The Ffolliots of Redmarley | Page 7

and
scrutinised him sternly. Long afterwards he read how some admirer of
Lord Hartington had said that what he liked most about him was his
"You-be-damnedness." The phrase, Eloquent felt, exactly described Mr
Ffolliot; aloof, detached, a fastidious, fine gentleman to his finerer tips,
entirely careless as to what the common people thought of him; not
willingly conscious, unless rudely reminded of their existence, that

there were any common people: such, Eloquent felt sure, was Mr
Ffolliot's mental attitude, and he hated him.
Mr Ffolliot wore a monocle, and just at that time a new figure loomed
large on the little boy's political horizon--a figure held up before him
not for admiration, but reprobation--as a turncoat, an apostate, a real
and menacing danger to the Cause dada had most at heart; the
well-known effigy of Mr Joseph Chamberlain. He always appeared
with monocle and orchid. In his expression, judged by the illustrated
papers, there was something of that same "you-be-damnedness" he
disliked so much in Mr Ffolliot. Eloquent lumped them together in his
mind, and hated Mr Ffolliot as ardently as he worshipped his wife; and
to no one at all did he ever say a word about either of them.
He rose rapidly in the school, and when he was nine years old had
reached a form with boys much older than himself, boys old enough to
write essays; and Eloquent wrote essays too; essays which were cruder
and quainter than those of his companions. One day the subject
given--rather an abstruse theme for boys to tackle--was Beauty.
Eloquent wrote as follows:
"Beauty is tall and has a pleasant sounding voice, and you want to
come as near as you can. You want to look at her all the time because
you don't see it often. Beauty is most pretty to look at and you don't
seem to see anyone else when it's there. She smells nice, a wafty smell
like tobacco plants not pipes in the evening. When beauty looks at you
you feel glad and funny and she smiles at you and looks with her eyes.
She is different to aunts and people's wives. Taller and quite a different
shape. Beauty is different.--E. A. Gallup, class IIIb."
He was twelve years old when they left Marlehouse. His father had
bought a larger business in a busy commercial town, where there was a
grammar school famous throughout the Midlands.
There Eloquent was educated until he was seventeen, when he, too,
went into the outfitting business. He attended lectures and the science
school in his free time, and belonged to two or three debating clubs. He
was in great request at the smaller political gatherings as a speaker, and

with constant practice bade fair to justify his name.
He occasionally went to Marlehouse, generally on political business,
but never to Redmarley. Nevertheless, stray items of Redmarley news
reached him through his aunt, who still kept up her friendship with
some of the village folk there.
From her he learned that there were a lot of young Ffolliots; that they
were wild and "mishtiful," unmanageable and generally troublesome;
that Mrs Ffolliot was still immensely popular and her husband hardly
known after all these years; that, owing, it was supposed, to their
increasing family, they did not entertain much, and that the "Manshun"
itself looked much as it had always looked.
Eloquent made no comment on these revelations, but he treasured them
in his heart. Some day he intended to go back to Redmarley. He never
forgot Mrs Ffolliot, or the impression she had made upon him the first
time he saw her.
When Eloquent was four-and-twenty Abel Gallup died. He then learned
that his father was a much wealthier man than anyone had supposed.
Miss Gallup was left an annuity of a hundred a year. The rest of the
very considerable property (some seventy thousand pounds) was left to
Eloquent, but with the proviso that until he was elected a member of
Parliament he could not touch more than three hundred a year, though
he was to be allowed two thousand pounds for his election expenses
whenever, and as often as he chose to stand, until he was elected; as
long as the money lasted. Once he was in Parliament the property was
his absolutely, to dispose of as he thought fit.
It was proof of Abel Gallup's entire trust in his son, that there was not
one word in the will that in any way whatsoever expressed even a hope
as to the legatee's political convictions.
Miss Gallup went back to Redmarley. Eloquent sold the outfitting
business, and went to London to study parliamentary business from the
stranger's gallery.

CHAPTER III
ANOTHER OF THEM
A young man was walking through Redmarley woods towards
Redmarley village, and from time to time he gazed