A RETROSPECT AND A RESULT
Mr Ffolliot was really a much-tried man. Those interviews with Grantly
and Buz caused his nerves to vibrate most unpleasantly.
So unhinged was he that for quite half an hour after Buz's departure he
kept looking nervously at the door, fully expectant that it would open
to admit Uz, primed with some fresh reason why Eloquent Gallup should
be asked to dinner; and that he would be followed by Ger and the Kitten
bent on a similar errand.
However, no one else invaded his privacy. The Manor House was very
still; the only occasional sound being the soft swish of a curtain
stirred by the breeze through the open window.
Mr Ffolliot neither read _Gaston Latour_ nor did he write, though his
monograph on Ercole Ferrarese was not yet completed.
Wrapped in thought he sat quite motionless in his deep chair, and the
subject that engrossed him was his own youth; comparing what he
remembered of it with these queer, careless sons of his, who seemed
born to trouble other people, Mr Ffolliot could not call to mind any
occasion when he had been a nuisance to anybody. He honestly tried and
wholly failed.
Such persons as have been nourished in early youth on Mr Thackeray's
inimitable _The Rose and The Ring_ will remember how at the christening
of Prince Giglio, the Fairy Blackstick, who was his godmother, said,
"My poor child, the best thing I can send you is a little misfortune!"
Now the Fairy Blackstick had evidently absented herself from Hilary
Ffolliot's christening, for his youth was one long procession of
brilliant successes. It is true that his father, an easy-going,
amiable clergyman, died during his first term at Harrow, but that did
not affect Hilary's material comfort in any way. It left his mother
perfectly free to devote her entire attention to him.
He was a good-looking, averagely healthy boy, who carried all before
him at preparatory school. Easily first in every class he entered, he
was quite able to hold his own in all the usual games, and he left for
Harrow in a blaze of glory, having obtained the most valuable classical
scholarship.
Throughout his career at school he never failed to win any prize he
tried for, and when he left, it was with scholarships that almost
covered the expenses of his time at Cambridge. Moreover, he was head
of his house and a member of the Eleven.
His mother, a gentle and unselfish lady, felt that she could not do
enough to promote the comfort of so brilliant and satisfactory a son.
Hilary's likes and dislikes in the matter of food, Hilary's preference
for silk underwear, Hilary's love of art and music, were all matters of
equal and supreme importance to Mrs Ffolliot, and in every way she
fostered the strain of selfishness that exists even in the best of us.
At the university he did equally well. He took a brilliant degree, and
then travelled for a year or so, devoting himself to the study of
Italian art and architecture; and finally accepted (he never seemed to
try for things like other people) a clerkship in the Foreign Office.
When he was eight and twenty his uncle died, and he inherited Redmarley.
His conduct had always been blameless. He shared the ordinary
pleasures of upper-class young men without committing any of their
follies. He was careful about money, and never got into debt. He
accepted kindnesses as his right, and felt under no obligation to
return them.
He could not be said ever to have worked hard, for all the work he had
hitherto undertaken came so easily to him. He possessed a large circle
of agreeable acquaintances, and no intimate friends.
He met Marjory Grantly in her second season, and for the first time in
his life fell ardently and hopelessly in love.
Now was the chance for the Fairy Blackstick!
But she evidently took no interest in Hilary Ffolliot, for Marjory,
instead of sending him about his business, and perhaps thus rendering
him for a space the most miserable of men, fell in love with him, and
they were married in three months.
The General, it is true, had misgivings, and remarked to Mrs Grantly
that Ffolliot seemed too good to be true. But there was no disproving
it; and Hilary was so much in love that for a while, for nearly a year,
he thought more about Marjory's likes and dislikes than his own.
And Marjory's likes included such a vast number of other people.
But the chance, the hundred-to-one chance, of turning him into an
ordinary human being--loving, suffering, understanding--was lost.
Once more in Life's Market he had got what he wanted at his own price,
and with the cessation of competitive examinations all ambition seemed
dead in him.
And what of Marjory?
