"Father, what d'you think we'd better call him?" Mrs Gallup asked, when the baby was a week old; "have you thought of a name?"
"I've fixed on a name," her husband replied, triumphantly. "The child shall be called Eloquent."
"Eloquent," Mrs Gallup repeated, dubiously. "That's a queer name, isn't it? 'Tisn't a name at all, not really."
"It's going to be my son's name, anyhow," Mr Gallup retorted, positively. "I've thought the matter out, most careful I've considered it, and that's the name my son's got to be called . . . Eloquent Gallup he'll be, and a very good name too."
"But why Eloquent?" Mrs Gallup persisted. "How d'you know as he'll be eloquent? an' if he isn't, that name'll make him a laughing-stock. Suppose he was to grow up one of them say-nothing-to-nobody sort of chaps, always looking down his nose, and afraid to say 'Bo' to a goose: what's he to do with such a name?"
"There's no fear my son will grow up a-say-nothing-to-nobody sort of chap," said Mr Gallup, boastfully. "I'll take care of that. Now you listen to me, mother. You know the proverb 'Give a dog a bad name'——"
"I never said it was a bad name," Mrs Gallup pleaded.
"I should think you didn't—but look here, if it's true of a bad name, mustn't it be equally true of a good one? Why, it's argument, it's logic, that is. Call a boy Eloquent and ten to one he'll be eloquent, don't you see?"
"But what d'you want him to be eloquent for?" Mrs Gallup enquired almost tearfully. "What good will it do him—precious lamb?"
"There's others to be thought of as well as 'im," Mr Gallup remarked, mysteriously.
"Who? More children?" asked Mrs Gallup. "I don't see as he'd need to be eloquent just to mind his little brother or sister."
"Ellen Gallup, you listen to me. That babe lying there on your knee with a red face all puckered up is going to sway the multitude." Mrs Gallup gasped, and clutched her baby closer. "He's going to be one of those whose voice shall ring clarion-like"—here Mr Gallup unconsciously raised his own, and the baby stirred uneasily—"over"—he paused for a simile—he had been going to say "land and sea," but it didn't finish the sentence to his liking, "far and wide," he concluded, rather lamely.
Mrs Gallup made no remark, so he continued: "Eloquent Gallup shall be a politician. Some day he'll stand for parlyment, and he'll get in, and when he's there he'll speak up and he'll speak out for the rights of his fellow men, and he'll proclaim their wrongs."
And there and then, as if in vindication of his father's belief in him, the baby began to roar so lustily that further converse was impossible.
A week later, the baby was baptized Eloquent Abel Gallup. Abel was a concession to his mother's qualms. It was his father's name, and by her it was looked upon as a loophole of escape for her son, should Eloquent prove a misnomer.
"After all," she reflected, "if the poor chap shouldn't have the gift of the gab, Abel's a good everyday workin' name, and he can drop the E if it suits 'im. 'Tain't always them as has most to say does most, that's certain; and why his father's so set on him being one of those chaps forever standing on platforms and haranguing passes me. I never see no good come of an election yet, an' I've seen plenty of harm: what with drinkin' and quarrellin', and standin' for hours at street corners argifying. Politics is all very well in their place, but let it be a small place, says I, and let 'em keep there."
Abel Gallup was fifty years old and his wife over forty when they married; staid, home-loving people both. Abel's business was that of "a General Outfitter," and "The Golden Anchor" that was hung over the entrance to the shop presided over the fortunes of a sound, going concern. Only ready-made clothes were sold, only ready money was accepted. They were well-to-do, and living simply above their shop in the main street of Marlehouse were able to save largely.
Abel Gallup, however, was not merely a keen man of business and successful tradesman. He was, in addition, an idealist and a dreamer of dreams; but so shrewd and level-headed was he, that he kept the two things quite apart. His business was never neglected, and he returned to it all the fresher, inasmuch as in his off times his mind was ardently concerned with other things.
