hilary Ffolliot was a new type to her. His brilliant record impressed her. His cultivated taste and extraordinary versatility attracted her, and his evident admiration gratified her girlish vanity.
She was a proud woman, and if she had made a mistake she was not going to let it spoil her life. Only once did she come near showing her heart even to her mother. It was a year after the Kitten was born, when the General had just got the command at Woolwich, and Mrs Grantly once more came back to the assault—her constant plea that she should have Ger given over to her entirely.
"You really are, Margie, a greedy, grasping woman. Here are you with six children, four of them sons. And here am I with only one child, a miserable, measly girl, and you won't let me have even one of the boys."
The miserable, measly girl referred to laughed and knelt down at her mother's knee. "Dearest, you really get quite as much of the children as is good for you—or them——"
"You can't say I spoil them; I didn't spoil you, and you were only one."
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more," Mrs Ffolliot said contritely; "but you see, mother dear, it's like this, it's just because I was only one I want the children to have as much as possible of each other . . . while they are young . . . I want them to grow up . . ." Mrs Ffolliot sat down on the floor and leant her head against Mrs Grantly's knees so that her face was hidden. "I want them to realise what a lot of other people there are in the world, all with hopes and fears and likes and dislikes and joys and sorrows . . . and that each one of them is only a very little humble atom of a great whole—and that's what they can teach each other—I can't do it—you can't do it—but they can manage it amongst them."
Mrs Grantly did not answer; quick as she was in repartee, she had the much rarer gift of sympathetic silence. She laid a kind hand on her daughter's bent head and softly stroked it.
The clock struck four, and still Mr Ffolliot sat on in his chair withGaston Latourunopened, held loosely in his long slender hands.
A dignified presence with every attribute that goes to make the scholar and the gentleman; though one who judged of character from external appearance might have misdoubted the thin straight lips, the rather pinched nostrils, the eyes too close together, and above all, the head—high and intellectual, but almost devoid of curve at the back. A clean-cut, ascetic, handsome face, as a rule calm and judicial in its dignified repose.
This afternoon, though, the Squire lacks his usual serene poise. His self-confidence has been shaken, and it is his young sons who have disturbed its delicately adjusted equilibrium.
He was puzzled.
It is a mistake to imagine that selfish and ungrateful people fail to recognise these qualities in others. Not only are they quick to perceive incipient signs of them, but they demand the constant exercise of their opposites in their fellow men.
Mr Ffolliot was puzzled.
Among the words he used most constantly, both on paper and in conversation, were "fine shades" and "fineness" in its most psychological sense. "Fineness" was a quality he was for ever belauding: a quality that he believed was only to be found in persons of complex character and unusually sensitive organisation.
And yet he grudgingly conceded that he had, that afternoon, been confronted by it in two of his own quite ordinary children.
What rankled, however, was that Buz, at all events, seemed doubtful whether he, the Squire, possessed it. The dubious and thrice-repeated "you do understand, don't you, father?" rang in his ears.
How was it that Buz, the shallow and mercurial, seemed to fear that what was so plain to him might be hidden from his father?
Undesired and wholly irrelevant there flashed into his mind that walk with Mary, a short ten days ago, when he had reproached her with her limitations, her power to grasp only the obvious. And it was suddenly revealed to Mr Ffolliot that certain obligations were obvious to his children that were by no means equally clear to him.
Why was this?
As if in answer came his own phrase, used so often in contemptuous explanation of their more troublesome vagaries—"the Grantly Strain."
He was fair-minded and he admired courage. He in no way underrated the effort it must have been for Grantly and Buz to come and confess their peccadillos to him. And he knew very well that only because they felt someone else was involved had they summoned up courage to do so.
If their evil-doings were discovered, they did not lie, these noisy, blundering children of his; but they never showed the smallest desire to draw attention to their escapades.
His mind seemed incapable of concentration that afternoon, for now he began to wonder how it was that "the children" lately had managed to emerge from the noun of multitude and each had assumed a separate identity with marked and definite characteristics.
There was Mary . . .
Mr Ffolliot frowned. If it hadn't been for Mary he really would have been quite glad to ask young Gallup to dinner. But Mary complicated matters; for he had instantly divined what had struck none of the others, a connection between the Liberal member's amiability to his sons and the fact that those sons possessed a sister.
Presently Fusby came in to make up the fire. "Do you happen to know,Fusby, if your mistress is in the house and disengaged?"
"I saw the mistress as I came through the 'all, sir, sitting in a window reading a book. She was quite alone, sir."
"Ah," said Mr Ffolliot, "thank you, I will go to her."
As the door was closed behind his master, Fusby arose from brushing the hearth and shook his fist in that direction.
"Go, I should think you would go, you one-eyed old image you. Did you think I was going to fetch her to wait your pleasure?"
Mrs Ffolliot laid down her book as her husband came across the wide old hall. She made room for him on the window-seat beside her. She noticed that he was flushed and that his hair was almost shaggy.
"Have you got a headache, Larrie?" she asked in her kind voice. "I hope Grantly had nothing disturbing to relate."
"Yes, no," Mr Ffolliot replied vaguely; "I've been thinking things over, my dear, and I've come round to your opinion that perhaps it would be the right thing to ask young Gallup to dinner on the twenty-first. There will be the Campions and the Wards to keep him in countenance."
"I'm so glad you see it as I do," Mrs Ffolliot said gently, looking, however, much surprised. "After all, he may not come, you know."
"He'll come," and his wife wondered why the Squire laid such grim emphasis upon the words.
"By the way," Mr Ffolliot said in quite a new tone, "you were saying something the other day about your mother's very kind offer to have Mary for some weeks after the May drawing-room. I think it would be a good thing. You don't want the fag and expense of going up to town so soon after you've come home. Let her stay with her grandmother for a bit and go out—see that she has proper clothes—they will enjoy having the child, and she will see something of the world. Let her have her fling—don't hurry her."
