THE GRANTLY STRAIN
Easter, that year, fell in the second week of April, and both Grantly
and the twins were home for it. Mrs Ffolliot was back too. The
Riviera had done wonders for her, and she returned beautiful and gay,
and immensely glad to have her children round her once more.
To celebrate Mrs Ffolliot's return, it was decided to give a
dinner-party. Dinner-parties were rare occurrences at the Manor. The
Squire allowed about two a year, and grumbled a good deal over each.
If he would have left the whole thing to Mrs Ffolliot, she and everyone
else would have enjoyed it; but he would interfere. Above all, he
insisted on supervising the list of guests, and settling who was to go
in with whom. This time they were to number fourteen in all, and as
Grantly and Mary were to be of the party, that left ten people to be
discussed.
It was arranged with comparative ease till about a week before the day
fixed the bachelor intended for Mary broke his leg out hunting. Mary
had been allowed a new dress for the occasion; it would be the first
time she had been at a real party in her father's house, and to be left
out would have been a cruel disappointment.
Bachelors in that neighbourhood, even elderly bachelors, who came up to
the standard required by Mr Ffolliot were few, and there was
comparatively little time.
The four elder children, their father, and mother were sitting at
lunch; they had reached the cheese stage. Fusby and his attendant maid
had departed, and the question of a "man for Mary" occupied the
attention of the family. When Mrs Ffolliot quite innocently discharged
a bomb into their midst by exclaiming, "I've got it. Let's ask Mr
Gallup. He's our member; he was very kind in coming to tell me about
poor Buz's accident, very kind to him, too, I remember. It would be a
friendly thing to do. The Campions are coming, they'd be pleased."
Had Mrs Ffolliot not been gazing straight at her husband, she might
have noticed that three pairs of startled eyes looked up at the same
moment, and then were bent sedulously on the table.
Uz alone curiously regarded his brethren. Mr Ffolliot paused in the
very act of pouring himself out another glass of marsala and set the
decanter on the table with a thump, the glass only half-full.
"Impossible," he said coldly, "absolutely out of the question."
"But why?" Mrs Ffolliot asked; "there's nothing against the young man,
and it would be a friendly thing to do."
"That's why I won't have it done," Mr Ffolliot said decidedly. "It
would give a false impression. He might be disposed to take liberties."
"Oh no, Larrie; why should you think anything of that sort? It seems
to me such a pity people in the county shouldn't be friendly. The
Campions speak most highly of him."
"My dear"--Mr Ffolliot spoke with evident self-restraint--"I do not
care to ask my friends to meet Mr Gallup as an equal. How could you
ask any lady of your own rank to go in to dinner with him? The thing
is outrageous."
"I was going to send him in with Mary," Mrs Ffolliot said innocently.
"We must get somebody, and I know he's in the neighbourhood, for I saw
him to-day."
"If he were in Honolulu he would not be more impossible than he is at
present," said the Squire irritably. "Don't discuss it any more, my
dear, I beg of you. It is out of the question."
And Mr Ffolliot rose from the table and took refuge in his study.
"I'm sorry," Mrs Ffolliot sighed, "I should have liked to ask him," and
then she suddenly awoke to the fact that her entire family looked
perturbed and miserable to the last degree.
Grantly pushed back his chair. "May I go, mother," he said, "I've
something I must say to father."
"Not now, Grantly," and Mrs Ffolliot laid a gentle detaining hand upon
his arm as he passed, "not just when he's feeling annoyed--if there's
anything you have to tell him let it wait--don't go and worry him now."
Grantly lifted his mother's hand off his arm very gently. "I must,
mummy dear, it can't wait."
He looked rather pale but his eyes were steady, and she thought with a
little thrill of pride how like his grandfather he was growing.
He went straight to the study. Mr Ffolliot was seated by the fire with
_Gaston Latour_ open in his hand.
Grantly shut the door, crossed to the fireplace and stood on the
hearth-rug looking down at his father. "I've come to say, father, that
I think we _ought_ to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."
"_You_ think we ought to . . ." the Squire paused in breathless
astonishment.
"Yes, sir, I do. And I hope you'll think so too when you hear what
I've got to say."
"Go on," said Mr Ffolliot, laying down his book. "Go on."
It wasn't very easy. Grantly swallowed something in his throat, and
began rather huskily: "You see, sir, we're under an obligation to
Gallup. We are really."
