THE THIN END
Eloquent rode the bicycle left outside by Miss Buttermish, rode
carefully, bearing the suit-case in his left hand. The village was
quite deserted and he reached the great gates of the Manor House
unchallenged. The gates stood open and he entered the dark shadowy
drive without having encountered a living soul. Lights gleamed from
the lower windows of the house, but the porch was in darkness. He rang
loudly, and Fusby, the old manservant, switched on the light as he
opened the door and revealed a square, oak-panelled room and the
warning cards. The inner door leading to the hall was closed, but the
sound of cheerful voices reached Eloquent.
Fusby stood expectant, and in spite of his imperturbable and almost
benedictory manner he looked mildly surprised.
"Is Mrs Ffolliot at home?" Eloquent asked rather breathlessly.
"She is, sir," Fusby answered, but in a tone that subtly conveyed the
unspoken "to some people," fixing his eyes the while on the suitcase.
"Do you think she could speak to me here?" Eloquent continued humbly.
"I think not, sir; the mistress at present is dispensing tea to the
fam'ly. She does not as a rule see people at the door. Can I take a
message?"
"I fear I must disturb her," said Eloquent, conscious all the time that
Fusby's mild gaze was concentrated on the suit-case. "One of her
sons"--for the life of him he couldn't remember the boy's ridiculous
name--"has broken his arm."
"Master Buz, sir?" asked Fusby, quite unmoved by the intelligence;
"it's generally 'im."
"Yes, Master Buz, and he asked me to give you this. . . . It's some
things of his. I'll send for the suit-case--put it out of the way
somewhere--he was dressed up . . . these are the clothes----"
"He will 'ave 'is frolic," Fusby murmured indulgently; "a very
light-'earted young gentleman he is--step this way, please, sir."
Fusby opened a door behind him, and announced in the voice of one
issuing an edict, "Mr Gallup."
There seemed to Eloquent crowds of people in the hall, mostly gathered
about a round table near the fire. He discerned Mrs Ffolliot in the
very act of "dispensing tea" and General Grantly standing on the
hearthrug warming his coat tails. Mary, too, he saw give a cup of tea
into her grandfather's hands, and he was conscious of the presence of
Mrs Grantly seated on an oaken settle at the other side of the fire
from Mrs Ffolliot. These four were clear to him as he came into the
hall. There was a fire of logs in the open fireplace and a good many
lights, and Eloquent, coming out of the soft darkness of that winter
afternoon, felt dazzled and intolerably hot.
The four people he saw first suddenly seemed to recede to an
immeasurable distance, and he became conscious of others whom he could
not focus. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, and he was
conscious that at his entrance dead silence had fallen upon the group
by the fire. Then Mrs Ffolliot rose and held out a kind fair hand to
him, and said something that he could not hear. Somehow he reached the
succouring hand and clung to it like a drowning man, mumbling the
while, "Sorry to intrude upon you, but one of your sons"--again the
name eluded him--"has broken his arm, and he's in my aunt's cottage."
"Look at Ganpie's tea!" exclaimed a shrill clear voice, and the Kitten
diverted attention from Eloquent to the General, who was calmly pouring
the tea from his newly filled cup upon the bear-skin hearthrug, as he
gazed fixedly at this bringer of ill-tidings.
Eloquent could never remember clearly what happened between the dual
announcement of the accident and the spilling of the General's tea,
till the moment when he found himself sitting on the settle beside Mrs
Grantly with a cup of tea of his own, which Mary had poured out.
Everyone else seemed to have melted away, Mrs Ffolliot to telephone to
the doctor, the General to order his motor, the Kitten and Ger to the
nursery, and the rest of the party to the four winds.
But he, Mrs Grantly, and Mary were still sitting at the fire, and Mary
had asked him if he took sugar.
"Two lumps," he said.
"So do I," said Mary, and it seemed a most wonderful coincidence of
kindred tastes.
In thinking it over afterwards it struck him that the whole family took
the accident very coolly. There was no fuss, very little exclamation;
and to Eloquent, sitting as a guest in that old hall where, as a small
boy, he had sometimes peeped wonderingly, there came a curious feeling
that either he had dreamt of this moment or that it had all happened
aeons of ages ago, and that if it was a dream then Mary was in a dream
too, that he had always wanted her, been conscious of her, only then
she was an immense way off; vaguely beautiful and desirable, but set in
a luminous haze of impossibilities, remote, apart as a star.