"Why, Hilary, what avolte-face! When I spoke to you about it beforeI was ill you said it was out of the question . . ."
"My dear," said Mr Ffolliot testily, "only stupid people think that they must never change their minds. I have decided that it will be good for Mary to leave Redmarley for a bit. You must remember that I have been carefully observing her for the last few weeks. She will grow narrow and provincial if she never meets anyone except the Garsetshire people. Surely you must see that?"
"May I tell Mary? It's such fun when you're young to look forward to things."
"Certainly tell Mary, and let her go as soon as her grandmother will have her. She'd better get what clothes she wants in town."
"She can go up with Grantly when he goes back to the Shop. Itisnice of you, Larrie."
"I suppose she must stay for this tiresome dinner? Why not let her go beforehand? It's always very easy to get an odd girl."
"That wouldn't do," Mrs Ffolliot said decidedly, "the child would be disappointed—besides I want her."
Mr Ffolliot sighed. "As you will, my dear," he said meekly, "but she'd better go directly it is over."
"Aunt Susan, will you give me a bed on Thursday night?"
Eloquent, who was spending the Easter recess at Marlehouse, had bicycled out to tea with Miss Gallup.
"You know as I'm always pleased to give you a bed any time. What do you want it then for? Are you coming to stop a bit?"
"Because," Eloquent took a deep breath and watched his aunt closely,"I'm dining at the Manor that night."
"Then," said Miss Gallup sharply, "you don't have a bed here."
"Why ever not?" and in his astonishment Eloquent dropped into theGarsetshire idiom he was usually so careful to avoid.
"Because," Miss Gallup was flushed and tremulous, "no one shall ever say I was as a drag on you."
"But, Aunt Susan, no one could say it, and if they did, what would it matter? and what in the world has that to do with giving me a bed?"
"My dear," said Miss Gallup, "I know my place if you don't. When you goes to dinner with Squire Ffolliot you must go properly from Marlehouse like anybody else—you must drive out, or hire a motor and put it up there, same as other people do, and go back again to your own house where you're known to be—it's in the paper. There's no sort of use draggin'mein. I always knew as you'd get there some day, and now you've got there and no one's pleasder than me. Do show me the invitation."
Eloquent took a note from his breast-pocket and handed it to his aunt, who put on her spectacles and read aloud, slowly and impressively:—
Dear Mr Gallup,—If you have no other engagement, will you come and dine with us on the twenty-first at eight o'clock. It will give us great pleasure if you can.—Yours sincerely,
"H'm, now that's not what I should have expected," Miss Gallup said in a disappointed tone. "Ishould have thought she'd 'a said, 'Mr and Mrs Ffolliot presents their compliments to Mr Gallup, and requests the pleasure of his company at a dinner-party'—I know there is a party, for Dorcas did tell Em'ly-Alice there was going to be one; only last night she was talking about it—it's downright blunt that note—I call it——"
Eloquent laughed. "All the same I've accepted, and now do explain why I can't sleep here instead of trailing all the way back into Marlehouse at that time of night."
"If you can'tsee, why you must just take my word for it. You and me's in different walks of life, and it's my bounden duty to see as you don't bemean yourself. I'm always pleased to see you in a quiet way, but there's no use in strangers knowing we're relations."
"What nonsense," Eloquent exclaimed hotly, "I've only got one aunt in the world, and I'm very proud of her, so let there be an end of this foolishness."
Miss Gallup wiped her eyes. "In some ways, Eloquent," she said huskily, "with all your politics an' that, you're no better than a child."
"I'm hanged if I can see what you're driving at," Eloquent exclaimed in great irritation. "Once more, Aunt Susan, will you give me a bed on Thursday?"
"Don't ask me, my dear, don't ask me. It's for your good as I refuse.Ican see the difference between us if you can't, and when you took on so with politics, and then your father left all that fortune so as you could leave the likes of the Golden Anchor, I said to myself, 'Now, Martha Gallup, don't you interfere. Don't you go intrudin' on your brother's child. If he sees fit to keep friendly it shows he's a good heart, but you keep your place.' . . . An' I've kep' it; never have I been near you in Marlehouse, as you know—Not but what you've as't me, and very pleased I was to be as't . . ."
"And very displeased I was that you would never come," Eloquent interrupted.
"I know my place," Miss Gallup persisted. "I don't mind the likes of the Ffolliots knowing we're related. . . . They're bound to know, and they're not proud, none of 'em exceptin' Squire, that is to say, and he wouldn't think it worth while to be proud to the likes of me. But I don't want to hang on and keep you down, and there's some as would think less of you for me bein' your aunt, so where's the use of flaunting an old-fashioned piece like me in their faces. . . . If you'll come out next day and tell me all about the party, I'd take it most kind of you, Eloquent, that I should."
"Why shouldn't I come here straight that night? I shouldn't have forgotten anything by then."
"No," Miss Gallup said firmly. "I'd much rather you didn't come to me from that 'ouse nor go there from me. You go back 'ome like a good boy. It isn't as if you couldn't afford a chaise to bring you."
Eloquent saw that she really meant what she said. He was puzzled and rather hurt, for it had never occurred to him that his aunt was anything but his aunt: a kindly garrulous old lady who had always been extremely good to him, whom it was his duty to cherish, who looked upon him in the light of a son.
He was a simple person and never realised that this simplicity and directness had a good deal to do with the undoubted cordiality of certain persons, who, apart from politics, were known to be very exclusive in the matter of their acquaintance; and that it was largely owing to the fact that he never showed the smallest false shame as to his origin, that members of his party who had at first consented to know him solely for political reasons, continued to know him when the Liberal Government was for a second time firmly established. They perceived his primness, were faintly amused by his immense earnestness, and they respected his sincerity.
The manner of his arrival on the fateful night was settled for him by Sir George Campion, who, meeting him in the street, offered him a seat in their motor. Eloquent never knew that Mrs Ffolliot had asked Sir George to do this, thinking that it would make things easier and pleasanter for the guest who was the one stranger to the assembled party.
