CHRISTMAS AT REDMARLEY
That year Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, and on the Saturday afternoon
Eloquent drove out from Marlehouse to Redmarley to spend the week-end
with his aunt. She was out when he arrived, and he went straight to
the vicarage, asked for the vicar, and was shown into the study, where
Mr Molyneaux sat smoking by the fire in a deep-seated high-backed chair.
Even as he entered the room, Eloquent was conscious of the pleasurable
thrill that things beautiful and harmonious never failed to evoke. The
windows faced west; the red sun, just sinking behind Redmarley Woods,
shone in on and was reflected from walls covered from floor to ceiling
with books; books bound for the most part in mellow brown and yellow
calf, that seemed to give forth an amber light as from sun-warmed
turning beeches.
The vicar had discarded his clerical coat, and wore a shabby grey-green
Norfolk jacket frayed at the cuffs; nevertheless, Eloquent sincerely
admired him as he rose to give courteous greeting to his guest.
The old vicar was stout and bald, and the grey hair that fringed his
head was decidedly rumpled. A long face, with high, narrow forehead
and pointed beard, cheeks heavy and creased, straight nose, with
strongly marked, sensitive nostrils. The mouth, full-lipped and
shutting firmly under the grey moustache, cut straight across the upper
lip; the eyes, rather prominent blue eyes, had once been bold and
merry, and were still keen. A fine old face, deeply lined and
sorrowful, bearing upon it the impress of great possibilities that had
remained--possibilities. He was somehow in keeping with his room, this
warm, untidy, comfortable room that smelt of tobacco and old leather,
where there was such a curious jumble of things artistic and sporting:
a few pictures and bas-reliefs, nearly all of the pre-Renaissance
Italian School, a big stuffed trout in a glass case, a fox's brush and
mask, an old faded cricket cap; and over the carved mantelshelf, the
portrait of a Georgian beauty in powder and patches, whose oval face,
heavy-lidded eyes, and straight features were not unlike the vicar's
own.
There was in the vicar's manner the welcoming quality that puts the
shyest person at his ease. He was secretly much surprised that young
Gallup should call upon him; but no hint of this appeared in his
manner, and Eloquent found no difficulty in stating the object of his
visit with business-like directness.
"I came to ask you," he remarked with his usual stiff solemnity, "if
you would care for me to read the lessons at morning service
to-morrow. . . . I do not read badly. . . . I have studied elocution."
The humorous lines round the old vicar's eyes deepened, but he answered
with equal gravity, "That is very good of you, and I gratefully accept
your kind offer. General Grantly has promised to read the first
lesson, but I shall be glad if you will read the second. Will you do
both at the afternoon service? There's no evensong on Christmas Day."
This was rather more than Eloquent had bargained for, but . . . she
might come to the afternoon service as well. "I shall be most happy,"
he said meekly, "to do anything I can to assist."
The vicar rang for tea, but Eloquent arose hastily, saying he had
promised to have tea with his aunt. He had no desire to prolong the
interview with this urbane old gentleman now that its object was
achieved. Mr Molyneux saw him to the front door and watched him for a
moment as he bustled down the drive. "So that," he said to himself, as
he went back to the warm study, "is our future member . . . for
everyone says he will get in. Why does he want to read the lessons, I
wonder? It will certainly do him no good with his dissenting
constituents, and it is they who will get him in--what can his object
be?"
The Ffolliot family formed quite a procession as they marched up the
aisle on Christmas morning. General and Mrs Grantly were there;
Reggie, Mr and Mrs Ffolliot, and the six young Ffolliots. They
overflowed into the seat behind, and the Kitten, whom nothing ever awed
or subdued, was heard to remark that since she couldn't sit with
Willets, the keeper, who always had "such instasting things in his
pottets," she'd sit "between the Ganpies." Reggie, Mary, and her four
brothers filled the second seat: Mary sat at the far end, and Ger
nearest the aisle, that he might gaze entrancedly at his grandfather
while he read the lesson. Reggie came next to Ger, and Grantly
separated Uz and Buz, so that Eloquent only caught an occasional
glimpse of Mary's extremely flat back between the heads of other
worshippers.