Now she was friendly and approachable, only a few yards away, looking
across at him with frank kind eyes and the firelight shining on her
bright hair.
The time seemed all too short till Mrs Ffolliot, dressed for driving,
in a long fur coat, came back to tell them that the doctor was at a
case five miles off, at a house where there was no telephone, and that
she had arranged to take Buz into the Marlehouse Infirmary to have the
arm set there, and, if necessary, he must stay there till he could be
moved. . . .
"Could they drive Mr Gallup back?"
So there was nothing for it but to accompany the General and Mrs
Ffolliot.
Mr Ffolliot did not appear at all.
General Grantly went outside with the chauffeur, and Eloquent again
experienced the queer dream-like sense of doing again something he had
done already as he followed Mrs Ffolliot into the motor. He had never
lost his awestruck admiration for her, and it never occurred to him to
sit down at her side. He was about to put down one of the little seats
and sit on that, when she said, "Oh, please, sit here, Mr Gallup," and
he sank into the seat beside her, confused and tremulous. Mary and Mrs
Grantly had come into the porch with them, and stood there now calling
out all sorts of messages and questions. The inner door stood open,
and the hall shone bright behind them.
The motor purred and slid swiftly down the drive.
Mrs Ffolliot switched off the light behind her head, and Eloquent
became conscious of a soft pervading scent of violets. The twenty
years that lay between her first visit to his father's shop and this
wonderful new nearness seemed to him but as one short link in a chain
of inevitable circumstances. Like a picture thrown on a screen he saw
the little boy standing at her knee, the giggling shop assistants, and
his father flushed and triumphant. And he knew that through all the
years he had always been sure that such a moment as this would come,
when he would sit beside her as an equal and a friend. . . . And here
he was, sitting with her in her father's motor, sharing the same fur
rug. What was she saying?
Something kind about the trouble he had taken . . . and the motor
stopped at his aunt's gate.
* * * * * *
Uz was in the midst of a large bite of plum-cake when Eloquent
announced his errand. Uz hastily took another bite, and just as the
Kitten drew attention to her grandfather's tea he quietly opened the
door of the hall, shut it after him softly, did the same by the front
door, and hatless, coatless, and in his pumps--for his boots were
exceedingly dirty, and Nana had caught him and turned him back to
change before tea--he started down the drive at a good swinging run.
His wind was excellent, and he reached Miss Gallup's gate in about five
minutes. Only once had he stopped, when the piece of cake he was
carrying broke off short and dropped in the mud; he peered about for it
during some four seconds, then gave it up and ran on.
The lamp was lit in Miss Gallup's sitting-room, but the blind was not
pulled down. He looked in at the window and saw his brother lying on
the sofa under the eiderdown, opened the front door--no one ever locks
a door in Redmarley unless they go out, and then the key is always
under the scraper--and walked in.
"Hullo," said Buz; "isn't this rotten?"
"Little man's just come, so I did a bunk. I didn't wait to hear his
revelations about the lovely suffragette----"
"I don't believe he'll tell," Buz said; "he's not a bad little chap, he
wasn't a bit shirty, helped me out of those beastly clothes and never
said a word; took them with him too, so's they shouldn't be found here.
I say, by the way, tell Adèle to get the jacket mended and I'll pay it
whenever I can get any money. I'm frightfully sorry about that--he cut
the sleeve right up to get my arm out. Who got the togs?"
"I don't know, he hadn't 'em when he came in----"
"Gave 'em to Fusby, I expect; he'll see they're properly
distributed----"
"What happened, did you have a lark?"
"He rose like anything," Buz chuckled delightedly. "Chuck us your
handkerchief, old chap, mine's in that coat--I'm only sorry for one
thing."
"What's that?"
"I told him if he wouldn't declare for Votes for Women he'd better put
up his shutters, and I know he thought I meant to rub it in about his
father's shop--I didn't, it would have been beastly; but I'm certain he
thought so by the way he flushed up. He's a game little beggar, he
wouldn't give in, or palaver or promise. . . . Hullo, here's two more
of the family----"
The two more were Reggie Peel and Grantly. The Ffolliots were not
demonstrative, but they always shared good-luck or ill, therefore
Reggie and Grantly made a bee-line for Miss Gallup's cottage whenever
they understood what had happened. They knew nothing of Miss
Buttermish, and neither of the younger boys enlightened them.
