Part 1 (1/2)

The Ffolliots of Redmarley.

by L. Allen Harker.

CHAPTER I

ELOQUENT

”Father, what d'you think we'd better call him?” Mrs Gallup asked, when the baby was a week old; ”have you thought of a name?”

”I've _fixed_ on a name,” her husband replied, triumphantly. ”The child shall be called Eloquent.”

”Eloquent,” Mrs Gallup repeated, dubiously. ”That's a queer name, isn't it? 'Tisn't a name at all, not really.”

”It's going to be my son's name, anyhow,” Mr Gallup retorted, positively. ”I've thought the matter out, most careful I've considered it, and that's the name my son's got to be called . . . Eloquent Gallup he'll be, and a very good name too.”

”But why Eloquent?” Mrs Gallup persisted. ”How d'you know as he'll _be_ eloquent? an' if he isn't, that name'll make him a laughing-stock.

Suppose he was to grow up one of them say-nothing-to-n.o.body sort of chaps, always looking down his nose, and afraid to say 'Bo' to a goose: what's he to _do_ with such a name?”

”There's no fear my son will grow up a-say-nothing-to-n.o.body sort of chap,” said Mr Gallup, boastfully. ”I'll take care of that. Now you listen to me, mother. You know the proverb 'Give a dog a bad name'----”

”I never said it was a bad name,” Mrs Gallup pleaded.

”I should think you didn't--but look here, if it's true of a bad name, mustn't it be equally true of a good one? Why, it's argument, it's logic, that is. Call a boy Eloquent and ten to one he'll _be_ eloquent, don't you see?”

”But what d'you want him to be eloquent for?” Mrs Gallup enquired almost tearfully. ”What good will it do him--precious lamb?”

”There's others to be thought of as well as 'im,” Mr Gallup remarked, mysteriously.

”Who? More children?” asked Mrs Gallup. ”I don't see as he'd need to be eloquent just to mind his little brother or sister.”

”Ellen Gallup, you listen to me. That babe lying there on your knee with a red face all puckered up is going to sway the mult.i.tude.” Mrs Gallup gasped, and clutched her baby closer. ”He's going to be one of those whose voice shall ring clarion-like”--here Mr Gallup unconsciously raised his own, and the baby stirred uneasily--”over”--he paused for a simile--he had been going to say ”land and sea,” but it didn't finish the sentence to his liking, ”far and wide,” he concluded, rather lamely.

Mrs Gallup made no remark, so he continued: ”Eloquent Gallup shall be a politician. Some day he'll stand for parlyment, _and he'll get in_, and when he's there he'll speak up and he'll speak out for the rights of his fellow men, and he'll proclaim their wrongs.”

And there and then, as if in vindication of his father's belief in him, the baby began to roar so l.u.s.tily that further converse was impossible.

A week later, the baby was baptized Eloquent Abel Gallup. Abel was a concession to his mother's qualms. It was his father's name, and by her it was looked upon as a loophole of escape for her son, should Eloquent prove a misnomer.

”After all,” she reflected, ”if the poor chap shouldn't have the gift of the gab, Abel's a good everyday workin' name, and he can drop the E if it suits 'im. 'Tain't always them as has most to say does most, that's certain; and why his father's so set on him being one of those chaps forever standing on platforms and haranguing pa.s.ses 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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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.