He was a self-educated, self-made man, who had started as shop-boy and risen to be proprietor. He had always been interested in politics, and in their study had found the relaxation that others sought in art, music, literature, or less intellectual pursuits. He was proud of his liking for politics, counting it for much righteousness that he should be able to find such joy in what he considered so useful and important a matter. In fact, he had a habit of saying, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you," with the comfortable reflection that such temporal prosperity as had been added to him was probably a reward for his abstention from all frivolous pleasures. He had no particular desire to rise in the world, himself. When he married, comparatively late in life, it was a woman of his own class, a comely, sensible, "comfortable" woman, who would order his house well, and see to it that there was "no waste."
She did all this; but she did infinitely more. She gave him a son, and in that son all his hopes and dreams, his secret humilities and unconscious vanities, his political devotions and antipathies were all brought together and focussed in one great determination that this son of his should have all that he had been denied; that in this son every one of his own inarticulate aspirations should find a voice.
He was a Congregationalist and a prominent member of this sect, the chief dissenting body in Marlehouse. He read little poetry and no fiction, but he was widely read in and thoroughly conversant with all the political events and controversies of both his own generation and of the one before it. A political meeting was to him what a public-house is to the habitual drunkard; he could not pass it. He never spoke in public himself, but he longed to do so with a longing that was intense as it was hopeless. He knew his limitations, and was quite conscious that his English was not that of the platform.
Little Eloquent could never remember when he first began to hear the names that were afterwards to be the most familiar household words to him. Two names, two personalities ever stood out in memory as an integral part of his child-life—those of William Ewart Gladstone and John Bright.
These were his father's idols.
They glowed, fixed planets in the political firmament, stable, unquenchable, a lamp to the feet of the faithful. Each shining with a steady radiance that the divergence in their views on many points could neither confuse nor obscure.
The square, dogged, fighting face of the man of peace; the serene, scholarly, aquiline features of the great Liberal leader were familiar to the little boy as the face of his own father.
That John Bright died when Eloquent was about six made no difference in his influence. There were two likenesses of him in the sitting-room, and under one of these the words were inscribed: "Be just and fear not"; and Eloquent, who was brought up to look upon justice as the first of political virtues, used to wonder wistfully whether such fearlessness could be achieved by one whose face at present showed none of those characteristics of force, strength, and pugnacity manifested in the portraits of the great commoner. But he found comfort in the reflection that "Dada," mirror of all the virtues, was yet quite mild and almost insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, very clean-looking little tradesman, with trim white whiskers, a bald head, and a round, rosy face, wherein shrewd, blue eyes twinkled cheerfully.
No, dada bore not the slightest resemblance either to Mr Gladstone or Mr Bright, and yet, Eloquent reflected, "what a man he was!" Dada was the chief factor in Eloquent's little world—law-giver, lover, and friend.
It is probable that his childhood would have been more normal and less politically precocious had his mother lived. But she died when he was four years old, a fortnight after the birth of a little sister who lived but a few hours.
Abel Gallup's sister came to keep house for them, and luckily, she, like his wife, was sensible and kindly, but she stood in great awe of her brother and never dreamt of criticising his conduct. Now his wife had never spared him her caustic, common-sense comments. Politics, especially where they might have affected the well-being of the child, were strictly kept in their proper place, And naturally she considered that, in the upbringing of a very small boy, that place should be remote almost to invisibility.
With her death all this was altered. Abel Gallup was very lonely, and turned to his little son for comfort. The child was biddable, loving, and gentle, and "to please his dada" had ever been held before him as his highest honour and duty.
Before he could read he could repeat long portions from the various speeches his father particularly admired; he learned by heart easily and had a retentive memory, and his father had only to say over a sentence two or three times when the child was word perfect. It gave Abel Gallup the most exquisite delight to stand his little son between his knees and hear the stirring, sonorous sentences rolled out in the high, child voice; and even in those early days he used to impress upon Eloquent that when he was grown-up he "would have to speak different to dada."