On the night of the dinner Mary was dressed early and went to her mother's room to see if she could help her.
Mrs Ffolliot was standing before her long glass and Sophia was shaking out the train of her dress, a soft grey-blue dress full of purple shadows and silvery lights.
She turned and looked at her tall young daughter, critically, fondly, with the pride and fear and wonder a woman, above all a beautiful woman, feels as she realises that for her child everything is yet to come; the story all untold.
"You may go, Sophia," she said gently. "I think Miss Mary looks nice, don't you? It's her first real evening frock, you know."
Sophia looked from the one to the other and her severe face relaxed a little. "It fits most beautiful," she vouchsafed.
"Mother," Mary said when Sophia had gone, "I wanted to catch you just a minute—I've seen Mr Gallup since that night he came to tell us about Buz . . ."
"You've met?" Mrs Ffolliot exclaimed, "where? and why have you never told me?"
"It was while you were away. Miss Gallup had been ill and I went to ask for her and he was there, and he walked home with me . . ."
Mrs Ffolliot raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, you think it funny too? It couldn't be helped—old Miss Gallup seemed to think it was the proper thing and sent him—and father was waiting for me at the gate and was awfully cross. . . . Mother, howdidyou persuade him to let you ask Mr Gallup?"
Mrs Ffolliot turned to her dressing-table and began to collect fan and handkerchief. She looked in the glass and saw Mary behind her, eager, radiant, slim, upright, and gloriously young. She began to see why father was so awfully cross. There was more excuse than usual.
"Why don't you answer me, mother? didn't you hear what I said?"
"I heard, my darling. Father needed no persuasion. He simply changed his mind; but I can't think why you never told me you had met Mr Gallup already."
Mary blushed. The warm colour dyed forehead and neck and ears, and faded into the exceedingly white chest and shoulders, revealed to the world for the first time.
Mrs Ffolliot saw all this in the glass, wondered if she could have imagined it, and turned to face her daughter.
"Mother"—what honest eyes the child had, to be sure—"it wasn't the first time I'd spoken to him."
"Really, Mary, you are very mysterious——"
"I met him in the woods once before Christmas, and he was lost, and I showed him the way out, and father saw us . . . and was just as cross."
Mrs Ffolliot felt more in sympathy with her husband than usual. But all she said was, "Well, well, it's evident you don't need an introduction. I forgot you'd seen him when he called. I'm glad you told me in time to prevent it, or he would have thought it so odd—come, my child, we must go down."
"Youaren't cross, are you, mother?" Mary asked wistfully.
"Cross!" Mrs Ffolliot repeated, "at your first party. What is there to be cross about? Yes, my child, that dress is quite charming—father was right, you can stand that dead white—but it's trying to some people—come."
The Campions called for Eloquent, and he found himself seated side by side with Sir George on one of the little seats, while Lady Campion and a pretty niece called Miss Bax sat opposite. Miss Bax was disposed to be friendly and conversational, but to Eloquent the fact that he was going to Redmarley was no ordinary occurrence, and he would infinitely have preferred to have driven out alone, or, better still, to have walked through the soft spring night from his aunt's house to the Manor, which still held something of the glamour that had surrounded it in his childhood.
For him it was still "the Manshun," immense, remote, peopled by inhabitants fine and strange, and far removed from ordinary life. A house whose interior common folk were, it is true, occasionally allowed to see, walking on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, led and instructed by an important rustling old lady who wore an imposing cap and a silk apron; a strange, silent house where none save servants ever seemed to come and go. He had not yet quite recovered from the shock it was to him to hear voices and laughter in that old panelled hall which he had known in childhood as so vast and shadowy. He liked to remember all this, and to feel that he was going there as THEIR guest, to be with THEM on intimate friendly terms. It was wonderful, incredible; it was part of the dream.
". . . don't you think so, Mr Gallup?" asked Miss Bax, and Eloquent woke with a start to realise that he had not heard a word his pretty neighbour was saying. He was thankful that the motor was dark and that the others could not notice how red he was.
"I beg your pardon," he said loudly, leaning forward, "I didn't catch what you said."
"Is the man deaf?" Miss Bax wondered, for the motor was a Rolls-Royce and singularly smooth and noiseless. "I was saying," she went on aloud, "that it will probably be my lot to go in to dinner with Grantly Ffolliot, and that cadets as a class are badly in need of snubbing; don't you agree with me?"
"I haven't met any except young Mr Ffolliot," Eloquent said primly, "and I must say he did not strike me as a particularly conceited young man."
"He isn't," Sir George broke in, "he's an exceedingly nice boy, they all are. Their mother has seen to that."
"Boys are so difficult to talk to," Miss Bax lamented; "their range is so limited, and my enthusiasm for football is so lukewarm."
"Try him on his profession," Lady Campion suggested.
"That would be worse. Cadets do nothing but tell you how hard they are worked, and what a fearful block there is in the special branch of the army they are going in for. Is young Ffolliot going to be a Sapper by any chance? for they're the worst of all—considering themselves, as they do, the brains of the army."
"I don't think so," said Sir George; "he's not clever enough. He's only got moderate ability and an uncommonly pretty seat on a horse. He'll get Field all right. But why are you so sure, my dear, that he'll be your fate? Why not Gallup here? and you could try and convert him to your views on the Suffrage question? He'd be some use, you know. Hehasa vote."
Again Eloquent blessed the darkness as he coloured hotly and brought his mind back to the present with a violent wrench. He knew he ought to say something, but what? He fervently hoped they would not assign him to this severe self-possessed young lady who thought cadets conceited and had political views. Heavens! she might be another Elsmaria Buttermish with no blessed transformation later on into something human and approachable.
"I'm afraid"—he heard Miss Bax talking as it were an immense way off as he floated away on the wings of his dream—"that my views would startle Mr Gallup."
