THE DREAM GOES ON
"Aunt Susan, will you give me a bed on Thursday night?"
Eloquent, who was spending the Easter recess at Marlehouse, had
bicycled out to tea with Miss Gallup.
"You know as I'm always pleased to give you a bed any time. What do
you want it then for? Are you coming to stop a bit?"
"Because," Eloquent took a deep breath and watched his aunt closely,
"I'm dining at the Manor that night."
"Then," said Miss Gallup sharply, "you don't have a bed here."
"Why ever not?" and in his astonishment Eloquent dropped into the
Garsetshire idiom he was usually so careful to avoid.
"Because," Miss Gallup was flushed and tremulous, "no one shall ever
say I was as a drag on you."
"But, Aunt Susan, no one could say it, and if they did, what would it
matter? and what in the world has that to do with giving me a bed?"
"My dear," said Miss Gallup, "I know my place if you don't. When you
goes to dinner with Squire Ffolliot you must go properly from
Marlehouse like anybody else--you must drive out, or hire a motor and
put it up there, same as other people do, and go back again to your own
house where you're known to be--it's in the paper. There's no sort of
use draggin' _me_ in. I always knew as you'd get there some day, and
now you've got there and no one's pleasder than me. Do show me the
invitation."
Eloquent took a note from his breast-pocket and handed it to his aunt,
who put on her spectacles and read aloud, slowly and impressively:--
Dear Mr Gallup,--If you have no other engagement, will you come and
dine with us on the twenty-first at eight o'clock. It will give us
great pleasure if you can.--Yours sincerely,
MARGERY FFOLLIOT.
"H'm, now that's not what I should have expected," Miss Gallup said in
a disappointed tone. "_I_ should have thought she'd 'a said, 'Mr and
Mrs Ffolliot presents their compliments to Mr Gallup, and requests the
pleasure of his company at a dinner-party'--I know there is a party,
for Dorcas did tell Em'ly-Alice there was going to be one; only last
night she was talking about it--it's downright blunt that note--I call
it----"
Eloquent laughed. "All the same I've accepted, and now do explain why
I can't sleep here instead of trailing all the way back into Marlehouse
at that time of night."
"If you can't _see_, why you must just take my word for it. You and
me's in different walks of life, and it's my bounden duty to see as you
don't bemean yourself. I'm always pleased to see you in a quiet way,
but there's no use in strangers knowing we're relations."
"What nonsense," Eloquent exclaimed hotly, "I've only got one aunt in
the world, and I'm very proud of her, so let there be an end of this
foolishness."
Miss Gallup wiped her eyes. "In some ways, Eloquent," she said
huskily, "with all your politics an' that, you're no better than a
child."
"I'm hanged if I can see what you're driving at," Eloquent exclaimed in
great irritation. "Once more, Aunt Susan, will you give me a bed on
Thursday?"
"Don't ask me, my dear, don't ask me. It's for your good as I refuse.
_I_ can see the difference between us if you can't, and when you took
on so with politics, and then your father left all that fortune so as
you could leave the likes of the Golden Anchor, I said to myself, 'Now,
Martha Gallup, don't you interfere. Don't you go intrudin' on your
brother's child. If he sees fit to keep friendly it shows he's a good
heart, but you keep your place.' . . . An' I've kep' it; never have I
been near you in Marlehouse, as you know--Not but what you've as't me,
and very pleased I was to be as't . . ."
"And very displeased I was that you would never come," Eloquent
interrupted.
"I know my place," Miss Gallup persisted. "I don't mind the likes of
the Ffolliots knowing we're related. . . . They're bound to know, and
they're not proud, none of 'em exceptin' Squire, that is to say, and he
wouldn't think it worth while to be proud to the likes of me. But I
don't want to hang on and keep you down, and there's some as would
think less of you for me bein' your aunt, so where's the use of
flaunting an old-fashioned piece like me in their faces. . . . If
you'll come out next day and tell me all about the party, I'd take it
most kind of you, Eloquent, that I should."
"Why shouldn't I come here straight that night? I shouldn't have
forgotten anything by then."
