The Ffolliots of Redmarley | Page 2

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