"Oh come, all ye faithful!" the choir sang lustily as it started in
procession round the church, and the faithful responded vigorously.
The Kitten pranced on her hassock, and always started the new verse
before everyone else in the clearest of pure trebles. The Ffolliot
boys shouted, and for once Mr Ffolliot forebore to frown on them. No
woman with a houseful of children can remain quite unmoved on Christmas
morning during that singularly jubilant invocation, and Mrs Grantly and
Margery Ffolliot ceased to sing, for their eyes were full of tears. Mr
Ffolliot fixed his monocle more firmly, and bent forward to look at the
Kitten, and to catch her little pipe above the shouts of her brothers
behind.
The Kitten sang words of her own composition during the Psalms, her
grandparents both singing loudly themselves in their efforts not to
hear her, for the Kitten's improvisations were enough to upset the
gravity of a bench of bishops.
The General read the first lesson in a brisk and business-like
monotone, and when he had finished his grandsons applauded noiselessly
under the book-board.
The Kitten was very much to the fore during "Praise him and magnify him
for ever," and then came the second lesson.
Eloquent walked up the aisle and took his stand at the lectern with the
utmost unconcern. Shy and awkward he might be in ordinary social
intercourse, but whenever it was a matter of standing up before his
fellow-creatures and haranguing them, his self-consciousness dropped
from him like a discarded garment, and he instantly acquired a mental
poise and serene self-confidence wholly lacking at other times.
The second lesson on Christmas morning contains the plainest possible
statement of a few great facts, and Eloquent proclaimed them in a
singularly melodious voice with just exactly the emphatic simplicity
they demanded.
The perfect sincerity of great literature is always impressive. All
over the church heads were turned in the direction of the lectern, and
when the short lesson ended the Kitten demanded in a quite audible
voice, "Why did he stop so soon for?"
Eloquent looked at Mary as he passed down the aisle to his place,
half-hoping she might meet his glance with the frank confident smile he
found so disturbing and delicious. But her eyes were bent upon her
prayer-book and she appeared quite unconscious that someone had just
been reading the Bible exceptionally well.
He felt chilled and disappointed. "It is quite possible," he reflected
bitterly, "that in this out-of-the-way old church they don't know good
reading from bad."
There is no sermon at Redmarley on Christmas morning, and people who
have been at the early service get out soon after twelve o'clock.
Eloquent waited in the churchyard and watched the young Ffolliots and
Reggie Peel come out. Mary saw him and nodded cheerfully, but she did
not, as he felt might have been expected, come up to him and exclaim,
"How beautifully you read!"
No one did.
Such of the congregation as had already been to early service hurried
home to look after the dinner; or, as in the case of the young
Ffolliots, to deposit prayer-books and take violent exercise until
lunch time.
In the afternoon Eloquent read the lessons to a very meagre assembly.
The Manor House seats were empty and his enthusiastic desire to be of
assistance to the vicar cooled considerably. His aunt during dinner
announced with the utmost frankness that wild horses would not drag her
to church "of an afternoon"; she "liked her forty winks peaceable."
She, however, further informed him that "he read very nice"; but as she
had said the same thing of Grantly Ffolliot's performance, her nephew
could not feel uplifted by her praise.
The vicar poured a little balm on his wounded spirit by hastening after
him as he walked slowly and gloomily homewards, to thank him with warm
urbanity for his kind help, but he made no remark upon his reading.
They parted at the vicarage gate, and Eloquent pursued his way alone.
He felt restless and curiously disappointed. Everything was exactly as
it had been before, and somehow he had expected it to be different.
So far he had encountered no special desire on the part of the "upper
classes" to cultivate him. He was quite shrewd enough to perceive that
those he had met--the Campions at Marlehouse and the few who had
offered him hospitality in London--had done so purely on political
grounds.
Only one, so far, had shown any kindness to him, the shy, wistfully
self-conscious young man, hungry for sympathy and comprehension. Only
one, Mary Ffolliot, had seemed to recognise in him other possibilities
than those of party: but had she?
Anyway, here was he in the same village with her not a mile away, and
yet a gulf stretched between them apparently impassable as a river in
flood to a boatless man who could not swim.
That evening Miss Gallup decided that her nephew did not possess much
general conversation.