"No," Miss Gallup said firmly. "I'd much rather you didn't come to me
from that 'ouse nor go there from me. You go back 'ome like a good
boy. It isn't as if you couldn't afford a chaise to bring you."
Eloquent saw that she really meant what she said. He was puzzled and
rather hurt, for it had never occurred to him that his aunt was
anything but his aunt: a kindly garrulous old lady who had always been
extremely good to him, whom it was his duty to cherish, who looked upon
him in the light of a son.
He was a simple person and never realised that this simplicity and
directness had a good deal to do with the undoubted cordiality of
certain persons, who, apart from politics, were known to be very
exclusive in the matter of their acquaintance; and that it was largely
owing to the fact that he never showed the smallest false shame as to
his origin, that members of his party who had at first consented to
know him solely for political reasons, continued to know him when the
Liberal Government was for a second time firmly established. They
perceived his primness, were faintly amused by his immense earnestness,
and they respected his sincerity.
The manner of his arrival on the fateful night was settled for him by
Sir George Campion, who, meeting him in the street, offered him a seat
in their motor. Eloquent never knew that Mrs Ffolliot had asked Sir
George to do this, thinking that it would make things easier and
pleasanter for the guest who was the one stranger to the assembled
party.
On the night of the dinner Mary was dressed early and went to her
mother's room to see if she could help her.
Mrs Ffolliot was standing before her long glass and Sophia was shaking
out the train of her dress, a soft grey-blue dress full of purple
shadows and silvery lights.
She turned and looked at her tall young daughter, critically, fondly,
with the pride and fear and wonder a woman, above all a beautiful
woman, feels as she realises that for her child everything is yet to
come; the story all untold.
"You may go, Sophia," she said gently. "I think Miss Mary looks nice,
don't you? It's her first real evening frock, you know."
Sophia looked from the one to the other and her severe face relaxed a
little. "It fits most beautiful," she vouchsafed.
"Mother," Mary said when Sophia had gone, "I wanted to catch you just a
minute--I've seen Mr Gallup since that night he came to tell us about
Buz . . ."
"You've met?" Mrs Ffolliot exclaimed, "where? and why have you never
told me?"
"It was while you were away. Miss Gallup had been ill and I went to
ask for her and he was there, and he walked home with me . . ."
Mrs Ffolliot raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, you think it funny too? It couldn't be helped--old Miss Gallup
seemed to think it was the proper thing and sent him--and father was
waiting for me at the gate and was awfully cross. . . . Mother, how
_did_ you persuade him to let you ask Mr Gallup?"
Mrs Ffolliot turned to her dressing-table and began to collect fan and
handkerchief. She looked in the glass and saw Mary behind her, eager,
radiant, slim, upright, and gloriously young. She began to see why
father was so awfully cross. There was more excuse than usual.
"Why don't you answer me, mother? didn't you hear what I said?"
"I heard, my darling. Father needed no persuasion. He simply changed
his mind; but I can't think why you never told me you had met Mr Gallup
already."
Mary blushed. The warm colour dyed forehead and neck and ears, and
faded into the exceedingly white chest and shoulders, revealed to the
world for the first time.
Mrs Ffolliot saw all this in the glass, wondered if she could have
imagined it, and turned to face her daughter.
"Mother"--what honest eyes the child had, to be sure--"it wasn't the
first time I'd spoken to him."
"Really, Mary, you are very mysterious----"
"I met him in the woods once before Christmas, and he was lost, and I
showed him the way out, and father saw us . . . and was just as cross."
Mrs Ffolliot felt more in sympathy with her husband than usual. But
all she said was, "Well, well, it's evident you don't need an
introduction. I forgot you'd seen him when he called. I'm glad you
told me in time to prevent it, or he would have thought it so
odd--come, my child, we must go down."
"_You_ aren't cross, are you, mother?" Mary asked wistfully.
"Cross!" Mrs Ffolliot repeated, "at your first party. What is there to
be cross about? Yes, my child, that dress is quite charming--father
was right, you can stand that dead white--but it's trying to some
people--come."