The motor turned in at the drive gates, they had reached the door.
Eloquent was right in the middle of his dream.
He followed Lady Campion and Miss Bax across the hall and down a corridor to a room he had never been in when he was a child.
Fusby threw open a door and announced loudly, "Sir George and LadyCampion, Miss Bax, Mr Gallup."
They were the last of the guests.
For a little while he was less conscious of his dream. This light, bright room with white panelled walls and furniture covered with gay chintzes, soft blurred chintz in palest pinks and greens, with pictures in oval frames, and people, ordinary people that he had seen before, all talking and laughing together. This was not the Redmarley that he knew, grave and beautiful and old.
This was not the Redmarley of his dream. It came back to him as Mrs Ffolliot gave him her hand in welcome, presenting him to her husband and one or two other people. It left him as she turned away and Grantly came forward and greeted him. Grantly, tall and irreproachably well dressed, cheerful withal and quite at his ease.
Sir George had pulled Mary into the very middle of the room and held her at arm's length with laughing comments. How could men find the courage for that sort of thing? He heard him ask what she had done with her sash, and then Mrs Ffolliot said, "I think you know my daughter, Mr Gallup; will you take her in to dinner?"
And once more he was well in the middle of his dream, for he found himself in the corridor he knew, side by side with Mary, part of a procession moving towards the dining-room.
Her hand was on his arm, but the exquisite moment was a little marred by the discovery that she was quite an inch taller than he.
Eloquent had been to a good many public dinners; he had even dined with certain Cabinet Ministers, but always when there were only men. He had never yet dined with people of the Ffolliots' class in this intimate, friendly way, and he found everything a little different from what he expected. He had read very little fiction, and such mental pictures as he had evolved were drawn from his inner consciousness. As always, he wondered how they contrived to be so gay, to talk such nonsense, and to laugh at it. Seated between Mary and witty Mrs Ward, whose husband was one of his ardent supporters in the county, he did his best to join in the general conversation, but he found it hard. Miss Bax, whose premonition regarding her fate was justified, seemed to have overcome her objection to cadets. She and Grantly were just opposite to him, and he noticed with regret that Grantly was drinking champagne. It would have been better, Eloquent thought, if the boy had abstained altogether after his experience at the election. Mary, too, drank champagne, but Eloquent condoned this weakness in her case, she drank so little. Everyone drank champagne except Sir George, who preferred whisky, and Eloquent himself, who drank Apollinaris.
"Do you suffer from rheumatism?" Mary asked innocently. "Do you think it would hurt you once in a way?"
"I am not in the least rheumatic," Eloquent protested, "but I have never tasted anything intoxicating."
"Then you don't know whether you'd like it or not. Why not try some and see?" Mary suggested hospitably.
Eloquent shook his head. "Better not," he said, "you don't know what effect it might have on me."
He ate whatever was put before him, wholly unaware of its nature, and in spite of Mary's efforts to keep the conversational ball rolling gaily, he was very silent.
The dream had got him again, for he knew this room with the dark oak panelling and great old portraits of departed Ffolliots, some of them with eyes that followed you. He knew the room, but as he knew it, the long narrow table, like the table in a refectory, was bare and polished and empty; or with a little cloth laid just at one end for old Mr Ffolliot.
What did they think of it now, these solemn pictured people?—this long, narrow strip of brilliant light and flowers and sparkling glass and silver, surrounded by well-dressed cheerful persons, all, apparently, laughing and talking at the same time.
They had reached dessert, and he was handing Mary a dish of sweets; she took four. "Do take some," she whispered, "take lots, and what you don't want give to me; you can put them in my bridge-bag under the table, I want them for the children. I promised Ger."
Bewildered, but only too happy to do anything she asked him, Eloquent helped himself largely.
"Now," Mary whispered, holding a little white satin bag open under the table, "and if they come round again, take some more."
"It was my grandfather began it," she explained; "he used always to save sweets for us when we stayed with him, and now it's a rule—if we dine downstairs—if there are any—there aren't always, you know—and Fusby's so stingy, if there are any left he takes them and locks them up in a box till next time. You watch Grantly, he's got some too, but he hasn't got anywhere to put them, like me. I must go round behind him when mother collects eyes, then I'll nip up to Ger, for he'll never go to sleep till I've been . . ."
"You see," she went on confidentially, "they will take them to Willets to-morrow. He loves good sweets and he never gets any unless they take them to him. They'll make a party of it, and Mrs Willets will give them each a weeny glass of ginger-wine. They'll have a lovely time—do you know Willets?"
"By sight, I think . . . he's your keeper, isn't he? From all I can hear to-night he seems a very remarkable person, everyone is talking about him."
"Oh, you ought to know him, he's the greatest dear in Redmarley. Everyone who knows us knows Willets, and dukes and people have tried to get him away, he's such a good sportsman, but he won't leave us. We love him so much we couldn't bear it. He couldn't either. He's been keeper here nearly twenty-three years. Before mother came he was here, and now there's all of us he'll never leave."
"Have you got enough? Won't they want some for themselves as well asWillets?"
"Thanks to you, I've got a splendid lot. One can't always ask people, you know, but I thought you wouldn't mind."
"Shall I demand some more in a loud voice? there are some at the end of the table," Eloquent murmured; "I'm very shy, but I can be bold in a good cause."
Mary looked at him in some surprise. "Would you really? Ah, it's too late, there's mother——"
Eloquent watched her with breathless interest as she "went round the longest way" and received new spoils from Grantly as she passed. How curious they were about their servants these people, where Fusby seemed to control the supplies and the children of the house secretly saved sweets for the keeper.
The men did not sit long over their wine, and it was to the hall they went and not to the white-panelled room that Eloquent unconsciously resented as an anachronism; and in the hall bridge-tables were set out.
This was a complication Eloquent had not foreseen. Among his father's friends cards were regarded as the Devil's Books, and he did not know the ace of spades from the knave of hearts.
