The Ffolliots of Redmarley Part 37

REDMARLEY, _Tuesday._

DEAR REGGIE,--We were all very excited to see it in the _Gazette_ this morning, though of course we knew it was coming. The children took the _Times_ down to Willets at tea-time, and Fusby was at special pains to ask mother after lunch if there was any chance of Captain Peel coming down soon. Is there? You won't find me here unless it's very soon, for I'm actually to be allowed to stay with grannie for quite a long time. After swearing that I should only go up for the drawing-room, and that it was nonsense to talk of my going out at all till mother could take me, the _pater_ has suddenly veered round, and I am to go up to Woolwich on May-Day, and what's more, he is taking me up himself.

At first I thought I was to go with Grantly when he went back to the Shop, but that wouldn't do seemingly, Grantly wasn't enough chaperon, so father's coming just for one night.

Last night we had a dinner-party and the Liberal member took me in. He is such an odd little man. Very, very good, I should think; very kind--not hard-hearted and ruthless like some people who write cruel stories about war--he is a nonconformist of sorts and doesn't do any of the usual things, so it's a little difficult to talk to him, but mother managed it--to make him talk, I mean. I heard him murmuring away like anything while we were playing bridge. She likes him too. He has an odd way of looking at you as if you were a picture and not a person.

Don't you think it's fun to be going to town on May-Day and to have proper dinner every night whether there are people or not. I hope there will be lots of people. Do come to Woolwich while I'm there, and mind you treat me with great respect.

When is the new story coming out? I wish they'd hurry up. It will be so exciting to hear people talk about it and to think I know who wrote it and they don't. Clara Bax came with the Campions last night--do you remember her? She is _very_ pretty and so clever, understands all about politics and things like that. Fancy, she sells newspapers in the street for the Cause. She asked me if I'd help her, and I thought it would be great fun, but father--you know how he pounces--heard from the other end of the table, and though just a minute before he'd been ever so sympathetic with Miss Bax, at once interfered, and said I was much too ignorant to take any active part as yet, and Grantly frowned at me across the table. Would you buy a newspaper from me, I wonder?

When father pounces I always feel that I could almost marry an impossible person just to annoy him; but the worst of it is that I should have the impossible person always, and I might get rather tired of it. Why should Miss Bax steal a horse and father beam and pay her compliments, and yet if I so much as look over the fence he shoos me away with a pitch-fork.

I wonder if you will get out to India, as you wish? In a way I hope you won't, because you'd go out in the autumn, wouldn't you? and if you are stationed anywhere at home you could come sometimes for a few days'

hunting; but of course if you want it very much I want you to have it.

This is a very long letter. Good-bye, Reggie, and heaps of grats. You a captain and me grown up: we are coming on.--Yours: affectionately,

MARY B. FFOLLIOT.

P.S.--Some fiend in human shape sent Ger a little red book, trumpet, and bugle notes for the army, and he makes Miss Glover play them and then practises. There's one thing, it's a little change from the eternal "cook-house door," but it's very dreadful all the same.

BRIDGE HOUSE, REDMARLEY, _27th. April._

DEAR SIR,--Excuse the liberty I take in writing to offer you my congratulations on the announcement in the paper yesterday. Master Ger and Miss Kitten came to tea with my wife, and the mistress, with her usual kindness, sent me the paper. When I first knew you, sir, you were very much the size Master Ger is now, and yet it seems but yesterday when I was teaching you to throw a fly just beyond the bridge here. I always look on you as one of our young gentlemen, for you've come amongst us so many years now and always been so free and pleasant, and I hope I may have the pleasure of going out with you often in the future, though Master Ger did say he'd heard that you were thinking of India. If that is so, I hope you'll make a point of coming down for a few days early in June, when the fly will be at its best. If this mild weather continues we ought to get some very sizeable fish.

It's funny to me to think how I've been here twenty-three years come Michaelmas, and when the present Squire came I never thought I should stop, he not being fond of sport. If I may say so, you, sir, had a good deal to do with me stopping on that first summer, me being very fond of children, and then when they came at the Manor House and the mistress always sent them down to be shown to us as soon as ever they went out, I began to feel I'd taken root here, and so I suppose I have.