The Campions called for Eloquent, and he found himself seated side by
side with Sir George on one of the little seats, while Lady Campion and
a pretty niece called Miss Bax sat opposite. Miss Bax was disposed to
be friendly and conversational, but to Eloquent the fact that he was
going to Redmarley was no ordinary occurrence, and he would infinitely
have preferred to have driven out alone, or, better still, to have
walked through the soft spring night from his aunt's house to the
Manor, which still held something of the glamour that had surrounded it
in his childhood.
For him it was still "the Manshun," immense, remote, peopled by
inhabitants fine and strange, and far removed from ordinary life. A
house whose interior common folk were, it is true, occasionally allowed
to see, walking on tiptoe, speaking in whispers, led and instructed by
an important rustling old lady who wore an imposing cap and a silk
apron; a strange, silent house where none save servants ever seemed to
come and go. He had not yet quite recovered from the shock it was to
him to hear voices and laughter in that old panelled hall which he had
known in childhood as so vast and shadowy. He liked to remember all
this, and to feel that he was going there as THEIR guest, to be with
THEM on intimate friendly terms. It was wonderful, incredible; it was
part of the dream.
". . . don't you think so, Mr Gallup?" asked Miss Bax, and Eloquent
woke with a start to realise that he had not heard a word his pretty
neighbour was saying. He was thankful that the motor was dark and that
the others could not notice how red he was.
"I beg your pardon," he said loudly, leaning forward, "I didn't catch
what you said."
"Is the man deaf?" Miss Bax wondered, for the motor was a Rolls-Royce
and singularly smooth and noiseless. "I was saying," she went on
aloud, "that it will probably be my lot to go in to dinner with Grantly
Ffolliot, and that cadets as a class are badly in need of snubbing;
don't you agree with me?"
"I haven't met any except young Mr Ffolliot," Eloquent said primly,
"and I must say he did not strike me as a particularly conceited young
man."
"He isn't," Sir George broke in, "he's an exceedingly nice boy, they
all are. Their mother has seen to that."
"Boys are so difficult to talk to," Miss Bax lamented; "their range is
so limited, and my enthusiasm for football is so lukewarm."
"Try him on his profession," Lady Campion suggested.
"That would be worse. Cadets do nothing but tell you how hard they are
worked, and what a fearful block there is in the special branch of the
army they are going in for. Is young Ffolliot going to be a Sapper by
any chance? for they're the worst of all--considering themselves, as
they do, the brains of the army."
"I don't think so," said Sir George; "he's not clever enough. He's
only got moderate ability and an uncommonly pretty seat on a horse.
He'll get Field all right. But why are you so sure, my dear, that
he'll be your fate? Why not Gallup here? and you could try and convert
him to your views on the Suffrage question? He'd be some use, you
know. He _has_ a vote."
Again Eloquent blessed the darkness as he coloured hotly and brought
his mind back to the present with a violent wrench. He knew he ought
to say something, but what? He fervently hoped they would not assign
him to this severe self-possessed young lady who thought cadets
conceited and had political views. Heavens! she might be another
Elsmaria Buttermish with no blessed transformation later on into
something human and approachable.
"I'm afraid"--he heard Miss Bax talking as it were an immense way off
as he floated away on the wings of his dream--"that my views would
startle Mr Gallup."
The motor turned in at the drive gates, they had reached the door.
Eloquent was right in the middle of his dream.
He followed Lady Campion and Miss Bax across the hall and down a
corridor to a room he had never been in when he was a child.
Fusby threw open a door and announced loudly, "Sir George and Lady
Campion, Miss Bax, Mr Gallup."
They were the last of the guests.
For a little while he was less conscious of his dream. This light,
bright room with white panelled walls and furniture covered with gay
chintzes, soft blurred chintz in palest pinks and greens, with pictures
in oval frames, and people, ordinary people that he had seen before,
all talking and laughing together. This was not the Redmarley that he
knew, grave and beautiful and old.
This was not the Redmarley of his dream. It came back to him as Mrs
Ffolliot gave him her hand in welcome, presenting him to her husband
and one or two other people. It left him as she turned away and
Grantly came forward and greeted him. Grantly, tall and irreproachably
well dressed, cheerful withal and quite at his ease.