Would they force him to play, he wondered. Would he cover himself with shame and ignominy? and what if he said it was against his principles to play for money?
He braced himself to be faithful to the traditions in which he had been trained, only to find that on his saying he neverhadplayed bridge no one expressed the smallest desire that he should do so.
In fact it seemed to him that three tables were arranged with almost indecent haste, cryptic remarks about "cutting in" were bandied about, and in less than five minutes he was sitting on the oak settle by the fire with Mrs Ffolliot, who talked to him so delightfully that the dream came back.
Here on the high-backed settle he found courage to tell her how clearly he remembered that first time he had seen her in his father's shop; and plainly she was touched and interested, and drew him on to speak of his queer lonely childhood and the ultimate goal that had been kept ever before his eyes.
He was very happy, and it seemed but a short time till somebody at one of the tables exclaimed "game and rub," and Mary came over to the settle saying, "Now, mother, you must take my place. I've been awfully lucky, I've won half a crown."
She sat down beside him on the settle asking, "Would you care to watch, or shall we just sit here and talk—which would you rather?"
What Eloquent wanted to do was to stare: to gaze and gaze at the gracious young figure sitting there in gleaming white flecked with splashes of rosy light from the dancing flames, but he could hardly say this.
"I'm afraid it would be of no use for me to watch; I have never played cards, and don't understand them in the least."
"You mean you don't know the suits?"
"What are suits?"
"This must be seen to," said Mary; "you don't smoke, you drink nothing festive, you don't know one card from another; you can't go through life like this. It's not fair. We won't waste another minute, I'll teach you the suits now."
She made him fetch a little table, she produced a pack of cards. She spread them out and she expounded. He was a quick study. By the time Mr Ffolliot came to take Mary's place he knew all the suits. By the time Mr Ffolliot had thoroughly confused him by a learned disquisition on the principles of bridge, Lady Campion's motor was announced, and he departed in her train.
"Surely Mr Gallup is a very absent-minded person," Miss Bax remarked to her aunt when they had deposited Eloquent at his door.
"I expect he's shy," said Lady Campion, who was sleepy and not particularly interested; "but wasn't Mary nice to him?—I do like that girl—she's so natural and unaffected."
"She always strikes me as being a mere child," said Miss Bax, "so very unformed; is she out yet, or is she still in the schoolroom?"
Sir George chuckled. "She's on her way out," he said, "and, I fancy, on her way to an uncommonly good time as well. That girl is a sight to make an old man young."
"She certainly is handsome," said Miss Bax.
Sir George chuckled again. "Unformed," he repeated, "there's some of us likes 'em like that."
Eloquent sat long in his orderly little dining-room where the glass of milk and tray of sandwiches awaited him on the sideboard. His head was in a whirl. She drank champagne. She gambled. She seemed to think it was perfectly natural and right to do these things. It probably was if she thought so. She . . .
Heavens! what an adorable wife she would be for a young CabinetMinister.
Had Eloquent ever taken the smallest interest in country pursuits he must have come across Willets, for in that part of the Cotswolds Willets was as well known as the Marle itself.
A small thick-set man with a hooky nose, and with bright, long-sighted brown eyes and strong, sensitive hands, wrists tempered and supple as a rapier, and a tongue that talked unceasingly and well.
Sporting people wondered why Willets, with his multifarious knowledge of wood and river craft, should stay at Redmarley: a comparatively small estate, whose owner was known to preserve only because it was a tradition to do so, and not because he cared in the least about the sport provided. Willets was wasted, they said, and it is possible that at one time Willets, himself, agreed with them.
He came originally of Redmarley folk, and his wife from a neighbouring village. He "got on" and became one of the favourite keepers on a ducal estate in the North, much liked both by the noble owner and his sporting friends; a steady, intelligent man with a real genius for the gentle craft. He could charm trout from water where, apparently, no trout existed; he could throw a fly with a skill and precision beautiful to behold, and he was well read in the literature of his pursuits. Much converse with gentlemen had softened the asperities of his Cotswold speech, he expressed himself well, wrote both a good hand and a good letter, and was very popular with those he served. Life looked exceedingly rosy for Willets—for he was happy in his marriage and a devoted father to his three little girls—when the hand of fate fell heavily upon him. There came a terribly severe winter in that part of Scotland, and one after another the little girls got bronchitis and died; the three in five months.
He and his wife could bear the place no longer, and came South. The Duke was really sorry to lose him, and took considerable trouble to find him something to do in the Cotswold country whence he came.
It happened that just then old Mr Ffolliot was looking for a keeper who would see after things in general at the Manor, and the fishing in particular; so Willets accepted the situation merely as a make-shift for a short time, till something worthier of his powers should turn up.
It was pleasant to be in the old county once more. There was help and healing in the kind grey houses and the smiling pastoral country. His wife was pleased to be near her people, and his work was of the lightest. But Willets was not yet forty, he had ambitions, and the wages were much smaller than what he had been getting. It would do, perhaps, for a year or two, and he knew that whenever he liked, his late master would be glad to have him back and would give him a post in the Yorkshire dales.
Old Mr Ffolliot died, and his nephew, Hilary, reigned in his stead. Willets announced to his wife that their time in Redmarley would be short.
The young Squire married and in the bride's train came General Grantly with all the patience and enthusiasm and friendly anecdotal powers of your true angler; and in his train came like-minded brother officers to whom, it must be conceded, Hilary Ffolliot was always ready to offer hospitality.
Things livened up a bit at Redmarley, and Willets decided to stay a little longer.
Margery Ffolliot liked the Willets and was passionately sorry for them about the little girls; but it was the Ffolliot children who wove about Willets an unbreakable charm, binding him to his native village.
One by one, with toddling steps and high, clear voices, they stormed the little house by the bridge and took its owners captive.
