Читать книгу The Ffolliots of Redmarley - L. Allen Harker - Страница 5

When Eloquent was six years old his visits to the "Manshun" at

Redmarley ceased.

Old Mr. Ffolliot died, and his nephew, Mr. Hilary, reigned in his stead. The butler and the housekeeper, handsomely pensioned, left the village. The staff of servants was much reduced, and at first Mr. Hilary Ffolliot only came down to Redmarley for two or three days at a time. Then he married and came to live there altogether.

Eloquent had liked going to Redmarley. The place attracted him, and the people were kind, even if they were wrong-headed as to politics. One day he asked his aunt when they would go again.

"I don't fancy we shall go much now," she replied; "most of my friends have left. It's all different now up at the 'Manshun,' with a young missus and a new housekeeper; though they seem pleased enough about it in the village; a well-spoken, nice-looking young lady they says she is, but I shan't go there no more. They don't know me and I don't know them, and there we'll have to leave it."

And there it was left.

Redmarley would probably have faded altogether from Eloquent's mind, but for something that occurred to give it a new interest in his eyes.

The summer that he was seven, he was sent to the Grammar School. He came home every day directly after morning lessons, for he was as yet considered too small to take part in the games which were at that time but slightly supervised.

One day he returned to find a victoria and pair standing at the shop door, coachman on the box, footman standing on the pavement. This was unusual. Such an equipage must, he felt, belong to some member of the dangerously seductive "upper classes" his dada warned him against so often. The class that some day would want him. The class he was to keep at arm's length till he was safely "in."

The shop door was open, and Eloquent looked in. Dada, himself, was serving a customer; moreover, he was looking particularly brisk and pleased.

Eloquent crept into the shop cautiously. None noticed him. The four shopmen were serving other customers, and they all happened to be at the counter on the right-hand side.

It was a long shop with two counters that stretched its entire length, and was rather dark and close as a rule, but to-day there was bright sunshine outside. It shone through the big plate-glass windows, the glass door stood open, and somehow the shop looked gay. Dada had the left-hand counter all to himself.

Eloquent had never before seen anyone in the least like this customer, who, with slender hands, sat turning over little ready-made suits, boy's suits, and feeling the stuff to see if it were strong; she had taken off one of her long white gloves, and it lay beside the suits.

Eloquent gazed and gazed, and edged up the side of the counter towards her. Had he possessed eyes for anybody else he would have observed that the four assistants were staring also, and that his father, even, seemed very much absorbed by this particular purchaser.

And, after all, why?

She was just a tall, quite young woman, very simply dressed in white.

But she was beautiful.

Not pretty; beautiful in a large, luminous, quite intelligible way.

It was all there, the gracious sovereignty of feature, colouring, above all, expression—that governs men.

Little Eloquent knew it and came edging up the shop, drawn irresistibly as by some powerful magnetic force.

The young shopmen knew it, and neglected their patrons as much as they dared to stare at her.

Mr. Gallup knew it, and stood rubbing his hands and thoroughly enjoying the good moment.

Those other customers knew it, and although the inattention of the young shopmen annoyed them, they sat well sideways in their chairs that they, too, might take a peep at the lady without rudely turning round.

The only person in the shop who appeared to know nothing about it was the lady herself. She bent her lovely head over the little suits and pondered, murmuring:

"I do wish I knew which they'd like best, a Norfolk jacket, or a jacket and waistcoat. Can you remember which you liked best?" she asked, suddenly lifting large, earnest eyes to Mr. Gallup's flushed and cheerful countenance.

"Really, madam," said Mr. Gallup, rather taken aback at the very personal turn the subject had taken, "I shouldn't think it matters in the least. Both are equally suitable."

At that moment, the lady caught sight of Eloquent edging, edging up the side of the counter, ever nearer to this astonishing vision.

"Here's somebody who can tell us," she exclaimed. "I'll explain to him. … I'm buying suits for three little boys—Sunday suits, for church and Sunday school, you know—I want them plain and serviceable so that by and bye they won't look funny for school—you know; well, would they like coats and waistcoats, or a Norfolk—which do you think?"