And little Eloquent, not realising that his father referred merely to accent and general grammar, would puzzle for hours wondering how such men as Mr Gladstone or John Bright would express their common wants. In what lofty terms, for instance, would Mr Gladstone inform his aunt, if he had an aunt, that his collar was frayed at the back and was scratching his neck. This, Eloquent felt, was quite a likely contingency, "seeing as he wore 'em so high." And how, he wondered, would Mr John Bright intimate delicately to the authorities who ruled his home that he hoped there would be pork for dinner on Sunday and plenty of crackling. He felt certain that Mr Bright would be sympathetic in the matter of crackling; he didn't know why, but he was sure of it. Equally convinced was he that the great statesman would express his desire in impressive and rhetorical language. He repeated "bits" from the speeches that he knew, to see if he could fasten on a chance phrase here and there that could be introduced into the common conversations of life; but they never did fit, and he was fain to express his small wants in the plain language of the folk about him.
Another name floated vague and nebulous among the impressions of very early childhood: that of one Herbert Spencer; and this was curious, for Abel Gallup was what he would himself have described as "a sincere Believer." Nevertheless, he was immensely attracted by the philosopher's Study of Sociology, and little Eloquent was made to learn and repeat many long bits from that dispassionate work. There was no portrait of Mr Herbert Spencer hanging upon the walls; he was not a living force, a real presence, like Mr Gladstone or Mr Bright; he spake not with the words of "a great soul greatly stirred"; yet there was something in his polished and logical sentences that gave Eloquent a doubtless quite erroneous sense of his personality, and of a certain aloofness in his attitude. He never called into council the "bits" from Mr Herbert Spencer in order to find majestic language in which to express the ordinary wants of life.
Eloquent was taken to his first political meeting when he was six years old, and he fell asleep before he had been there half an hour. His father put his arm round the child, rested the heavy little head against his shoulder and let him sleep in peace. Not even the cheering woke him, and his father carried him home, still sleeping. Perhaps Abel believed that in some mysterious manner the child absorbed the opinions of the speakers through the pores. He was not in the least annoyed with the little boy for falling asleep, nor did his tender years prevent a repetition of the experiment a few months later. This time Eloquent kept awake for nearly an hour. He was dreadfully bored, but at the same time felt very elated and important. He was the only little boy in the hall.
Abel Gallup was never tired of impressing upon Eloquent that "the people had the power, and the people had the votes to send you to parlyment or keep you out. Don't you be misled, my boy, by them as would wish you to try to please the gentry by and bye. The gentry's few and the people's many. I don't say a word against the gentry, mind, they're all right in their proper place, and very pleasant they be, some of them, but when the time comes for you to stand, just you remember that even hereabout there's hundreds of little houses for one manshun, and in every one of those little houses there's a vote, and you can have it if you go the right way about. When you're in, Eloquent, then you can hob-a-nob with the gentry if it so pleases you; but till you're in, remember it's the working man as can make or mar you."
Eloquent's aunt, Miss Gallup, had for many years "kept" the post-office and general shop in the village of Redmarley; but when her brother asked her to come and look after his home and his motherless child, she did not hesitate. She resigned her position of post-mistress, sold the good-will of her shop, and went to live in Marlehouse at "The Sign of the Golden Anchor."
She did not lose her interest in Redmarley, however; she had many friends there, and it was one of the treats of little Eloquent's childhood to drive there with his aunt "in a shay," to spend the afternoon in the woods, and have tea afterwards either with the housekeeper at the "Manshun" or in one of the cottages in the village.
In those days, only one old gentleman lived at the "Manshun." He "kept himself very much to himself," so aunt said, and Eloquent never saw him except from an upper window in the Golden Anchor, when he happened to drive through Marlehouse.
Neither did the little boy ever see much of the interior of the "Manshun" itself, except the housekeeper's room, which was down a passage just inside the back entrance.
It was during these visits to the housekeeper at Redmarley that it first dawned upon Eloquent that there could be two opinions as to the absolute righteousness of the Liberal Cause. Moreover, he found out that his aunt's political views were not on all fours with those of his father. This last discovery was quite a shock to him, and there was worse in store. For while he sat in solemn silence devouring bread and jam at the housekeeper's well-spread table, with his own ears he heard her dare to speak of the Grand Old Man as "that there Gladstone," and the butler, an imposing gentleman in black, actually described him as "a snake in the grass."