"_We_ are under an obligation. What on earth do you mean?"
"Well I am, father, anyway. You remember the night before the
election----?"
"I don't," the Squire interrupted, "why in the world should I----?"
"Well, sir, it was like this . . . I went to dinner with young Rabbich
at the Moonstone, and I got drunk----"
"You--got--drunk?" the pauses between each word were far more emphatic
than the words themselves.
"Yes, sir, we all had more than was good for us, and we went to the
Radical meeting and made an awful row, and got chucked out and----"
"Look here, Grantly, what has all this to do with young Gallup? It was
idiotic of you to go to his meeting, and the conduct of a vulgar
blockhead to get drunk; but in what way . . ."
"That's not all, sir; after the meeting the bands came into collision,
and I got taken up."
"_You_ got taken up?"
"Two policemen, sir, taking me to the station, and Mr Gallup got me out
of it and gave me a bed in his house."
Mr Ffolliot sat forward in his chair. "You accepted his
hospitality--you slept the night in his house?"
"If I hadn't I'd have slept the night in the lock-up, and it would have
been in the papers."
"But why--why should he have intervened to protect you?"
"Do you think, sir"--Grantly's voice was very shy--"that it might be
because we both come from the same place?"
"He doesn't belong to the village."
"In a way he does; there have been Gallups in Redmarley nearly as long
as us."
Mr Ffolliot said nothing. He sat staring at his tall young son as if
he were a new person.
Grantly fidgetted and flushed and paled under this steady
contemplation, saying at last: "You do see what I mean, don't you,
father?"
"I do."
"That we ought to do something friendly?"
"He has certainly, through your idiotic fault, contrived to put us
under an obligation. Why, I cannot think, but the fact remains. I do
not know anything that could have annoyed me more."
Grantly ventured to think that perhaps a paragraph in the police
reports of the local newspaper might have tried the Squire even more
severely, but he did not say so. He waited.
"Does your mother know of all this?"
"Oh no, father, it would make her so sorry. Must we tell her?"
"Your tenderness for her feelings in no way restrained you at the time;
why this solicitude now?"
"I'd rather she knew than seem to go back on Gallup."
"You may go, Grantly, and leave me to digest this particularly
disagreeable intelligence. I have long reconciled myself to your lack
of intellectual ability, but I did not know that you indulged in such
coarse pleasures."
"Father--did you never do anything of that kind when you were young?"
"Most truthfully I can answer that I never did. It would not have
amused me in the least."
"It didn't _amuse_ me," Grantly said ruefully; "I can't remember much
about it."
"Go," said Mr Ffolliot, and Grantly went, looking rather like Parker
with his tail between his legs.
Hardly had Mr Ffolliot realised the import of what Grantly had told him
when the door was opened again and Buz came in.
Buz, too, made straight for the hearth-rug, and standing there faced
his bewildered parent (these sudden invasions were wholly without
precedent), saying: "I've come to tell you, sir, that I think we
_ought_ to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."
Had Mr Ffolliot been a man of his hands he would have fallen upon Buz
and boxed his ears there and then; as it was, he replied bitterly:
"I am not interested in your opinion, boy, on this or any other
subject. Leave the room at once."
But Buz, to his father's amazement, stood his ground.
"You must hear me, father, else you can't understand."
"If you've come to say anything about Grantly you may spare yourself
the pains, he has told me himself."
"About Grantly," Buz repeated stupidly, "why should I want to talk
about Grantly?--it's about him and me I want to talk."
"Him and you?" Mr Ffolliot echoed desperately.
"Yes, I rotted him that night and he was awfully decent----"
"What night?"
"The night I broke my arm--they said at the Infirmary that if he hadn't
been so careful of me it would have been much worse."
"You refer, I suppose, to Gallup?"
"Yes, father, and it really was decent of him, because I went dressed
up as a suffragette and had no end of a rag; he might have been awfully
shirty, and he wasn't--he never told a soul. Don't you think we ought
to ask him?"
"Does your mother know about this?"
"Of course not, nobody knew except Uz and," Buz added truthfully,
"Adèle."
"Leave me," said Mr Ffolliot feebly, "I've had about as much as I can
bear this afternoon--Go."
"You do see, sir, that it makes a difference," pleaded the persistent
Buz.
"Go," thundered the exasperated Squire.
"All right, father, I'm going, but you _do_ see, don't you?" said Buz
from the door.