Part 33 (1/2)

This afternoon, though, the Squire lacks his usual serene poise. His self-confidence has been shaken, and it is his young sons who have disturbed its delicately adjusted equilibrium.

He was puzzled.

It is a mistake to imagine that selfish and ungrateful people fail to recognise these qualities in others. Not only are they quick to perceive incipient signs of them, but they demand the constant exercise of their opposites in their fellow men.

Mr Ffolliot was puzzled.

Among the words he used most constantly, both on paper and in conversation, were ”fine shades” and ”fineness” in its most psychological sense. ”Fineness” was a quality he was for ever belauding: a quality that he believed was only to be found in persons of complex character and unusually sensitive organisation.

And yet he grudgingly conceded that he had, that afternoon, been confronted by it in two of his own quite ordinary children.

What rankled, however, was that Buz, at all events, seemed doubtful whether he, the Squire, possessed it. The dubious and thrice-repeated ”you do understand, don't you, father?” rang in his ears.

How was it that Buz, the shallow and mercurial, seemed to fear that what was so plain to him might be hidden from his father?

Undesired and wholly irrelevant there flashed into his mind that walk with Mary, a short ten days ago, when he had reproached her with her limitations, her power to grasp only the obvious. And it was suddenly revealed to Mr Ffolliot that certain obligations were obvious to his children that were by no means equally clear to him.

Why was this?

As if in answer came his own phrase, used so often in contemptuous explanation of their more troublesome vagaries--”the Grantly Strain.”

He was fair-minded and he admired courage. He in no way underrated the effort it must have been for Grantly and Buz to come and confess their peccadillos to him. And he knew very well that only because they felt someone else was involved had they summoned up courage to do so.

If their evil-doings were discovered, they did not lie, these noisy, blundering children of his; but they never showed the smallest desire to draw attention to their escapades.

His mind seemed incapable of concentration that afternoon, for now he began to wonder how it was that ”the children” lately had managed to emerge from the noun of mult.i.tude and each had a.s.sumed a separate ident.i.ty with marked and definite characteristics.

There was Mary . . .

Mr Ffolliot frowned. If it hadn't been for Mary he really would have been quite glad to ask young Gallup to dinner. But Mary complicated matters; for he had instantly divined what had struck none of the others, a connection between the Liberal member's amiability to his sons and the fact that those sons possessed a sister.

Presently Fusby came in to make up the fire. ”Do you happen to know, Fusby, if your mistress is in the house and disengaged?”

”I saw the mistress as I came through the 'all, sir, sitting in a window reading a book. She was quite alone, sir.”

”Ah,” said Mr Ffolliot, ”thank you, I will go to her.”

As the door was closed behind his master, Fusby arose from brus.h.i.+ng the hearth and shook his fist in that direction.

”Go, I should think you would go, you one-eyed old image you. Did you think I was going to fetch her to wait your pleasure?”

Mrs Ffolliot laid down her book as her husband came across the wide old hall. She made room for him on the window-seat beside her. She noticed that he was flushed and that his hair was almost s.h.a.ggy.

”Have you got a headache, Larrie?” she asked in her kind voice. ”I hope Grantly had nothing disturbing to relate.”

”Yes, no,” Mr Ffolliot replied vaguely; ”I've been thinking things over, my dear, and I've come round to your opinion that perhaps it would be the right thing to ask young Gallup to dinner on the twenty-first. There will be the Campions and the Wards to keep him in countenance.”

”I'm so glad you see it as I do,” Mrs Ffolliot said gently, looking, however, much surprised. ”After all, he may not come, you know.”