Sir George had pulled Mary into the very middle of the room and held
her at arm's length with laughing comments. How could men find the
courage for that sort of thing? He heard him ask what she had done
with her sash, and then Mrs Ffolliot said, "I think you know my
daughter, Mr Gallup; will you take her in to dinner?"
And once more he was well in the middle of his dream, for he found
himself in the corridor he knew, side by side with Mary, part of a
procession moving towards the dining-room.
Her hand was on his arm, but the exquisite moment was a little marred
by the discovery that she was quite an inch taller than he.
Eloquent had been to a good many public dinners; he had even dined with
certain Cabinet Ministers, but always when there were only men. He had
never yet dined with people of the Ffolliots' class in this intimate,
friendly way, and he found everything a little different from what he
expected. He had read very little fiction, and such mental pictures as
he had evolved were drawn from his inner consciousness. As always, he
wondered how they contrived to be so gay, to talk such nonsense, and to
laugh at it. Seated between Mary and witty Mrs Ward, whose husband was
one of his ardent supporters in the county, he did his best to join in
the general conversation, but he found it hard. Miss Bax, whose
premonition regarding her fate was justified, seemed to have overcome
her objection to cadets. She and Grantly were just opposite to him,
and he noticed with regret that Grantly was drinking champagne. It
would have been better, Eloquent thought, if the boy had abstained
altogether after his experience at the election. Mary, too, drank
champagne, but Eloquent condoned this weakness in her case, she drank
so little. Everyone drank champagne except Sir George, who preferred
whisky, and Eloquent himself, who drank Apollinaris.
"Do you suffer from rheumatism?" Mary asked innocently. "Do you think
it would hurt you once in a way?"
"I am not in the least rheumatic," Eloquent protested, "but I have
never tasted anything intoxicating."
"Then you don't know whether you'd like it or not. Why not try some
and see?" Mary suggested hospitably.
Eloquent shook his head. "Better not," he said, "you don't know what
effect it might have on me."
He ate whatever was put before him, wholly unaware of its nature, and
in spite of Mary's efforts to keep the conversational ball rolling
gaily, he was very silent.
The dream had got him again, for he knew this room with the dark oak
panelling and great old portraits of departed Ffolliots, some of them
with eyes that followed you. He knew the room, but as he knew it, the
long narrow table, like the table in a refectory, was bare and polished
and empty; or with a little cloth laid just at one end for old Mr
Ffolliot.
What did they think of it now, these solemn pictured people?--this
long, narrow strip of brilliant light and flowers and sparkling glass
and silver, surrounded by well-dressed cheerful persons, all,
apparently, laughing and talking at the same time.
They had reached dessert, and he was handing Mary a dish of sweets; she
took four. "Do take some," she whispered, "take lots, and what you
don't want give to me; you can put them in my bridge-bag under the
table, I want them for the children. I promised Ger."
Bewildered, but only too happy to do anything she asked him, Eloquent
helped himself largely.
"Now," Mary whispered, holding a little white satin bag open under the
table, "and if they come round again, take some more."
"It was my grandfather began it," she explained; "he used always to
save sweets for us when we stayed with him, and now it's a rule--if we
dine downstairs--if there are any--there aren't always, you know--and
Fusby's so stingy, if there are any left he takes them and locks them
up in a box till next time. You watch Grantly, he's got some too, but
he hasn't got anywhere to put them, like me. I must go round behind
him when mother collects eyes, then I'll nip up to Ger, for he'll never
go to sleep till I've been . . ."
"You see," she went on confidentially, "they will take them to Willets
to-morrow. He loves good sweets and he never gets any unless they take
them to him. They'll make a party of it, and Mrs Willets will give
them each a weeny glass of ginger-wine. They'll have a lovely time--do
you know Willets?"
"By sight, I think . . . he's your keeper, isn't he? From all I can
hear to-night he seems a very remarkable person, everyone is talking
about him."
"Oh, you ought to know him, he's the greatest dear in Redmarley.
Everyone who knows us knows Willets, and dukes and people have tried to
get him away, he's such a good sportsman, but he won't leave us. We
love him so much we couldn't bear it. He couldn't either. He's been
keeper here nearly twenty-three years. Before mother came he was here,
and now there's all of us he'll never leave."