"Coats and waistcoats," said Eloquent promptly, his eyes still glued to her face.

"Why?" asked the lady.

"Because you can take off your coat, and then you're in your shirt-sleeves."

"But aren't you in your shirt-sleeves when you take off a Norfolk?"

"No," said Eloquent, "then you're in your shirt."

The lady laughed. Mr. Gallup laughed. The assistants, who had not heard, for Eloquent spoke very low, sniggered sympathetically, and the other customers frowned.

"That settles it," said the lady, "and I'm very much obliged to you. I'll have the three little grey suits with coats and waistcoats. Poor little chaps, their mother died just a fortnight ago, and they've nothing tidy."

"My mother's dead," Eloquent announced abruptly.

The lady's eyes had been so soft, her face so tender and full of pity as she said, "poor little chaps," he felt a sudden spasm of jealousy. He wanted her to look at him like that.

He did not see his father's start, nor the momentary pained contraction of his cheerful features.

Eloquent's eyes were fixed on the lady's face, and sure enough he got what he wanted.

"I'm so sorry," she said simply, and she looked it; she had turned her kind eyes full upon him, eyes wide apart and grey and limpid.

He edged still nearer to her; so near that he stood upon her white dress with his dusty little boots, and still he stared unblinkingly.

The young lady looked puzzled. Why did the child regard her so fixedly? She suddenly awoke to the fact that everyone in the shop was looking at her. Even Mr. Gallup, on the other side of the counter, seemed suddenly stricken by inertia, and instead of putting up the little suits in paper, was staring at the pair of them.

Then Eloquent was moved to explain.

"I've never seen anybody look like you before," he said gravely, "and I like watching you."

"Thank you," said the lady, and she patted his cheek.

She laughed.

Mr. Gallup laughed, and came back to the affairs of the Golden Anchor, busying himself in tying up her parcel, while he explained that Eloquent was his only child.

Eloquent did not laugh, for she was going away.

Dada carried the parcel to the shop door and gave it to the footman. He put it in the carriage, and held out a thin silken cloak for the lady, which she put on. He covered her knees with a linen dust rug, and smiling and bowing she drove away.

Eloquent turned back into the shop with his father.

It seemed to have got very dark and gloomy again.

"Dada," he asked, "who is that lady?"

"That," said Mr. Gallup, loudly and with no little pride, "is Mrs

Ffolliot of Redmarley, the bride."

The customers were all listening, the four assistants were all listening.

Mr. Gallup held out his hand to Eloquent, and together they went through the shop and upstairs into the sitting-room, that looked out upon the market-place.

"Dada, is she one of the Classes?" Eloquent inquired, nervously.

"I believe you, my boy," Mr. Gallup responded jocosely, "very much so, she is; a regular out and outer."

His father went away chuckling, but Eloquent was much depressed.

He went and stood over against one of the portraits of John Bright and looked at him for help.

"Be just and fear not," said that statesman.

"All very well," thought Eloquent, "she didn't pat your cheek."

He went and sought counsel of Mr. Gladstone, a youngish Mr. Gladstone in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester: "At last, my friends, I have come amongst you … unmuzzled," said the legend underneath his portrait.

But Eloquent felt that this was just what he was not. He felt very muzzled indeed. All sorts of vague thoughts went surging through his brain that could find no expression in words.

"I do believe," he said desperately, "if she was to give the whisperingest little call, I'd be obliged to go … and so would you," he continued, shaking his head at Mr. Gladstone, "you'd do just the same."

He felt that, in some inexplicable, subtly mysterious fashion, there was a kind of affinity between Mr. Gladstone and Mrs. Ffolliot.

Mr. Gladstone would understand, and not be too hard upon him.

In the years that followed, he saw Mrs. Ffolliot from time to time from the window or in the street, but never again did he come so close to her as to touch her.

Never did he see her, however, without that strange thrill of enthusiastic admiration; that dumb, inarticulate sense of having seen something entirely satisfying and delightful; satisfying for the moment only: he paid dearly for his brief joy in after hours of curious depression and an aching sense of emptiness and loss. She was so far away.