"It's curious, Miss Gallup," the butler said, thoughtfully, "that your brother should be that side in politics, and him so well-to-do and all. If he'd been in the boot trade now, I could have understood it—there's something in the smell of leather that breeds Radicals like a bad drain breeds fever; but clothes now, and lining and neck-ties and hosiery, you'd think they'd have a softening effect on a man. Dissenter, too, he is, isn't he?"
"My brother's altogether out of the common run," Miss Gallup remarked, rather huffily. She might deplore his politics herself—when she was some distance away from him—but no one else should presume to find fault. "He may be mistaken in his views—I think he is mistaken—but that don't alter the fact that he's a very successful man: a solid man, well thought of in Marlehouse, I can tell you."
"Dada says," Eloquent broke in, "that he's successful because of his views."
"Well, to be sure," exclaimed the housekeeper in astonishment, "who'd have thought the child could understand."
"The child," groaned Miss Gallup, "hears nothing but politics all day long—it turns me cold sometimes, it does really."
When Eloquent was six years old his visits to the "Manshun" at
Redmarley ceased.
Old Mr Ffolliot died, and his nephew, Mr Hilary, reigned in his stead. The butler and the housekeeper, handsomely pensioned, left the village. The staff of servants was much reduced, and at first Mr Hilary Ffolliot only came down to Redmarley for two or three days at a time. Then he married and came to live there altogether.
Eloquent had liked going to Redmarley. The place attracted him, and the people were kind, even if they were wrong-headed as to politics. One day he asked his aunt when they would go again.
"I don't fancy we shall go much now," she replied; "most of my friends have left. It's all different now up at the 'Manshun,' with a young missus and a new housekeeper; though they seem pleased enough about it in the village; a well-spoken, nice-looking young lady they says she is, but I shan't go there no more. They don't know me and I don't know them, and there we'll have to leave it."
And there it was left.
Redmarley would probably have faded altogether from Eloquent's mind, but for something that occurred to give it a new interest in his eyes.
The summer that he was seven, he was sent to the Grammar School. He came home every day directly after morning lessons, for he was as yet considered too small to take part in the games which were at that time but slightly supervised.
One day he returned to find a victoria and pair standing at the shop door, coachman on the box, footman standing on the pavement. This was unusual. Such an equipage must, he felt, belong to some member of the dangerously seductive "upper classes" his dada warned him against so often. The class that some day would want him. The class he was to keep at arm's length till he was safely "in."
The shop door was open, and Eloquent looked in. Dada, himself, was serving a customer; moreover, he was looking particularly brisk and pleased.
Eloquent crept into the shop cautiously. None noticed him. The four shopmen were serving other customers, and they all happened to be at the counter on the right-hand side.
It was a long shop with two counters that stretched its entire length, and was rather dark and close as a rule, but to-day there was bright sunshine outside. It shone through the big plate-glass windows, the glass door stood open, and somehow the shop looked gay. Dada had the left-hand counter all to himself.
Eloquent had never before seen anyone in the least like this customer, who, with slender hands, sat turning over little ready-made suits, boy's suits, and feeling the stuff to see if it were strong; she had taken off one of her long white gloves, and it lay beside the suits.
Eloquent gazed and gazed, and edged up the side of the counter towards her. Had he possessed eyes for anybody else he would have observed that the four assistants were staring also, and that his father, even, seemed very much absorbed by this particular purchaser.
And, after all, why?
She was just a tall, quite young woman, very simply dressed in white.
But she was beautiful.
Not pretty; beautiful in a large, luminous, quite intelligible way.
It was all there, the gracious sovereignty of feature, colouring, above all, expression—that governs men.
Little Eloquent knew it and came edging up the shop, drawn irresistibly as by some powerful magnetic force.
The young shopmen knew it, and neglected their patrons as much as they dared to stare at her.
Mr Gallup knew it, and stood rubbing his hands and thoroughly enjoying the good moment.
Those other customers knew it, and although the inattention of the young shopmen annoyed them, they sat well sideways in their chairs that they, too, might take a peep at the lady without rudely turning round.
