ONE OF THEM
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.