Saving only their mother, Willets had a good deal more to do with the upbringing of the young Ffolliots in their earliest years than anybody else. Singly and collectively, they adored him, tyrannised over him, copied him, learnt from him, and wasted his time with a prodigality a more sporting master than the Squire might have resented seriously.
Thus it fell out that offers came to Willets, good offers from places far more important than Redmarley, where there were possibilities both in the way of sport and of tips—there was a sad scarcity of tips at Redmarley—and yet he passed them by.
Sometimes his wife would be a little reproachful, pointing out that they were saving nothing and he was throwing away good money.
Willets had always some excellent reason for not leaving just then.
Redmarley had possibilities; it would be a nice place by the time Master Grantly was grown up and brought his friends. No one else would take quite the same interest in it that he did; he was proud of the children, and money wasn't everything, and so Willets stayed on.
With the arrival of the Kitten his subjugation was completed, and a seal was set upon the permanence of his relations with the Manor House. From the days when the Kitten in a white bonnet and woolly gaiters would struggle out of her nurse's arms to be taken by Willets, sitting on his knee and gazing at him with wine-coloured bright eyes not unlike his own, occasionally putting up a small hand encased in an absurd fingerless glove to turn his face that she might see it better, Willets was her infatuated and abject slave. When on these occasions he attempted to restore her to her nurse she would clutch him fiercely and scream, so that it ended in his carrying her up to the house and up the backstairs to the nursery, whence he only escaped by strategy.
No day passed without a visit from the Kitten and although he was not wholly blind to the defects in her character, he was sure she was the "peartest, sauciest, cleverest little baggage in the British Isles."
Of course the fact that Eloquent had been asked to dine at the ManorHouse was much canvassed in the village. Miss Gallup trumpeted thematter abroad, and naturally it was discussed exhaustively by what MrFfolliot would have called his "retainers."
Willets was not sure that he approved. "I've no doubt," he said leniently to Mrs Willets as they were sitting at tea, "that he's a smart young chap and he's got on wonderfully, but I don't altogether trust that pushing kind myself, and he's that sort. Why, I saw him, with my own eyes, walk past this house with our Miss Mary as bold as brass. I'll warrant if Squire had seen him he'd have been put out."
"He was her partner at dinner last night," Fusby was saying, "and what's more," here Mrs Willets lowered her voice mysteriously, "he says as he looked at her that loving, he's sure he's after her."
"After your grandmother!" Willets said rudely, his hawk's eyes bright with anger. "As if Miss Mary would so much as look at him! Let him seek a mate in his own class."
"That's just what he won't do; Miss Gallup—she's that set-up and silly about him—says he must marry a lady, one who'll be able to help him now he's got so high up. I'm surprised, I own it, at Squire—but probably it was the Mistress, she's all for friendliness always. But I'll warrant they'd both be in a pretty takin' if they thought he was after Miss Mary."
"I tell you he's nothing of the kind," Willets shouted, thumping the table so violently that he hurt his hand. "It's scandalous to say such things, and so I'll tell Fusby the first time I see him—gossiping old silly."
"Now, William, it's no good going on against Fusby. He was as upset as you could be yourself, an' he only told me when he looked in this afternoon because he felt worried like. He wouldn't care a bit if it wasn't that she seems taken with 'im. He says he saw them whisperin' at dinner, and young Gallup he give something to Miss Mary under the table. Fusbysawthem."
"I don't believe it," Willets said stoutly. "It's all some foolishness Fusby's gone and made up. I don't hold with such cackle, and I'm surprised at you, my dear, allowing him to say such things."
"How could I stop him? He was worried, I tell you. You talk to him about it yourself and see what he says."
"I'm not going to talk about Miss Mary to anyone, let alone Fusby. There's nothing but mischief happens when people begins talking about a young lady. I've seen it over and over again. If, which I can't believe, young Gallup's got the cheek to be after our Miss Mary, he'll be choked off, and pretty quick too."
"Who's going to do the chokin'? He's in parlyment, he's got plenty money, there's nothing against him as I know of, and they've asked him to their house. Who's going to do the chokin?"
Mrs Willets paused, breathless and triumphant. She seemed to take a malicious delight in considering the possibility of such a courtship.
Willets looked at her steadily. "We shan't have far to seek," he said, "and that old fool Fusby's got a maggot in his head. Why, the fellow's gone to London; Parliament meets to-morrow, I saw it in the paper."
Mrs Willets nodded, as who should say "I could an' I would"—aloud she remarked, "And Miss Mary's going to London to her granpa for a long visit, beautiful new clothes she's gettin', and going to see the King and Queen and all, so they're certain to meet. It's quite like a story book."
Willets frowned. He had once spent two days in London. He realised what a big place it was, but he also remembered that during those two days he had met seven people he knew in other parts of the country.
Reggie kept his word as to not interfering with Mary till such time as she should have seen a little more of the world. How much of the world in general, and the male portion of it in particular, he was willing she should see, he could not make up his mind. Sometimes he thought a very little would sufficiently salve his conscience and make a definite course of action possible. Reggie was not one of those who feared his fate. He was always eager to put it to the touch. Inaction was abhorrent to him. To desire a thing and to do nothing to obtain it seemed to him sheer foolishness. Whether any amount of effort would get for him what he desired just now was on the knees of the gods. But it was the waiting that tried him far more than the uncertainty. He was not conceited. He was confident, ready to take risks and to accept responsibility, but that is quite another thing.
Just before her birthday he sent her a little necklet under cover to Mrs Ffolliot, asking that it might be put with Mary's other presents on her plate that morning. And she had written to thank him for it, but he did not answer the letter. He had always been by way of writing to her from time to time; letters, generally embellished with comic sketches and full of chaff and nonsense, which were shared by the family. Lately he had not felt in the mood to write such letters. He wanted to see her with an unceasing ache of longing intense and persistent; and if he wrote he wanted to write, not a love letter—Reggie did not fancy he'd be much of a hand at love letters—but something intimate and revealing that would certainly be unsuitable for "family reading."