The only person in the shop who appeared to know nothing about it was the lady herself. She bent her lovely head over the little suits and pondered, murmuring:
"I do wish I knew which they'd like best, a Norfolk jacket, or a jacket and waistcoat. Can you remember which you liked best?" she asked, suddenly lifting large, earnest eyes to Mr Gallup's flushed and cheerful countenance.
"Really, madam," said Mr Gallup, rather taken aback at the very personal turn the subject had taken, "I shouldn't think it matters in the least. Both are equally suitable."
At that moment, the lady caught sight of Eloquent edging, edging up the side of the counter, ever nearer to this astonishing vision.
"Here's somebody who can tell us," she exclaimed. "I'll explain to him. . . . I'm buying suits for three little boys—Sunday suits, for church and Sunday school, you know—I want them plain and serviceable so that by and bye they won't look funny for school—you know; well, would they like coats and waistcoats, or a Norfolk—which do you think?"
"Coats and waistcoats," said Eloquent promptly, his eyes still glued to her face.
"Why?" asked the lady.
"Because you can take off your coat, and then you're in your shirt-sleeves."
"But aren't you in your shirt-sleeves when you take off a Norfolk?"
"No," said Eloquent, "then you're in your shirt."
The lady laughed. Mr Gallup laughed. The assistants, who had not heard, for Eloquent spoke very low, sniggered sympathetically, and the other customers frowned.
"That settles it," said the lady, "and I'm very much obliged to you. I'll have the three little grey suits with coats and waistcoats. Poor little chaps, their mother died just a fortnight ago, and they've nothing tidy."
"My mother's dead," Eloquent announced abruptly.
The lady's eyes had been so soft, her face so tender and full of pity as she said, "poor little chaps," he felt a sudden spasm of jealousy. He wanted her to look at him like that.
He did not see his father's start, nor the momentary pained contraction of his cheerful features.
Eloquent's eyes were fixed on the lady's face, and sure enough he got what he wanted.
"I'm so sorry," she said simply, and she looked it; she had turned her kind eyes full upon him, eyes wide apart and grey and limpid.
He edged still nearer to her; so near that he stood upon her white dress with his dusty little boots, and still he stared unblinkingly.
The young lady looked puzzled. Why did the child regard her so fixedly? She suddenly awoke to the fact that everyone in the shop was looking at her. Even Mr Gallup, on the other side of the counter, seemed suddenly stricken by inertia, and instead of putting up the little suits in paper, was staring at the pair of them.
Then Eloquent was moved to explain.
"I've never seen anybody look like you before," he said gravely, "and I like watching you."
"Thank you," said the lady, and she patted his cheek.
She laughed.
Mr Gallup laughed, and came back to the affairs of the Golden Anchor, busying himself in tying up her parcel, while he explained that Eloquent was his only child.
Eloquent did not laugh, for she was going away.
Dada carried the parcel to the shop door and gave it to the footman. He put it in the carriage, and held out a thin silken cloak for the lady, which she put on. He covered her knees with a linen dust rug, and smiling and bowing she drove away.
Eloquent turned back into the shop with his father.
It seemed to have got very dark and gloomy again.
"Dada," he asked, "who is that lady?"
"That," said Mr Gallup, loudly and with no little pride, "is Mrs
Ffolliot of Redmarley, the bride."
The customers were all listening, the four assistants were all listening.
Mr Gallup held out his hand to Eloquent, and together they went through the shop and upstairs into the sitting-room, that looked out upon the market-place.
"Dada, is she one of the Classes?" Eloquent inquired, nervously.
"I believe you, my boy," Mr Gallup responded jocosely, "very much so, she is; a regular out and outer."
His father went away chuckling, but Eloquent was much depressed.
He went and stood over against one of the portraits of John Bright and looked at him for help.
"Be just and fear not," said that statesman.
"All very well," thought Eloquent, "she didn't pat your cheek."
He went and sought counsel of Mr Gladstone, a youngish Mr Gladstone in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester: "At last, my friends, I have come amongst you . . . unmuzzled," said the legend underneath his portrait.
But Eloquent felt that this was just what he was not. He felt very muzzled indeed. All sorts of vague thoughts went surging through his brain that could find no expression in words.