"Have you got enough? Won't they want some for themselves as well as
Willets?"
"Thanks to you, I've got a splendid lot. One can't always ask people,
you know, but I thought you wouldn't mind."
"Shall I demand some more in a loud voice? there are some at the end of
the table," Eloquent murmured; "I'm very shy, but I can be bold in a
good cause."
Mary looked at him in some surprise. "Would you really? Ah, it's too
late, there's mother----"
Eloquent watched her with breathless interest as she "went round the
longest way" and received new spoils from Grantly as she passed. How
curious they were about their servants these people, where Fusby seemed
to control the supplies and the children of the house secretly saved
sweets for the keeper.
The men did not sit long over their wine, and it was to the hall they
went and not to the white-panelled room that Eloquent unconsciously
resented as an anachronism; and in the hall bridge-tables were set out.
This was a complication Eloquent had not foreseen. Among his father's
friends cards were regarded as the Devil's Books, and he did not know
the ace of spades from the knave of hearts.
Would they force him to play, he wondered. Would he cover himself with
shame and ignominy? and what if he said it was against his principles
to play for money?
He braced himself to be faithful to the traditions in which he had been
trained, only to find that on his saying he never _had_ played bridge
no one expressed the smallest desire that he should do so.
In fact it seemed to him that three tables were arranged with almost
indecent haste, cryptic remarks about "cutting in" were bandied about,
and in less than five minutes he was sitting on the oak settle by the
fire with Mrs Ffolliot, who talked to him so delightfully that the
dream came back.
Here on the high-backed settle he found courage to tell her how clearly
he remembered that first time he had seen her in his father's shop; and
plainly she was touched and interested, and drew him on to speak of his
queer lonely childhood and the ultimate goal that had been kept ever
before his eyes.
He was very happy, and it seemed but a short time till somebody at one
of the tables exclaimed "game and rub," and Mary came over to the
settle saying, "Now, mother, you must take my place. I've been awfully
lucky, I've won half a crown."
She sat down beside him on the settle asking, "Would you care to watch,
or shall we just sit here and talk--which would you rather?"
What Eloquent wanted to do was to stare: to gaze and gaze at the
gracious young figure sitting there in gleaming white flecked with
splashes of rosy light from the dancing flames, but he could hardly say
this.
"I'm afraid it would be of no use for me to watch; I have never played
cards, and don't understand them in the least."
"You mean you don't know the suits?"
"What are suits?"
"This must be seen to," said Mary; "you don't smoke, you drink nothing
festive, you don't know one card from another; you can't go through
life like this. It's not fair. We won't waste another minute, I'll
teach you the suits now."
She made him fetch a little table, she produced a pack of cards. She
spread them out and she expounded. He was a quick study. By the time
Mr Ffolliot came to take Mary's place he knew all the suits. By the
time Mr Ffolliot had thoroughly confused him by a learned disquisition
on the principles of bridge, Lady Campion's motor was announced, and he
departed in her train.
"Surely Mr Gallup is a very absent-minded person," Miss Bax remarked to
her aunt when they had deposited Eloquent at his door.
"I expect he's shy," said Lady Campion, who was sleepy and not
particularly interested; "but wasn't Mary nice to him?--I do like that
girl--she's so natural and unaffected."
"She always strikes me as being a mere child," said Miss Bax, "so very
unformed; is she out yet, or is she still in the schoolroom?"
Sir George chuckled. "She's on her way out," he said, "and, I fancy,
on her way to an uncommonly good time as well. That girl is a sight to
make an old man young."
"She certainly is handsome," said Miss Bax.
Sir George chuckled again. "Unformed," he repeated, "there's some of
us likes 'em like that."
Eloquent sat long in his orderly little dining-room where the glass of
milk and tray of sandwiches awaited him on the sideboard. His head was
in a whirl. She drank champagne. She gambled. She seemed to think it
was perfectly natural and right to do these things. It probably was if
she thought so. She . . .
Heavens! what an adorable wife she would be for a young Cabinet
Minister.