Sometimes she was driving with her husband, and little Eloquent wondered after they had passed what manner of man it could be who had the right to sit by her whenever he liked. He never had time to notice Mr. Ffolliot, till one day he saw him in the carriage alone, and scrutinised him sternly. Long afterwards he read how some admirer of Lord Hartington had said that what he liked most about him was his "You-be-damnedness." The phrase, Eloquent felt, exactly described Mr. Ffolliot; aloof, detached, a fastidious, fine gentleman to his finger tips, entirely careless as to what the common people thought of him; not willingly conscious, unless rudely reminded of their existence, that there were any common people: such, Eloquent felt sure, was Mr. Ffolliot's mental attitude, and he hated him.

Mr. Ffolliot wore a monocle, and just at that time a new figure loomed large on the little boy's political horizon—a figure held up before him not for admiration, but reprobation—as a turncoat, an apostate, a real and menacing danger to the Cause dada had most at heart; the well-known effigy of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. He always appeared with monocle and orchid. In his expression, judged by the illustrated papers, there was something of that same "you-be-damnedness" he disliked so much in Mr. Ffolliot. Eloquent lumped them together in his mind, and hated Mr. Ffolliot as ardently as he worshipped his wife; and to no one at all did he ever say a word about either of them.

He rose rapidly in the school, and when he was nine years old had reached a form with boys much older than himself, boys old enough to write essays; and Eloquent wrote essays too; essays which were cruder and quainter than those of his companions. One day the subject given—rather an abstruse theme for boys to tackle—was Beauty. Eloquent wrote as follows:

"Beauty is tall and has a pleasant sounding voice, and you want to come as near as you can. You want to look at her all the time because you don't see it often. Beauty is most pretty to look at and you don't seem to see anyone else when it's there. She smells nice, a wafty smell like tobacco plants not pipes in the evening. When beauty looks at you you feel glad and funny and she smiles at you and looks with her eyes. She is different to aunts and people's wives. Taller and quite a different shape. Beauty is different.—E. A. Gallup, class IIIb."

He was twelve years old when they left Marlehouse. His father had bought a larger business in a busy commercial town, where there was a grammar school famous throughout the Midlands.

There Eloquent was educated until he was seventeen, when he, too, went into the outfitting business. He attended lectures and the science school in his free time, and belonged to two or three debating clubs. He was in great request at the smaller political gatherings as a speaker, and with constant practice bade fair to justify his name.

He occasionally went to Marlehouse, generally on political business, but never to Redmarley. Nevertheless, stray items of Redmarley news reached him through his aunt, who still kept up her friendship with some of the village folk there.

From her he learned that there were a lot of young Ffolliots; that they were wild and "mishtiful," unmanageable and generally troublesome; that Mrs. Ffolliot was still immensely popular and her husband hardly known after all these years; that, owing, it was supposed, to their increasing family, they did not entertain much, and that the "Manshun" itself looked much as it had always looked.

Eloquent made no comment on these revelations, but he treasured them in his heart. Some day he intended to go back to Redmarley. He never forgot Mrs. Ffolliot, or the impression she had made upon him the first time he saw her.

When Eloquent was four-and-twenty Abel Gallup died. He then learned that his father was a much wealthier man than anyone had supposed. Miss Gallup was left an annuity of a hundred a year. The rest of the very considerable property (some seventy thousand pounds) was left to Eloquent, but with the proviso that until he was elected a member of Parliament he could not touch more than three hundred a year, though he was to be allowed two thousand pounds for his election expenses whenever, and as often as he chose to stand, until he was elected; as long as the money lasted. Once he was in Parliament the property was his absolutely, to dispose of as he thought fit.

It was proof of Abel Gallup's entire trust in his son, that there was not one word in the will that in any way whatsoever expressed even a hope as to the legatee's political convictions.

Miss Gallup went back to Redmarley. Eloquent sold the outfitting business, and went to London to study parliamentary business from the stranger's gallery.