The Ffolliots of Redmarley Part 18

"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 s.h.i.+ning 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 circ.u.mstances. Like a picture thrown on a screen he saw the little boy standing at her knee, the giggling shop a.s.sistants, 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 sc.r.a.per--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 s.h.i.+rty, 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 Adele 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 b.u.t.termish, 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 b.u.t.termish was 'er name; I remember it most pertikler, because I thought what a funny name."

"b.u.t.termish, b.u.t.termish," Miss Gallup repeated; "where did she come from?"

"That I can't tell you, Miss; I was in the kitchen polis.h.i.+ng 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 m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.ses me----"