Eloquent registered a vow.

The vicar himself read the second lesson, and the meditations of the a.s.sembled worshippers were undisturbed.

The vicar always preached for exactly ten minutes. He took an old-fashioned hour-gla.s.s up into the pulpit with him, and when it ran out he concluded his discourse. Redmarley folk highly approved this ritual. When stray parsons came to preach, especially if they were dignitaries of the church, a body could never tell what they might be at, and the suspense was wearing. Why, the Dean of Garchester had been known to keep on for half an hour.

The Redmarley worshippers rarely slept. It wasn't worth while.

Instead, they kept a wary eye upon the hour-gla.s.s. They trusted to their vicar's honour, and he rarely failed them. As the last grains of sand ran out he turned to the east, and most people were back home and sitting down to supper by eight o'clock.

Miss Gallup never hurried out of church. She thought it unseemly.

Therefore, it came to pa.s.s that Eloquent was still standing in his place as Mary Ffolliot and her brother came down the aisle. Mary looked him full in the face as she pa.s.sed, and smiled frankly at him with friendly recognition.

The "knut" had gone on ahead.

Eloquent gave no answering smile. For one thing, he had never for one moment expected her to take the slightest notice of him, and the fact that she had done so raised a perfect tumult of unexpected and inexplicable emotion.

The hot blood rushed to his face, and there was a singing in his ears.

He turned right round and stared down the aisle at her retreating form, and was only roused to a sense of mundane things by a violent poke in the small of his back, and his aunt's voice buzzing in an irritated whisper: "Go on, my boy, do you want to stop here all night?"

"Mr Grantly read very nice, didn't he?"

Miss Gallup remarked complacently, as they were walking home.

"To tell you the truth, Aunt Susan, I thought he read very badly: he bellowed so, and was absolutely wanting in expression."

"Poor young gentleman," Miss Gallup said tolerantly. "Last time he read, back in summer it was, he did read so soft like, no one could hear a word he said, and I know they all went on at him something dreadful, so this time I suppose he thought as they _should_ hear him."

"Do you think," Eloquent asked diffidently, "that Mr Molyneux would like me to read the lessons some Sunday when I'm down here?"

Miss Gallup stopped short.

"Well, now," she exclaimed, "to think of you suggestin' that, an' I was just wonderin' at that very minute whether if I was to ask you--you'd snap my head off, you being chapel and all."

Eloquent longed to say that he was not so wrapped up in chapel as all that, but long habits of self-restraint stood him in good stead. Where possible votes were concerned it did not do to speak the thought of the moment, so he merely remarked indifferently that he'd be "pleased to be of any a.s.sistance."

"Of course," Miss Gallup continued, as she walked on, "there's no knowing whether, with the election coming on and all, the vicar might think it quite suitable, though he's generally glad to get any one to read as will."

"Surely," Eloquent said severely, "he does not carry his political views into his religious life, to the extent of boycotting those who do not agree with him."

"It's his church," Miss Gallup rejoined stoutly; "no one can read in it without 'tis his wish."

"My dear aunt, you surely don't imagine that I want to read the lessons at Redmarley except as a matter of kindness . . . a.s.sistance to Mr Molyneux. What other reason can I have?"

"Well," said Miss Gallup, shrewdly, "it might be that you wanted to show how well you could do it . . ." she paused.

Eloquent blushed in the darkness.

"And with an election coming on, you never know what motives folks has," she continued. "But it's my belief Mr Molyneux'd be pleased as Punch. He's all for friendliness, he is. I know who wouldn't be pleased, though----"

"Who is that?" asked Eloquent, as his aunt had stopped, evidently waiting to be questioned.

"Why, Mr Ffolliot; he don't take much part in politics, but he thinks Redmarley belongs to him, and he'd be mighty astonished if you was to get up and read in the parish church, and him not been told anything about it."

"I shall certainly call on Mr Molyneux tomorrow," said Eloquent.

CHAPTER VI

THE SQUIRE

Hilary Ffolliot, squire of Redmarley in the county of Ga.r.s.etshire, did not appreciate the blessings heaped upon him by providence in the shape of so numerous a family, and from their very earliest years manifested a strong determination that no child of his should be spoilt through any injudicious slackening of discipline.

His rules and regulations were as the sands of the sea for number, and as they all tended in the same direction, namely, to the effacement of his lively and ubiquitous offspring, it is hardly surprising that such a large and healthy family found it difficult, not to say impossible, to attain to his ideal of the whole duty of children. And although a desire not to transgress his code regarding silence and decorum in such parts of the house as were within ear-shot of his study was strong in the children, knowing how swift and sure was the retribution overtaking such offenders--yet, however willing the spirit, the flesh was weak, and succ.u.mbed to temptations to jump whole flights of stairs, to slide down bannisters, arriving with a sounding thump at the bottom, and occasionally to bang the schoolroom door in the faces of the pursuing brethren.

Thus it was that strangers ringing the front-door bell at the Manor House were, on being admitted, faced by large cards on the opposite wall bearing such devices as, "Be sure you shut the door quietly," "Do not speak loudly," "Go round to the back if possible." And it is told of one timid guest, that on reading the aforesaid directions (which, by the way, were only supposed to apply to the children) he incontinently fled before the astonished butler could stop him; and, as directed, meekly rang the back-door bell, some five minutes afterwards.

