"If you've come to say anything about Grantly you may spare yourself the pains, he has told me himself."

"About Grantly," Buz repeated stupidly, "why should I want to talk about Grantly?--it's about him and me I want to talk."

"Him and you?" Mr Ffolliot echoed desperately.

"Yes, I rotted him that night and he was awfully decent----"

"What night?"

"The night I broke my arm--they said at the Infirmary that if he hadn't been so careful of me it would have been much worse."

"You refer, I suppose, to Gallup?"

"Yes, father, and it really was decent of him, because I went dressed up as a suffragette and had no end of a rag; he might have been awfully shirty, and he wasn't--he never told a soul. Don't you think we ought to ask him?"

"Does your mother know about this?"

"Of course not, n.o.body knew except Uz and," Buz added truthfully, "Adele."

"Leave me," said Mr Ffolliot feebly, "I've had about as much as I can bear this afternoon--Go."

"You do see, sir, that it makes a difference," pleaded the persistent Buz.

"Go," thundered the exasperated Squire.

"All right, father, I'm going, but you _do_ see, don't you?" said Buz from the door.

CHAPTER XXI

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 G.o.dmother, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.sical 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-cla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 compet.i.tive examinations all ambition seemed dead in him.

And what of Marjory?

n.o.body, 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 a.s.sault--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 mis...o...b..ed 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.