The Ffolliots of Redmarley Part 31

"If he were in Honolulu he would not be more impossible than he is at present," said the Squire irritably. "Don't discuss it any more, my dear, I beg of you. It is out of the question."

And Mr Ffolliot rose from the table and took refuge in his study.

"I'm sorry," Mrs Ffolliot sighed, "I should have liked to ask him," and then she suddenly awoke to the fact that her entire family looked perturbed and miserable to the last degree.

Grantly pushed back his chair. "May I go, mother," he said, "I've something I must say to father."

"Not now, Grantly," and Mrs Ffolliot laid a gentle detaining hand upon his arm as he pa.s.sed, "not just when he's feeling annoyed--if there's anything you have to tell him let it wait--don't go and worry him now."

Grantly lifted his mother's hand off his arm very gently. "I must, mummy dear, it can't wait."

He looked rather pale but his eyes were steady, and she thought with a little thrill of pride how like his grandfather he was growing.

He went straight to the study. Mr Ffolliot was seated by the fire with _Gaston Latour_ open in his hand.

Grantly shut the door, crossed to the fireplace and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at his father. "I've come to say, father, that I think we _ought_ to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."

"_You_ think we ought to . . ." the Squire paused in breathless astonishment.

"Yes, sir, I do. And I hope you'll think so too when you hear what I've got to say."

"Go on," said Mr Ffolliot, laying down his book. "Go on."

It wasn't very easy. Grantly swallowed something in his throat, and began rather huskily: "You see, sir, we're under an obligation to Gallup. We are really."

"_We_ are under an obligation. What on earth do you mean?"

"Well I am, father, anyway. You remember the night before the election----?"

"I don't," the Squire interrupted, "why in the world should I----?"

"Well, sir, it was like this . . . I went to dinner with young Rabb.i.+.c.h at the Moonstone, and I got drunk----"

"You--got--drunk?" the pauses between each word were far more emphatic than the words themselves.

"Yes, sir, we all had more than was good for us, and we went to the Radical meeting and made an awful row, and got chucked out and----"

"Look here, Grantly, what has all this to do with young Gallup? It was idiotic of you to go to his meeting, and the conduct of a vulgar blockhead to get drunk; but in what way . . ."

"That's not all, sir; after the meeting the bands came into collision, and I got taken up."

"_You_ got taken up?"

"Two policemen, sir, taking me to the station, and Mr Gallup got me out of it and gave me a bed in his house."

Mr Ffolliot sat forward in his chair. "You accepted his hospitality--you slept the night in his house?"

"If I hadn't I'd have slept the night in the lock-up, and it would have been in the papers."

"But why--why should he have intervened to protect you?"

"Do you think, sir"--Grantly's voice was very shy--"that it might be because we both come from the same place?"

"He doesn't belong to the village."

"In a way he does; there have been Gallups in Redmarley nearly as long as us."

Mr Ffolliot said nothing. He sat staring at his tall young son as if he were a new person.

Grantly fidgetted and flushed and paled under this steady contemplation, saying at last: "You do see what I mean, don't you, father?"

"I do."

"That we ought to do something friendly?"

"He has certainly, through your idiotic fault, contrived to put us under an obligation. Why, I cannot think, but the fact remains. I do not know anything that could have annoyed me more."

Grantly ventured to think that perhaps a paragraph in the police reports of the local newspaper might have tried the Squire even more severely, but he did not say so. He waited.

"Does your mother know of all this?"

"Oh no, father, it would make her so sorry. Must we tell her?"

"Your tenderness for her feelings in no way restrained you at the time; why this solicitude now?"

"I'd rather she knew than seem to go back on Gallup."

"You may go, Grantly, and leave me to digest this particularly disagreeable intelligence. I have long reconciled myself to your lack of intellectual ability, but I did not know that you indulged in such coa.r.s.e pleasures."

"Father--did you never do anything of that kind when you were young?"

"Most truthfully I can answer that I never did. It would not have amused me in the least."

"It didn't _amuse_ me," Grantly said ruefully; "I can't remember much about it."

"Go," said Mr Ffolliot, and Grantly went, looking rather like Parker with his tail between his legs.

Hardly had Mr Ffolliot realised the import of what Grantly had told him when the door was opened again and Buz came in.

Buz, too, made straight for the hearth-rug, and standing there faced his bewildered parent (these sudden invasions were wholly without precedent), saying: "I've come to tell you, sir, that I think we _ought_ to ask Mr Gallup to dinner."

Had Mr Ffolliot been a man of his hands he would have fallen upon Buz and boxed his ears there and then; as it was, he replied bitterly:

"I am not interested in your opinion, boy, on this or any other subject. Leave the room at once."

But Buz, to his father's amazement, stood his ground.

"You must hear me, father, else you can't understand."