Читать книгу The Ffolliots of Redmarley - L. Allen Harker - Страница 9

Eloquent found that M. B. Ffolliot had not deceived him as to the nearness of the village. A few yards to the left, over the bridge, and the long, irregular street lay in front of him; the river on one side; the houses, various in size and shape, but alike in one respect, that the most modern of them was over two hundred years old. He knew that his aunt's house was at the very end of the street and furthest from the bridge, and that Redmarley village was nearly a mile in length. Yet he did not hurry. He walked very slowly in the middle of the muddy road, resolved to marshal and tabulate his impressions as was his orderly wont.

But in this instance his impressions refused to conform to either process, and remained mutinously chaotic.

He found that, in thinking of Mary, he unconsciously called her "that girl," whereas such maidens as he hitherto had encountered were always "young ladies." He didn't know many "young ladies," but those he did know he there and then called into review and compared with Mary Ffolliot.

They were all of them much better dressed, he was certain of that. But he was equally assured that not one of them would have forborne to laugh at his plight, as he sat abject and ridiculous in the very largest puddle in Redmarley woods.

She had not laughed.

And would any one of these well-dressed young ladies (Eloquent took into account that it was Sunday) have held out helping hands to a total stranger with such absolute simplicity, so entirely as a matter of course? not as a young woman to a young man, but as one fellow-creature to another who had, literally, in this instance, fallen upon evil times.

How tall she was, and how strong.

Again (he blushed at the recollection) he seemed to feel the clasp of those muscular young hands in the worn tan-coloured gloves, gloves loose at the wrists, that did not button but were drawn on. He had noticed her leather gloves as she held out her hands to him, and knew that in the language of the trade they were "rather costly to start with, but lasted for ever."

They did not stock goods of that class in the particular branch of the outfitting trade that he knew best. People wouldn't pay the price. And he found himself saying over and over again, "wouldn't pay the price," and it was of the girl he was thinking, not of her gloves.

How eager she had been that he should come and be brushed; "I've no objection," Eloquent reflected, "to being under an obligation to her, but I'm hanged if I'd be beholden to Ffolliot for anything." Somehow it gave him infinite satisfaction to think of Mary's father in that familiar fashion. He, to put up boards about trespassers in the woods!

Who was he?

Eloquent ignored the fact that they were the same boards that had been there in old Mr. Ffolliot's time, and badly needed repainting.

That little boy, too, who first appeared to suspect him of poaching, and then expressed sorrow that he would not stay to tea. What an extraordinary family they seemed to be!

The girl had actually owned to being constantly suspected of all sorts of damage, and not always wrongfully either. He was devoured by curiosity as to what forms her lawlessness could take.

"A bit of a gawk" her young brother had called her. How dared he?

"Goddess," thought Eloquent, was much more appropriate than gawk. He had no very clear conception of a goddess, but vaguely pictured a woman fair and simple and superb and young—not quite so young as Mary Ffolliot. It was only during the last year or two that he had read any poetry, and he was never quite sure whether he liked it or not. It was upsetting stuff he considered, vaguely disquieting and suggestive. Yet there were times when it came in useful. It said things for a chap that he couldn't say for himself. It expressed the inexpressible … in words. It synthesised and formulated fantastic and illusive experiences.

His youthful facility in learning "bits" of prose by heart had not deserted him, and he found verse even easier to remember; in fact, sometimes certain stanzas would recur with irritating persistency when he didn't want them at all; and in thinking of this, to him, new type of girl, there flowed into his mind the lines:

"Walking in maiden wise,

Modest and kind and fair,

The freshness of spring in her eyes

And the fulness of spring in her hair."

Gawk, indeed! that little boy ought to have his head smacked.

And having come to a definite condition at last, he found he had reached his aunt's house. The lamp was lit in the parlour and the blind was down, for it was already quite dark. He had taken twenty-five minutes to walk from Mr. Ffolliot's gates to his aunt's house.

Miss Gallup, plump, ruddy, and garrulous, very like her brother Abel with her round pink face and twinkling eyes, was greatly delighted to see him.

"You've come to your old aunt first thing, Eloquent," she cried triumphantly, "which is no more than I expected, though none the less gratifying, and you nearly a member and all. How things do come to pass, to be sure. I wish as your poor father had lived to see this day, and you going into parlyment with the best of 'em."

"Don't say 'going in,' aunt," Eloquent expostulated. "It's quite on the cards that they won't elect me. Personally, I think they would have done better to put up a stronger candidate. Marlehouse is always looked upon as a safe Tory seat; you know Mr. Brooke has been member for a long time, and was unopposed at the last election."

"An' never opens his mouth in London from one year's end to the other, sits and sleeps, so I've heard, and leaves the rest to do all the talking and bills and that. My dear boy, don't tell me! Marlehouse folk's got too much sense to give the go-by to one as can talk and was born amongst 'em, and they all know you."

"But, Aunt Susan, I thought you were ever such a Tory. What has become of all your political convictions, if you want me to get in?"

Miss Gallup laughed. "Precious little chance; I had of 'aving any convictions all the years I kept house for your dear father; an' a pretty aunt I'd be if I could go against you now. Politics is all very well, but flesh and blood's a deal more, an' a woman wouldn't be half a woman if she didn't stand by her own. It don't seem to matter much which side's in. There'll be plenty to find fault with 'em whichever it is, and anyway from all I can hear just now you're on the winnin' side, so 'vote for Gallup,' says I, an' get someone as'll speak up for you—and not sit mumchance for all the world like a stuckey image night after night. Your bag come by the carrier all right yesterday. And now you must want your tea after that long walk—but, good gracious me, boy, have you met with an accident, or what, that you're all over with mud like that? You aren't hurted, are you?"