"I do believe," he said desperately, "if she was to give the whisperingest little call, I'd be obliged to go . . . and so would you," he continued, shaking his head at Mr Gladstone, "you'd do just the same."
He felt that, in some inexplicable, subtly mysterious fashion, there was a kind of affinity between Mr Gladstone and Mrs Ffolliot.
Mr Gladstone would understand, and not be too hard upon him.
In the years that followed, he saw Mrs Ffolliot from time to time from the window or in the street, but never again did he come so close to her as to touch her.
Never did he see her, however, without that strange thrill of enthusiastic admiration; that dumb, inarticulate sense of having seen something entirely satisfying and delightful; satisfying for the moment only: he paid dearly for his brief joy in after hours of curious depression and an aching sense of emptiness and loss. She was so far away.
Sometimes she was driving with her husband, and little Eloquent wondered after they had passed what manner of man it could be who had the right to sit by her whenever he liked. He never had time to notice Mr Ffolliot, till one day he saw him in the carriage alone, and scrutinised him sternly. Long afterwards he read how some admirer of Lord Hartington had said that what he liked most about him was his "You-be-damnedness." The phrase, Eloquent felt, exactly described Mr Ffolliot; aloof, detached, a fastidious, fine gentleman to his finger tips, entirely careless as to what the common people thought of him; not willingly conscious, unless rudely reminded of their existence, that there were any common people: such, Eloquent felt sure, was Mr Ffolliot's mental attitude, and he hated him.
Mr Ffolliot wore a monocle, and just at that time a new figure loomed large on the little boy's political horizon—a figure held up before him not for admiration, but reprobation—as a turncoat, an apostate, a real and menacing danger to the Cause dada had most at heart; the well-known effigy of Mr Joseph Chamberlain. He always appeared with monocle and orchid. In his expression, judged by the illustrated papers, there was something of that same "you-be-damnedness" he disliked so much in Mr Ffolliot. Eloquent lumped them together in his mind, and hated Mr Ffolliot as ardently as he worshipped his wife; and to no one at all did he ever say a word about either of them.
He rose rapidly in the school, and when he was nine years old had reached a form with boys much older than himself, boys old enough to write essays; and Eloquent wrote essays too; essays which were cruder and quainter than those of his companions. One day the subject given—rather an abstruse theme for boys to tackle—was Beauty. Eloquent wrote as follows:
"Beauty is tall and has a pleasant sounding voice, and you want to come as near as you can. You want to look at her all the time because you don't see it often. Beauty is most pretty to look at and you don't seem to see anyone else when it's there. She smells nice, a wafty smell like tobacco plants not pipes in the evening. When beauty looks at you you feel glad and funny and she smiles at you and looks with her eyes. She is different to aunts and people's wives. Taller and quite a different shape. Beauty is different.—E. A. Gallup, class IIIb."
He was twelve years old when they left Marlehouse. His father had bought a larger business in a busy commercial town, where there was a grammar school famous throughout the Midlands.
There Eloquent was educated until he was seventeen, when he, too, went into the outfitting business. He attended lectures and the science school in his free time, and belonged to two or three debating clubs. He was in great request at the smaller political gatherings as a speaker, and with constant practice bade fair to justify his name.
He occasionally went to Marlehouse, generally on political business, but never to Redmarley. Nevertheless, stray items of Redmarley news reached him through his aunt, who still kept up her friendship with some of the village folk there.
From her he learned that there were a lot of young Ffolliots; that they were wild and "mishtiful," unmanageable and generally troublesome; that Mrs Ffolliot was still immensely popular and her husband hardly known after all these years; that, owing, it was supposed, to their increasing family, they did not entertain much, and that the "Manshun" itself looked much as it had always looked.
Eloquent made no comment on these revelations, but he treasured them in his heart. Some day he intended to go back to Redmarley. He never forgot Mrs Ffolliot, or the impression she had made upon him the first time he saw her.