Mr Ffolliot suffered from nerves. He was by temperament quite unfitted to be either a country squire or the father of a large family. Above all, was he singularly unable to bear with equanimity the strain upon his income such a large family entailed. He liked his comforts about him, he was by nature of a contemplative and aesthetically studious turn, and saw no good reason why his learned leisure should suffer interruption, or his delicate susceptibilities be ruffled by such incongruities as the loud voices and inharmonious movements of a set of thoughtless children.

The village was small and well-to-do, his duties as a landowner sat lightly upon him, and he was very awe-inspiring, didactic, and distant in his dealings with the surrounding neighbours. He had a fine taste in old prints and old port, and every spring his health necessitated a somewhat lengthened stay in an "oasis" which he had "discovered," so he said, in the south of France, where he communed with nature, and manifested a nice appreciation of the artistic efforts of his host's most excellent cook.

In fact, the matter of intercourse with outsiders was largely left to the discretion of his wife; and whoever had much to do with Mrs Ffolliot (and most people wanted as much as they could get) spent a good deal of time in the society of the children. And to the children--what was she not to those children?

For them "mother" signified everything that was kind, and gay, and gracious, and above all, understanding. Other people might be stupid, and attaint with evil intention accidents, which while certainly unfortunate in their results, were wholly unpremeditated, but mother always gave the offender the benefit of the doubt, and not infrequently by her charms of person and persuasive arts of conversation, so effectually turned away the wrath of the injured one (generally a farmer), that no hint of the escapade reached Mr Ffolliot's ears.

For the fact is that being somewhat tightly kept at home, the young Ffolliots were more than something of a nuisance when they went abroad; and as several of them generally were abroad, in their train did mischief and destruction follow.

For three hundred years there had been Ffolliots at Redmarley; of the last three owners two were married and childless, and the one immediately preceding Mr Hilary Ffolliot was a bachelor. But the fact that the Manor had not for over a hundred years descended from father to son, in no way affected the love each reigning Ffolliot felt for it.

There was something about Redmarley that seized the imagination and the affection of the dwellers there. The little grey stone village that lay so lovingly along the banks of the Marle was so enduring, so valorous in its st.u.r.dy indifference to time; in the way its gabled cottages under their overhanging eaves faced summer sun and winter rains, and instead of crumbling away seemed but to stand the firmer and more dignified in their cheery eld.

The Ffolliots were good landlords. No leaking roofs or defective walls were complained of at Redmarley. Never was Ffolliot yet who had not realised the unique quality of the village, and done his best to maintain it. It never grew, rarely was a house to let, and the jerry builder was an unknown evil. It was a healthy village, too, set high in the clean Cotswold air. Big farms surrounded it, the nearest railway line was three miles off, and the nearest station almost seven.

Of course there was poverty and a good deal of rheumatism among the older inhabitants, but on the whole the periodic outbursts of industrial discontent and unrest that convulsed other parts of England seemed to pa.s.s Redmarley by.

Had the Manor stood empty or the vicar been a poor man with a large family, doubtless things would have been uncomfortable enough to stir the villagers out of their habitual philosophic acceptance of the "rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate" as an inevitable and immutable law. But they couldn't actively dislike either squire or parson, and although the agricultural labourer is slow of speech he is not lacking in shrewdness, and those at Redmarley realised that things would be much worse than they were if Squire and Parson were suddenly eliminated.

Hilary Ffolliot liked the role of landed proprietor in the abstract.

He would not have let the Manor and lived elsewhere for the world. He went regularly to church on Sunday morning, though it bored him extremely, because, like Major Pendennis, he thought that "when a gentleman is _sur ses terres_ he must give an example to the country people." Had he been starving he would not have sold a single rood of Redmarley land to a.s.suage his hunger. Similarly he would himself have done without a great many things rather than let any of his people go hungry. But it was only because they were _his_ people, part of the state and circ.u.mstance of Redmarley. He didn't care for them a bit as individuals. Any intercourse with the peasantry was irksome to him.

Dialect afflicted him. He had nothing to say to them, and they were stricken dumb in his awe-inspiring presence. He was well content to have few personal dealings with those, who, in his own mind, he thought of as his "retainers." He left everything of that sort to his wife.

It was the same with the children. He looked upon them as a concession to Marjory's liking for that sort of thing: and by "that sort of thing"

he meant his wife's enthusiastic interest in her fellow-creatures.

To be sure he was pleased that there should be no question as to a direct heir . . . but . . . six of them was really rather a nuisance.

Children were like peasantry, inclined to be awkward and uncouth, crude in thought and word and deed; apt to be sticky unless fresh from the hands of nurse; in summer nearly always hot, frequently dirty, and certainly always noisy, with, moreover, a distinct leaning towards low company and a plainly manifest discomfort in his own.

He was proud of them because they were Ffolliots, and because they were tall and straight and handsome (how wisely he had chosen their mother!), and he supposed that some day, when they became more civilised, he would be able to take some pleasure in their society.