Eloquent again explained his mishap, but he said nothing about Mary Ffolliot. His aunt took him to the back-door and brushed him vigorously, then they both sat down to tea in her exceedingly cosy sitting-room.

"Do you like being back here again after all these years, Aunt Susan?" asked Eloquent. "I suppose everything has changed very much since you lived here before."

"Not so much as you'd think; and then the place is the same, and as one grows older that counts for a lot. When one's young, one's all for change and gallivantin', but once you're up in years 'tis the old things you cares for most; 'an when I heard as the house I was born in was empty I just had to come back. Redmarley village don't change, because no one can build. Mr. Ffolliot sees to that; not one rood of land will he sell, and the old houses looks just the same as when I was a little girl. Your father he left Redmarley when he was fourteen, and went 'prentice to the 'Golden Anchor,' an' he never cared for the village like me. I hardly knew him when I was young, he being twelve years older than me, and him coming home but seldom."

"It must make a good deal of difference having a family at … the Manor," said Eloquent, with studied carelessness. He had nearly said "the Manshun," after the fashion of the villagers.

"Of course it do. There's changes there, if you like."

"I suppose you sometimes see … the young people?"

"See them? I should just think we do, and hear them and hear about them from morning to night. There never was more mixable children than the young Ffolliots."

"How many are there?" Eloquent tried to keep his voice cool and uninterested, but he felt as he used to feel when he was a child in "hiding games," when some one told him he was "getting warm."

"Well, there's Mr. Grantly, he's the eldest; he's going to be an officer in the army like his grandpa; he's gone apprentice to some shop."

"What?" asked Eloquent, in astonishment.

"I thought it a bit queer myself, but Miss Mary herself did say it. 'Grantly's gone to the shop,' she said, 'to learn to be a soldier'; and I said, 'Well, the gentry's got more sense than I thought for, if they gives 'em a trade as well.' And Miss Mary she said again, he'd gone to a shop right enough, and went off laughing."

"But that's impossible," said Eloquent. "He must have gone either to

Sandhurst or Woolwich; there's nowhere else he could go."

"She never mentioned neither of those names. 'Shop,' she said … you needn't look at me like that, Eloquent … I'm positive."

"You were telling me how many children there were," Eloquent remarked pacifically, "Grantly, the eldest son, and then … ?"

"I'm getting warm," his mind kept saying.

"Then Miss Mary, just a year younger, very like her mother she is … in looks, but she hasn't got the gumption of Mrs. Ffolliot. That'll come, perhaps … later. A bit of a tomboy she's bin, but she's settling down."

"I suppose she is nearly grown up?"

"Between seventeen and eighteen, she'll be, but not done up her hair yet—that's Mr. Ffolliot's doin's; he's full of fads as an egg's full o' meat. Then there's the twins, Uz and Buz they calls 'em. They're at Rugby School, they are, but they'll be home for the holidays almost directly. I can't say I'm partial to scripture names myself, and only last time he was here I asked Mr. Grantly what they called them that for, when there was so many prettier names in our language, and he said, quite solemn like, 'Uz his first-born and Buz his brother, that's why, you see.' And I said, 'but they're twins, sir'; and he said, 'but Uz was born five minutes before Buz, so it's quite correct,' and went off laughing. They're always laughing at something, those children."

"Then are there just the four?' asked Eloquent, who knew perfectly well there were more.

"Oh, bless you, no; there's Master Ger; now I call him the pick of the bunch, the most conformable little chap and full of sense: he'll talk to you like one of yourselves; he's everybody's friend, is Master Ger. Miss Kitten's the youngest, and a nice handful she is. She and Master Ger does everything together, and they do say as she's the only one as don't care two pins for her papa; nothing cows her, she'd sauce the king himself if she got the chance."

"From what you say, I gather that they seem to do pretty much as they like," Eloquent remarked primly.

"Outside they do, but in the house they say those poor children's hushed up something dreadful. Mr. Ffolliot's a regular old Betty, he never ought to have had one child, let alone six. He's always reading and writing and studying and sitting with his nose in a book, and then he complains of nerves. I'd nerve him if I was his wife—but she's all for peace, poor lady, and I suppose she makes the best of a bad job."

"Is she unhappy?" Eloquent demanded, with real solicitude.

"If she is, she don't show it, anyhow. She goes her way, and he goes his, and her way's crowded with the children, and there it is."

"Are you thinking of going to church, Aunt Susan?"

Miss Gallup looked surprised.

"Well, no, not if you don't want to come. I generally go, but I'm more than willing to stop with you."

"But I'd like to go," Eloquent asserted, and got very red in the face as he did so. "I don't think I've ever been in the church here."

"Well, there's no chapel as you could go to if you was ever so minded. Old Mr. Molyneux mayn't be so active as some, but there's never been no dissent since he was vicar, and that's forty years last Michaelmas."

"What about my father?" Eloquent suggested.

"Your dear father got his dissenting opinions and his politics in

Marlehouse, not here."

"Then I'm afraid I shan't get many votes from this village," said

Eloquent, but he said it cheerfully, as though he didn't care.