Part 2 (1/2)

”I've never seen anybody look like you before,” he said gravely, ”and I like watching you.”

”Thank you,” said the lady, and she patted his cheek.

She laughed.

Mr Gallup laughed, and came back to the affairs of the Golden Anchor, busying himself in tying up her parcel, while he explained that Eloquent was his only child.

Eloquent did not laugh, for she was going away.

Dada carried the parcel to the shop door and gave it to the footman.

He put it in the carriage, and held out a thin silken cloak for the lady, which she put on. He covered her knees with a linen dust rug, and smiling and bowing she drove away.

Eloquent turned back into the shop with his father.

It seemed to have got very dark and gloomy again.

”Dada,” he asked, ”who is that lady?”

”That,” said Mr Gallup, loudly and with no little pride, ”is Mrs Ffolliot of Redmarley, the bride.”

The customers were all listening, the four a.s.sistants were all listening.

Mr Gallup held out his hand to Eloquent, and together they went through the shop and upstairs into the sitting-room, that looked out upon the market-place.

”Dada, is she one of the Cla.s.ses?” Eloquent inquired, nervously.

”I believe you, my boy,” Mr Gallup responded jocosely, ”very much so, she is; a regular out and outer.”

His father went away chuckling, but Eloquent was much depressed.

He went and stood over against one of the portraits of John Bright and looked at him for help.

”Be just and fear not,” said that statesman.

”All very well,” thought Eloquent, ”she didn't pat _your_ cheek.”

He went and sought counsel of Mr Gladstone, a youngish Mr Gladstone in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester: ”At last, my friends, I have come amongst you . . . unmuzzled,” said the legend underneath his portrait.

But Eloquent felt that this was just what he was not. He felt very muzzled indeed. All sorts of vague thoughts went surging through his brain that could find no expression in words.

”I do believe,” he said desperately, ”if she was to give the whisperingest little call, I'd be obliged to go . . . and so would you,” he continued, shaking his head at Mr Gladstone, ”you'd do just the same.”

He felt that, in some inexplicable, subtly mysterious fas.h.i.+on, there was a kind of affinity between Mr Gladstone and Mrs Ffolliot.

Mr Gladstone would understand, and not be too hard upon him.

In the years that followed, he saw Mrs Ffolliot from time to time from the window or in the street, but never again did he come so close to her as to touch her.

Never did he see her, however, without that strange thrill of enthusiastic admiration; that dumb, inarticulate sense of having seen something entirely satisfying and delightful; satisfying for the moment only: he paid dearly for his brief joy in after hours of curious depression and an aching sense of emptiness and loss. She was so far away.