Master Ger is becoming a first-rate performer on the bugle, he played for us yesterday, quite wonderful it was. My wife begs to join with me in respectful congratulations.--Your obedient servant,

WILLIAM WILLETS.

He wrote to Willets at once, promising to come down at the end of May for a week-end, even if he couldn't get more. He was frightfully busy, for he was one of the instructors at Chatham, and had many other irons in the fire as well. He waited till he knew Mary was in Woolwich and then he wrote to her:--

It was nice of you to send me such pretty grats, and I am truly appreciative. I also had the jolliest letter from old Willets. He promises good sport very shortly, and I shall make a point of turning up at Redmarley when the fly is on the water, if only for a couple of nights, for when Willets foretells "sizeable fish" you know you're in for a first-cla.s.s thing. It will be queer to be at the Manor House and you away. Only once has that happened to me, the year you were at school, and now "all that's shuv be'ind you" and you're out and dancing about. I shall certainly have urgent private affairs in Woolwich during the next month. Talk of respect! When was I ever anything but grovelling? And once I have gazed upon your portrait in train and feathers I shall be reduced to such a state of timidity you won't know me.

The other day I met your friend Clara Bax selling _Votes for Women_ at the Panton Street corner of Leicester Square, and she hadn't at all a Hurrah face on. I greeted her and bought one of the beastly little papers, and went on my way. But something caused me to look back, and I beheld Miss Bax seemingly in difficulties with two young feller-me-lads, who evidently had no intention of going on. There was no policeman handy--besides, there's a coolness at present between members of the force and the fair militants--so I went back and dealt faithfully with Miss Bax's admirers, and they departed, I regret to say, blaspheming.

Miss Bax seemed rather shaken, the type was evidently new to her, and I suggested that she should quit her pitch for the moment and come and have lunch with me; so we went together to the _Pet.i.t Riche_, where we consumed an excellent omelette; and the bundle of papers, which I, Mary, had n.o.bly carried through the streets of London, sat on a chair between us and did chaperon.

Personally, I see no reason why women should not have votes if they want 'em, but I see every reason why no woman, and above all no young woman, should sell papers anywhere, more especially in Leicester Square. I'd like to give the Panks, and the Peths, and the Hicemen a bit of my mind on the subject. The mere thought of you ever indulging in such unseemly vagaries fills me with horror unspeakable. Talk of the Squire! Pouncing and pitchforks wouldn't be in it with me, I can tell you, and yet Miss Bax isn't an orphan.

That very day I met a lugubrious procession of females, encased in large sandwich-boards proclaiming a meeting somewhere. They were dismally dodging the traffic, and looked about as dejected as they could look--ladies every one of them. I begin to think old England's no place for women when they're reduced to that sort of thing--what do you say to India for a change?

The story will be out next month, but you won't like it--too technical.

I hope young Grantly's doing some work. This term counts a lot, and he mustn't pa.s.s out low for the honour of the family.

My salaams to the General and Mrs Grantly, and to you--my remembrances.

Do you, by the way, remember "our last ride together" in January? When shall we have another? Would the General let us ride in the park one day if I could get off?--Yours,

REGGIE.

P.S.--Why the kind and blameless member for Marlehouse? Has the Squire changed his politics? It's all very well for you to say the young man looked at you as if you were a picture. We've another name for that sort of sheep's eyes where I come from. He'd better not let me catch him at it.

Eloquent came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to pay court to a girl who belongs to what his father was wont to call "the cla.s.ses." He wondered how they managed it. Such girls, it seemed to him, were never left alone for a minute. One's only chance was to see them at parties in a crowd, and if you did dine at their houses, there was always bridge directly after dinner, when conversation was restricted to "I double hearts," or "with you," or "No." He studied the rules of bridge industriously, for he found on inquiry that even Cabinet Ministers did not disdain it as a recreation. Therefore Dalton shared with blue-books the little table by his bed.