Nobody, not even her father and mother who loved her so tenderly, ever
knew what Marjory felt. She had chosen her lot. She would abide by
it. No doubt she saw her husband as he was, but as time went on she
realised how few chances he had had to be anything different. She was
an only child herself. She, too, had adoring parents, but their
adoration took a different form from the somewhat abject and wholly
blind devotion of Hilary's mother. General and Mrs Grantly saw to it
from the very first that they should love their daughter because she
was lovable, and not only because she was theirs. They had troops of
friends, and exercised a large hospitality that entailed a constant
giving out of sympathy for and interest in other people. That there
was much suffering, and sadness, and sin in the world was never
concealed from Marjory in her happy girlhood; that it had not touched
her personally was never allowed to foster the belief that it did not
exist. That there was also much happiness, and gaiety, and kindness
was abundantly manifest in her own home, and every scope was given her
for the development of the social instincts which were part of her
charm. She went to her husband at twenty "handled and made," and
twenty years of married life had only perfected the work.
As a girl she was perhaps intellectually intolerant. Stupid people
annoyed her, and she possessed all youth's enthusiastic admiration for
achievement, for people who did things, who had arrived. Hilary
Ffolliot was a new type to her. His brilliant record impressed her.
His cultivated taste and extraordinary versatility attracted her, and
his evident admiration gratified her girlish vanity.
She was a proud woman, and if she had made a mistake she was not going
to let it spoil her life. Only once did she come near showing her
heart even to her mother. It was a year after the Kitten was born,
when the General had just got the command at Woolwich, and Mrs Grantly
once more came back to the assault--her constant plea that she should
have Ger given over to her entirely.
"You really are, Margie, a greedy, grasping woman. Here are you with
six children, four of them sons. And here am I with only one child, a
miserable, measly girl, and you won't let me have even one of the boys."
The miserable, measly girl referred to laughed and knelt down at her
mother's knee. "Dearest, you really get quite as much of the children
as is good for you--or them----"
"You can't say I spoil them; I didn't spoil you, and you were only one."
"I'm sorry I couldn't be more," Mrs Ffolliot said contritely; "but you
see, mother dear, it's like this, it's just because I was only one I
want the children to have as much as possible of each other . . . while
they are young . . . I want them to grow up . . ." Mrs Ffolliot sat
down on the floor and leant her head against Mrs Grantly's knees so
that her face was hidden. "I want them to realise what a lot of other
people there are in the world, all with hopes and fears and likes and
dislikes and joys and sorrows . . . and that each one of them is only a
very little humble atom of a great whole--and that's what they can
teach each other--I can't do it--you can't do it--but they can manage
it amongst them."
Mrs Grantly did not answer; quick as she was in repartee, she had the
much rarer gift of sympathetic silence. She laid a kind hand on her
daughter's bent head and softly stroked it.
The clock struck four, and still Mr Ffolliot sat on in his chair with
_Gaston Latour_ unopened, held loosely in his long slender hands.
A dignified presence with every attribute that goes to make the scholar
and the gentleman; though one who judged of character from external
appearance might have misdoubted the thin straight lips, the rather
pinched nostrils, the eyes too close together, and above all, the
head--high and intellectual, but almost devoid of curve at the back. A
clean-cut, ascetic, handsome face, as a rule calm and judicial in its
dignified repose.
This afternoon, though, the Squire lacks his usual serene poise. His
self-confidence has been shaken, and it is his young sons who have
disturbed its delicately adjusted equilibrium.
He was puzzled.
It is a mistake to imagine that selfish and ungrateful people fail to
recognise these qualities in others. Not only are they quick to
perceive incipient signs of them, but they demand the constant exercise
of their opposites in their fellow men.
Mr Ffolliot was puzzled.
Among the words he used most constantly, both on paper and in
conversation, were "fine shades" and "fineness" in its most
psychological sense. "Fineness" was a quality he was for ever
belauding: a quality that he believed was only to be found in persons
of complex character and unusually sensitive organisation.
And yet he grudgingly conceded that he had, that afternoon, been
confronted by it in two of his own quite ordinary children.
What rankled, however, was that Buz, at all events, seemed doubtful
whether he, the Squire, possessed it. The dubious and thrice-repeated
"you do understand, don't you, father?" rang in his ears.