When Eloquent was four-and-twenty Abel Gallup died. He then learned that his father was a much wealthier man than anyone had supposed. Miss Gallup was left an annuity of a hundred a year. The rest of the very considerable property (some seventy thousand pounds) was left to Eloquent, but with the proviso that until he was elected a member of Parliament he could not touch more than three hundred a year, though he was to be allowed two thousand pounds for his election expenses whenever, and as often as he chose to stand, until he was elected; as long as the money lasted. Once he was in Parliament the property was his absolutely, to dispose of as he thought fit.
It was proof of Abel Gallup's entire trust in his son, that there was not one word in the will that in any way whatsoever expressed even a hope as to the legatee's political convictions.
Miss Gallup went back to Redmarley. Eloquent sold the outfitting business, and went to London to study parliamentary business from the stranger's gallery.
A young man was walking through Redmarley woods towards Redmarley village, and from time to time he gazed sorrowfully at his boots. There had been a lot of rain that winter, and now on this, the third Sunday in December, the pathway was covered with mud, which, when it was not sticky, was extremely slippery.
The young man walked rather slowly, twirling a smart cane as he went, and presently he burst into speech—more accurately—a speech.
"What, gentlemen," he demanded, loudly and rhetorically, "but no—I will not call you gentlemen; here to-night, I note it with pride and gladness, there are but few who can claim that courtesy title. I who speak, and most of you who do me the honour to listen, can lay claim to no prouder appellation than that of MEN. What then, fellow-men, I ask you, what is the House of Lords? What purpose does it serve except to delay all beneficent legislation, to waste the country's time and to nullify the best efforts. . . . Confound . . ."
He slipped, he staggered, his hat went one way, his stick another, and he sat down violently and with a splash in a particularly large puddle. And at that instant he was suddenly beset by a dog—a curiously long-legged fox-terrier—who came bouncing round him with short rushes and sharp barks. He had reached a part of the woods where the paths cross. Fir trees were very thick just there, and footsteps made hardly any sound in the soft mud.
A tall girl came quickly round the corner, calling "Parker!" and pulled up short as she beheld the stranger seated ingloriously in the puddle. But it was only for a moment; she hastened towards him, rebuking the dog as she came: "Be quiet, Parker, how rude of you, come off now, come to heel"—then, as he of the puddle, apparently paralysed by his undignified position, made no effort to arise, on reaching him she held out her hands, saying; "I wouldn't sit there if I were you, it's so awfully wet. Shall I pull you up? Dig your heels in, that's it. I say, you are in a mess!"
He was.
The leggy fox-terrier ceased to bark. Instead, he thrust an inquisitive nose into the stranger's bowler hat and sniffed dubiously.
The girl was strong and had pulled with a will.
"I am much obliged to you," the young man remarked stiffly, at the same time regarding his rescuer with a suspicious and inimical eye, to see if she were laughing at him.
She did nothing of the kind. Her candid gaze merely expressed dismay, subtly mingled with commiseration. "I don't see how we're to clean you," she said; "only scraping would do it—a trowel's best, but, then, I don't suppose you've got one about you."
The young man tried to look down his back, always a difficult feat.
"You're simply covered with mud from head to foot," she continued. "The only thing I can think of for you to do is to come to the stables, and I'll get Heaven to clean you . . . unless, perhaps," she added, doubtfully, "you were coming to the house."
"If you will kindly direct me to the village," he said, "I have to pay a call there, and no doubt my friends will assist me to remove some of this mud."
"But you can't go calling like that," she expostulated; "you'd far better come to the stables first. Heaven's so used to us, he'd clean you up in no time; besides, by far the quickest way to the village is down our drive. There's no right-of-way through these woods; didn't you see the boards?"
"Whenever," he spoke with deliberate emphasis, "I see a board to the effect that trespassers will be prosecuted, I make a point of walking over that land as a protest."
"Dear me," she said. "It must take you sadly out of your way sometimes.
Where have you come from to-day?"
"From Marlehouse."
"Then you'd have saved yourself at least a mile and a half, and your trousers all that mud, if you'd stuck to the road; it's ever such a long way round to come by the woods."
"I prefer the woods."
There was such superior finality in his tone, that the girl was apparently crushed. She started to walk, he followed; she waited for him, and they tramped along side by side in silence; he, covertly taking stock of his companion; she, gazing straight ahead as though for the moment she had forgotten his existence.