It's a far cry from Westminster to Woolwich, and in spite of indefatigable spade-work on his part, it was well on in the third week in May before he so much as caught a glimpse of Mary Ffolliot.

Then one morning he saw her in Bond Street with her grandmother. She was on the opposite side of the street rather ahead of him, but he knew that easy strolling walk, the flat back, and proud carriage of the head: that head with its burnished hair coiled smoothly under a bewitching hat. They stopped to look in at Asprey's window, and he dashed across the road in the full stream of traffic. Two indignant taxi-drivers swore, and he reached the curb breathless, but uninjured, just as they went into the shop.

He stood staring at the window, keeping at the same time a sharp look-out on the door.

What an age they were!

He had just decided that the only thing to do was to go in and buy something, when they came out.

Mary saw him at once, and his round face looked so wistful that she greeted him with quite unnecessary warmth. She recalled him to Mrs Grantly, who, remembering vaguely that he was a young man who had "risen from the ranks," was also more cordial than the occasion demanded.

He walked up Bond Street with them, piloted them across Piccadilly, and turned with them down Haymarket, so plainly delighted to see them, so nervous, so pathetically anxious to please, that Mrs Grantly's hospitable instincts, fatally easy to rouse where pity played a part, overcame her discretion. Her husband and her daughter used to declare that she had a perfect genius for enc.u.mbering herself with impossible people--and repenting afterwards. With dismay she realised that Eloquent had, apparently, attached himself to them. Short of cruelly wounding his feelings, she saw herself walking about London all day, accompanied by this painfully polite young man. It seemed impossible to call a taxi, and leave him desolate there on the pavement unless . . . Mrs Grantly's heart was hopelessly soft where animals were concerned, and just then Eloquent reminded her of nothing so much as an affectionate dog, allowed to frisk gaily to the front door, and cruelly shut in on the wrong side, as she said--

"We've got to meet my husband at the Stores, Mr Gallup, perhaps you'll kindly get us a taxi, as I'm rather tired."

His woebegone face was too much for her, and she added, "We're always at home on Sunday afternoons."

Mary rather wondered at her grannie.

The taxi drove away and Eloquent walked down Haymarket as though he were treading on air. To-day was Friday. Sunday, oh blessed day! was the day after to-morrow.

There were clovers nodding in her hat, a wide-brimmed fine straw hat that threw soft shadows over her blue eyes and turned them dark as the clear water underneath Redmarley Bridge. And he would see her again on Sunday.

That lady, that handsome portly lady, he had been afraid of her at first, she looked so large and imposing, but how kind she was! How wonderfully kind and hearty she had been. It was she who had invited him. "We are always at home on Sundays," she said. Surely that meant he might go more than once?

That night he made his maiden speech in the House.

Reggie went down to Redmarley at the beginning of June from Sat.u.r.day afternoon till Sunday evening. The Squire had a bad cold and was confined to the house. His nerves vibrated, so did the tempers of other people, but Reggie did not care. He joined Willets at the river and fished till dinner-time. Directly after dinner he went out again and they had splendid sport till nearly ten. Willets walked with him back to the house, and Reggie had a curious feeling that Willets wanted to tell him something and couldn't come to the point. So strong was this feeling that as they parted he said, "I shan't go to bed yet, Willets. It's such a perfect night--may stroll down to the bridge, and if you're still up we might have a cigar together."

He went into the house, chatted a while to Mrs Ffolliot and the Squire, and when they went to bed let himself out very quietly and strolled down the drive and out of the great gates to the bridge. The perfect peace of the warm June night, the yellow moonlight on the quiet water, the wide-spanned bridge, the long straggling street of irregular gabled houses so kindly and so sheltering with their overhanging eaves, the dear familiar charm of it all seemed to grip Reggie by the throat and caused an unwonted smarting in his eyes.

The village was absolutely deserted save for one motionless figure sitting on the wall at the far end of the bridge.

"Hullo, Willets," Reggie called, "not in bed yet?"