How was it that Buz, the shallow and mercurial, seemed to fear that
what was so plain to him might be hidden from his father?
Undesired and wholly irrelevant there flashed into his mind that walk
with Mary, a short ten days ago, when he had reproached her with her
limitations, her power to grasp only the obvious. And it was suddenly
revealed to Mr Ffolliot that certain obligations were obvious to his
children that were by no means equally clear to him.
Why was this?
As if in answer came his own phrase, used so often in contemptuous
explanation of their more troublesome vagaries--"the Grantly Strain."
He was fair-minded and he admired courage. He in no way underrated the
effort it must have been for Grantly and Buz to come and confess their
peccadillos to him. And he knew very well that only because they felt
someone else was involved had they summoned up courage to do so.
If their evil-doings were discovered, they did not lie, these noisy,
blundering children of his; but they never showed the smallest desire
to draw attention to their escapades.
His mind seemed incapable of concentration that afternoon, for now he
began to wonder how it was that "the children" lately had managed to
emerge from the noun of multitude and each had assumed a separate
identity with marked and definite characteristics.
There was Mary . . .
Mr Ffolliot frowned. If it hadn't been for Mary he really would have
been quite glad to ask young Gallup to dinner. But Mary complicated
matters; for he had instantly divined what had struck none of the
others, a connection between the Liberal member's amiability to his
sons and the fact that those sons possessed a sister.
Presently Fusby came in to make up the fire. "Do you happen to know,
Fusby, if your mistress is in the house and disengaged?"
"I saw the mistress as I came through the 'all, sir, sitting in a
window reading a book. She was quite alone, sir."
"Ah," said Mr Ffolliot, "thank you, I will go to her."
As the door was closed behind his master, Fusby arose from brushing the
hearth and shook his fist in that direction.
"Go, I should think you would go, you one-eyed old image you. Did you
think I was going to fetch her to wait your pleasure?"
Mrs Ffolliot laid down her book as her husband came across the wide old
hall. She made room for him on the window-seat beside her. She
noticed that he was flushed and that his hair was almost shaggy.
"Have you got a headache, Larrie?" she asked in her kind voice. "I
hope Grantly had nothing disturbing to relate."
"Yes, no," Mr Ffolliot replied vaguely; "I've been thinking things
over, my dear, and I've come round to your opinion that perhaps it
would be the right thing to ask young Gallup to dinner on the
twenty-first. There will be the Campions and the Wards to keep him in
countenance."
"I'm so glad you see it as I do," Mrs Ffolliot said gently, looking,
however, much surprised. "After all, he may not come, you know."
"He'll come," and his wife wondered why the Squire laid such grim
emphasis upon the words.
"By the way," Mr Ffolliot said in quite a new tone, "you were saying
something the other day about your mother's very kind offer to have
Mary for some weeks after the May drawing-room. I think it would be a
good thing. You don't want the fag and expense of going up to town so
soon after you've come home. Let her stay with her grandmother for a
bit and go out--see that she has proper clothes--they will enjoy having
the child, and she will see something of the world. Let her have her
fling--don't hurry her."
"Why, Hilary, what a _volte-face_! When I spoke to you about it before
I was ill you said it was out of the question . . ."
"My dear," said Mr Ffolliot testily, "only stupid people think that
they must never change their minds. I have decided that it will be
good for Mary to leave Redmarley for a bit. You must remember that I
have been carefully observing her for the last few weeks. She will
grow narrow and provincial if she never meets anyone except the
Garsetshire people. Surely you must see that?"
"May I tell Mary? It's such fun when you're young to look forward to
things."
"Certainly tell Mary, and let her go as soon as her grandmother will
have her. She'd better get what clothes she wants in town."
"She can go up with Grantly when he goes back to the Shop. It _is_
nice of you, Larrie."
"I suppose she must stay for this tiresome dinner? Why not let her go
beforehand? It's always very easy to get an odd girl."
"That wouldn't do," Mrs Ffolliot said decidedly, "the child would be
disappointed--besides I want her."
Mr Ffolliot sighed. "As you will, my dear," he said meekly, "but she'd
better go directly it is over."