Then he got two letters from Redmarley that seemed to him to need an answer.
These were the letters:—
REDMARLEY,Tuesday.
DEAR REGGIE,—We were all very excited to see it in theGazettethis morning, though of course we knew it was coming. The children took theTimesdown to Willets at tea-time, and Fusby was at special pains to ask mother after lunch if there was any chance of Captain Peel coming down soon. Is there? You won't find me here unless it's very soon, for I'm actually to be allowed to stay with grannie for quite a long time. After swearing that I should only go up for the drawing-room, and that it was nonsense to talk of my going out at all till mother could take me, thepaterhas suddenly veered round, and I am to go up to Woolwich on May-Day, and what's more, he is taking me up himself. At first I thought I was to go with Grantly when he went back to the Shop, but that wouldn't do seemingly, Grantly wasn't enough chaperon, so father's coming just for one night.
Last night we had a dinner-party and the Liberal member took me in. He is such an odd little man. Very, very good, I should think; very kind—not hard-hearted and ruthless like some people who write cruel stories about war—he is a nonconformist of sorts and doesn't do any of the usual things, so it's a little difficult to talk to him, but mother managed it—to make him talk, I mean. I heard him murmuring away like anything while we were playing bridge. She likes him too. He has an odd way of looking at you as if you were a picture and not a person. Don't you think it's fun to be going to town on May-Day and to have proper dinner every night whether there are people or not. I hope there will be lots of people. Do come to Woolwich while I'm there, and mind you treat me with great respect.
When is the new story coming out? I wish they'd hurry up. It will be so exciting to hear people talk about it and to think I know who wrote it and they don't. Clara Bax came with the Campions last night—do you remember her? She isverypretty and so clever, understands all about politics and things like that. Fancy, she sells newspapers in the street for the Cause. She asked me if I'd help her, and I thought it would be great fun, but father—you know how he pounces—heard from the other end of the table, and though just a minute before he'd been ever so sympathetic with Miss Bax, at once interfered, and said I was much too ignorant to take any active part as yet, and Grantly frowned at me across the table. Would you buy a newspaper from me, I wonder?
When father pounces I always feel that I could almost marry an impossible person just to annoy him; but the worst of it is that I should have the impossible person always, and I might get rather tired of it. Why should Miss Bax steal a horse and father beam and pay her compliments, and yet if I so much as look over the fence he shoos me away with a pitch-fork.
I wonder if you will get out to India, as you wish? In a way I hope you won't, because you'd go out in the autumn, wouldn't you? and if you are stationed anywhere at home you could come sometimes for a few days' hunting; but of course if you want it very much I want you to have it.
This is a very long letter. Good-bye, Reggie, and heaps of grats. You a captain and me grown up: we are coming on.—Yours: affectionately,
P.S.—Some fiend in human shape sent Ger a little red book, trumpet, and bugle notes for the army, and he makes Miss Glover play them and then practises. There's one thing, it's a little change from the eternal "cook-house door," but it's very dreadful all the same.
BRIDGE HOUSE, REDMARLEY,27th. April.
DEAR SIR,—Excuse the liberty I take in writing to offer you my congratulations on the announcement in the paper yesterday. Master Ger and Miss Kitten came to tea with my wife, and the mistress, with her usual kindness, sent me the paper. When I first knew you, sir, you were very much the size Master Ger is now, and yet it seems but yesterday when I was teaching you to throw a fly just beyond the bridge here. I always look on you as one of our young gentlemen, for you've come amongst us so many years now and always been so free and pleasant, and I hope I may have the pleasure of going out with you often in the future, though Master Ger did say he'd heard that you were thinking of India. If that is so, I hope you'll make a point of coming down for a few days early in June, when the fly will be at its best. If this mild weather continues we ought to get some very sizeable fish.
It's funny to me to think how I've been here twenty-three years come Michaelmas, and when the present Squire came I never thought I should stop, he not being fond of sport. If I may say so, you, sir, had a good deal to do with me stopping on that first summer, me being very fond of children, and then when they came at the Manor House and the mistress always sent them down to be shown to us as soon as ever they went out, I began to feel I'd taken root here, and so I suppose I have.
Master Ger is becoming a first-rate performer on the bugle, he played for us yesterday, quite wonderful it was. My wife begs to join with me in respectful congratulations.—Your obedient servant,
He wrote to Willets at once, promising to come down at the end of May for a week-end, even if he couldn't get more. He was frightfully busy, for he was one of the instructors at Chatham, and had many other irons in the fire as well. He waited till he knew Mary was in Woolwich and then he wrote to her:—
It was nice of you to send me such pretty grats, and I am truly appreciative. I also had the jolliest letter from old Willets. He promises good sport very shortly, and I shall make a point of turning up at Redmarley when the fly is on the water, if only for a couple of nights, for when Willets foretells "sizeable fish" you know you're in for a first-class thing. It will be queer to be at the Manor House and you away. Only once has that happened to me, the year you were at school, and now "all that's shuv be'ind you" and you're out and dancing about. I shall certainly have urgent private affairs in Woolwich during the next month. Talk of respect! When was I ever anything but grovelling? And once I have gazed upon your portrait in train and feathers I shall be reduced to such a state of timidity you won't know me.
The other day I met your friend Clara Bax sellingVotes for Womenat the Panton Street corner of Leicester Square, and she hadn't at all a Hurrah face on. I greeted her and bought one of the beastly little papers, and went on my way. But something caused me to look back, and I beheld Miss Bax seemingly in difficulties with two young feller-me-lads, who evidently had no intention of going on. There was no policeman handy—besides, there's a coolness at present between members of the force and the fair militants—so I went back and dealt faithfully with Miss Bax's admirers, and they departed, I regret to say, blaspheming.
Miss Bax seemed rather shaken, the type was evidently new to her, and I suggested that she should quit her pitch for the moment and come and have lunch with me; so we went together to thePetit Riche, where we consumed an excellent omelette; and the bundle of papers, which I, Mary, had nobly carried through the streets of London, sat on a chair between us and did chaperon.