A tall girl, evidently between sixteen and seventeen, for her hair was not "done up," but tied together at the back with a large bow, whence it streamed long and thick and wavy to her waist: abundant light brown hair, with just enough red in it to give it life and warmth.
His appraising eye took in the fact at once that all her clothes were old, shabby, and exceedingly well cut. Her hat was a shapeless soft felt with no trimming, save a rather ragged cord, and she wore it turned down all round. It had once been brown, but was now a mixture of soft faded tints like certain lichens growing on a roof. Her covert coat, rather too big, and quite nondescript in colour, washed by the rains of many winters, revealed in flowing lines the dim grace of the broad, yet slender shoulders beneath.
Her exceedingly short skirt was almost as weather-beaten as the coat, but it swung evenly with every step and there was no sagging at the back.
Last of all, his eyes dropped to her boots: wide welted, heavy brown boots; regular country boots; but here again was the charm of graceful line, and he knew instinctively that the feet they encased were slender and shapely and unspoiled.
He raised his eyes again to the serenely unconscious profile presented to his view: a very finished profile with nothing smudgy or uncertain about it. The little nose was high-bridged and decided, the red lips full and shut closely together, the upper short and deeply cleft in the centre.
He was just thinking that, in spite of his muddy hat, he would rather like her to look at him again, when she turned her large gaze upon him with the question:
"Were you preaching just before you fell down?"
He flushed hotly. "Certainly not—did it sound like . . . that?"
"Well, I wasn't sure. I thought if you were a curate trying a sermon you'd have said 'brethren,' but 'fellow men' would do, you know; and then I heard something about the 'house of the Lord,' and I was sure you must be a sucking parson; but when I came up I wasn't so sure. What were you saying over, if it wasn't a sermon?"
"It was stupid of me . . . but I do a good deal of public speaking, and I never dreamt anyone was within miles . . ."
"Oh, a speech, was it? Where are you going to speak it?"
"I shall probably address a meeting in Marlehouse to-morrow night."
"Why?"
"Because I've been asked to do so."
"Will it be in the paper on Saturday?"
"Probably."
"How grand; do tell me your name, then I can look for your speech. I'd love to read it and see if you begin with the bit I heard about fellow men and the house of the Lord."
"The House of Lords," he corrected.
"Oh," said the girl. "Them! It's them you're against. I was afraid you objected to churches."
"I don't care much for churches, either," he observed, gloomily. "Do you?"
"I've really never thought about it," she confessed. "One's supposed to like them . . . they're good things, surely?"
"Institutions must be judged by their actual utility; their adaptability to present needs. Traditional benefits can no longer be accepted as a reason for the support of any particular cause."
"I think," she said, "that the mud on your clothes is drying. It will probably brush off quite nicely."
Had he ever read Alice in Wonderland he might have remembered what preceded the Caucus Race. But he never had, so he merely thought that she was singularly frivolous and irrelevant.
"You haven't told me your name," she continued, "so that I can look for that speech. We're nearly home, and I'll hand you over to Heaven so that he can make you tidy for your call."
"My name is E. A. Gallup," he replied, shortly.
"Up or op?" she asked.
"Up," he replied, wishing to heaven it weren't.
"Mine's M. B. Ffolliot, two 'fs' and two 'ls'. We live here, you know."
"I guessed you were a Miss Ffolliot. In fact, I may say I knew it."
"Everyone knows us about here," she said sadly. "That's the worst of it.
You can never get out of anything you've done."
E. A. Gallup looked surprised, but as she was again gazing into space she did not observe him.
"Whenever hay's trampled, or pheasants startled, or gates left open, or pigs chased, or turkeys furious, they always say, 'It's them varmints of young Ffolliots.'"
"Do you know," he said, and his grave face suddenly broke into a most boyish grin, "I believe even I have heard something of the kind."
"If you live anywhere within six miles of Redmarley you'll hear little else, and it isn't always us . . . though it is generally. This stupid gate's locked. We'll have to get over. It's easiest to do it like this."