Miss Gallup returned to find her parlour full of Ffolliots; and just
after her came her nephew, accompanied by General Grantly and Mrs
Ffolliot, who bore Buz away in the motor to Marlehouse wrapped in a
blanket and with the broken arm in a sling.
When they had all gone--the motor towards Marlehouse, the three others
to the Manor--Eloquent stood at the open gate for a minute or two and
then went out, shutting it after him very softly, so that neither the
three walking up the road, nor his aunt waiting at her open door,
should hear. Then he, too, set off in the direction of Marlehouse. He
had no intention whatever of walking there, but he could not face his
aunt just then, nor bear the torrent of questions and comments that he
knew would submerge him.
The last hour had been for him an epoch-making, a profound experience,
and he wanted, as his aunt would have said, "to squeege his orange dry."
A course of action intensely irritating to Miss Gallup, who awaited his
return, after seeing the Ffolliots off, with the utmost impatience.
"Wherever could he have got to?"
Em'ly-Alice, however, was longing to be questioned, and Miss Gallup
indulged her.
"How did the poor young gentleman break his arm?"
"Fell off 'is bike, 'e did, and it must 'ave bin but a minute or two
after the young lady'd gone----
"Young lady! What young lady?" Miss Gallup demanded sternly.
"A young lady as come to see Mr Gallup. Miss Buttermish was 'er name;
I remember it most pertikler, because I thought what a funny name."
"Buttermish, Buttermish," Miss Gallup repeated; "where did she come
from?"
"That I can't tell you, Miss; I was in the kitchen polishing the teapot
for your tea when there comes a knock at the door, and when I opens it,
there stood the young lady. 'Can I see Mr Gallup?' she says, and
knowing he was in the parlour I as't her in. She didn't stop long and
no sooner was she gone than I hears Mr Gallup runnin' upstairs an' in
and out, and presently 'e called out, 'Master Ffolliot's broken 'is
arm,' and went off in ever such an 'urry. I see 'im run down the
garden, and 'e 'ad 'is portmanteau in 'is 'and----"
"Nonsense," Miss Gallup said crossly; "what would he be doing with a
portmanteau?"
"That I can't say, mum, but 'e 'ad it, and when 'e'd gone I took the
lamp in to the poor young gentleman wot was lyin' all 'uddled up on the
sofa--'e said 'thank you' in a muffled voice that mournful, and I made
up the fire and waited a minute but 'e didn't say no more, so I come
away, an' in a few minutes the 'ouse seemed chock-full o' people.
Where they come from passes me----"
"Well, get tea now, as quick as you can. I can't think where Mr Gallup
can have got to."
Miss Gallup lit a candle and went straight upstairs to her nephew's
room. His clothes were still in the drawers as she, herself, had
arranged them--but the suit-case, the smart new leather suit-case, with
E. A. G. in large black letters upon its lid, was gone.
Miss Gallup sank heavily on a chair. What could it mean?
She immediately connected the advent of the strange young lady and the
disappearance of her nephew's suit-case.
She took off her bonnet and cloak and did not put them away, but left
them lying on her bed; a sure sign of perturbation with Miss Gallup,
who was the tidiest of mortals.
She sought Em'ly-Alice in the bright little kitchen. "What was the
young lady like?" she asked.
"Oh a superior young person, Miss, all in black."
"Young, was she?" Miss Gallup remarked suspiciously.
"Yes, Miss, quite young, I should say--about my own age; I couldn't see
'er face very well, but she did talk like the gentry, very soft and
distinct."
"Did Mr Gallup seem pleased to see her?"
"That I couldn't say, Miss, I'm sure. I left 'em together and come out
and shut the door."
Miss Gallup went back to the parlour shaking her head.
"There's a lot of them will be after him now 'e's stood for
Parliament," she reflected grimly; "but I did _not_ think they'd have
the face to track him to his aunt's house. She's hanging about the
lanes for him now I'll warrant. Miss Buttermish indeed!"