Personally, I see no reason why women should not have votes if they want 'em, but I see every reason why no woman, and above all no young woman, should sell papers anywhere, more especially in Leicester Square. I'd like to give the Panks, and the Peths, and the Hicemen a bit of my mind on the subject. The mere thought of you ever indulging in such unseemly vagaries fills me with horror unspeakable. Talk of the Squire! Pouncing and pitchforks wouldn't be in it with me, I can tell you, and yet Miss Bax isn't an orphan.
That very day I met a lugubrious procession of females, encased in large sandwich-boards proclaiming a meeting somewhere. They were dismally dodging the traffic, and looked about as dejected as they could look—ladies every one of them. I begin to think old England's no place for women when they're reduced to that sort of thing—what do you say to India for a change?
The story will be out next month, but you won't like it—too technical.
I hope young Grantly's doing some work. This term counts a lot, and he mustn't pass out low for the honour of the family.
My salaams to the General and Mrs Grantly, and to you—my remembrances. Do you, by the way, remember "our last ride together" in January? When shall we have another? Would the General let us ride in the park one day if I could get off?—Yours,
P.S.—Why the kind and blameless member for Marlehouse? Has the Squire changed his politics? It's all very well for you to say the young man looked at you as if you were a picture. We've another name for that sort of sheep's eyes where I come from. He'd better not let me catch him at it.
Eloquent came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to pay court to a girl who belongs to what his father was wont to call "the classes." He wondered how they managed it. Such girls, it seemed to him, were never left alone for a minute. One's only chance was to see them at parties in a crowd, and if you did dine at their houses, there was always bridge directly after dinner, when conversation was restricted to "I double hearts," or "with you," or "No." He studied the rules of bridge industriously, for he found on inquiry that even Cabinet Ministers did not disdain it as a recreation. Therefore Dalton shared with blue-books the little table by his bed.
It's a far cry from Westminster to Woolwich, and in spite of indefatigable spade-work on his part, it was well on in the third week in May before he so much as caught a glimpse of Mary Ffolliot.
Then one morning he saw her in Bond Street with her grandmother. She was on the opposite side of the street rather ahead of him, but he knew that easy strolling walk, the flat back, and proud carriage of the head: that head with its burnished hair coiled smoothly under a bewitching hat. They stopped to look in at Asprey's window, and he dashed across the road in the full stream of traffic. Two indignant taxi-drivers swore, and he reached the curb breathless, but uninjured, just as they went into the shop.
He stood staring at the window, keeping at the same time a sharp look-out on the door.
What an age they were!
He had just decided that the only thing to do was to go in and buy something, when they came out.
Mary saw him at once, and his round face looked so wistful that she greeted him with quite unnecessary warmth. She recalled him to Mrs Grantly, who, remembering vaguely that he was a young man who had "risen from the ranks," was also more cordial than the occasion demanded.
He walked up Bond Street with them, piloted them across Piccadilly, and turned with them down Haymarket, so plainly delighted to see them, so nervous, so pathetically anxious to please, that Mrs Grantly's hospitable instincts, fatally easy to rouse where pity played a part, overcame her discretion. Her husband and her daughter used to declare that she had a perfect genius for encumbering herself with impossible people—and repenting afterwards. With dismay she realised that Eloquent had, apparently, attached himself to them. Short of cruelly wounding his feelings, she saw herself walking about London all day, accompanied by this painfully polite young man. It seemed impossible to call a taxi, and leave him desolate there on the pavement unless . . . Mrs Grantly's heart was hopelessly soft where animals were concerned, and just then Eloquent reminded her of nothing so much as an affectionate dog, allowed to frisk gaily to the front door, and cruelly shut in on the wrong side, as she said—
"We've got to meet my husband at the Stores, Mr Gallup, perhaps you'll kindly get us a taxi, as I'm rather tired."
His woebegone face was too much for her, and she added, "We're always at home on Sunday afternoons."
Mary rather wondered at her grannie.
The taxi drove away and Eloquent walked down Haymarket as though he were treading on air. To-day was Friday. Sunday, oh blessed day! was the day after to-morrow.
There were clovers nodding in her hat, a wide-brimmed fine straw hat that threw soft shadows over her blue eyes and turned them dark as the clear water underneath Redmarley Bridge. And he would see her again on Sunday.
That lady, that handsome portly lady, he had been afraid of her at first, she looked so large and imposing, but how kind she was! How wonderfully kind and hearty she had been. It was she who had invited him. "We are always at home on Sundays," she said. Surely that meant he might go more than once?
That night he made his maiden speech in the House.
* * * * * *
Reggie went down to Redmarley at the beginning of June from Saturday afternoon till Sunday evening. The Squire had a bad cold and was confined to the house. His nerves vibrated, so did the tempers of other people, but Reggie did not care. He joined Willets at the river and fished till dinner-time. Directly after dinner he went out again and they had splendid sport till nearly ten. Willets walked with him back to the house, and Reggie had a curious feeling that Willets wanted to tell him something and couldn't come to the point. So strong was this feeling that as they parted he said, "I shan't go to bed yet, Willets. It's such a perfect night—may stroll down to the bridge, and if you're still up we might have a cigar together."
He went into the house, chatted a while to Mrs Ffolliot and the Squire, and when they went to bed let himself out very quietly and strolled down the drive and out of the great gates to the bridge. The perfect peace of the warm June night, the yellow moonlight on the quiet water, the wide-spanned bridge, the long straggling street of irregular gabled houses so kindly and so sheltering with their overhanging eaves, the dear familiar charm of it all seemed to grip Reggie by the throat and caused an unwonted smarting in his eyes.
The village was absolutely deserted save for one motionless figure sitting on the wall at the far end of the bridge.
"Hullo, Willets," Reggie called, "not in bed yet?"