The Ffolliots of Redmarley

by L. Allen Harker

Nobody, not even her father and mother who loved her so tenderly, ever knew what Marjory felt. She had chosen her lot. She would abide by it. No doubt she saw her husband as he was, but as time went on she realised how few chances he had had to be anything different. She was an only child herself. She, too, had adoring parents, but their adoration took a different form from the somewhat abject and wholly blind devotion of Hilary's mother. General and Mrs Grantly saw to it from the very first that they should love their daughter because she was lovable, and not only because she was theirs. They had troops of friends, and exercised a large hospitality that entailed a constant giving out of sympathy for and interest in other people. That there was much suffering, and sadness, and sin in the world was never concealed from Marjory in her happy girlhood; that it had not touched her personally was never allowed to foster the belief that it did not exist. That there was also much happiness, and gaiety, and kindness was abundantly manifest in her own home, and every scope was given her for the development of the social instincts which were part of her charm. She went to her husband at twenty "handled and made," and twenty years of married life had only perfected the work.

As a girl she was perhaps intellectually intolerant. Stupid people annoyed her, and she possessed all youth's enthusiastic admiration for achievement, for people who did things, who had arrived. Hilary Ffolliot was a new type to her. His brilliant record impressed her. His cultivated taste and extraordinary versatility attracted her, and his evident admiration gratified her girlish vanity.

She was a proud woman, and if she had made a mistake she was not going to let it spoil her life. Only once did she come near showing her heart even to her mother. It was a year after the Kitten was born, when the General had just got the command at Woolwich, and Mrs Grantly once more came back to the assault—her constant plea that she should have Ger given over to her entirely.

"You really are, Margie, a greedy, grasping woman. Here are you with six children, four of them sons. And here am I with only one child, a miserable, measly girl, and you won't let me have even one of the boys."

The miserable, measly girl referred to laughed and knelt down at her mother's knee. "Dearest, you really get quite as much of the children as is good for you—or them——"

"You can't say I spoil them; I didn't spoil you, and you were only one."

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more," Mrs Ffolliot said contritely; "but you see, mother dear, it's like this, it's just because I was only one I want the children to have as much as possible of each other . . . while they are young . . . I want them to grow up . . ." Mrs Ffolliot sat down on the floor and leant her head against Mrs Grantly's knees so that her face was hidden. "I want them to realise what a lot of other people there are in the world, all with hopes and fears and likes and dislikes and joys and sorrows . . . and that each one of them is only a very little humble atom of a great whole—and that's what they can teach each other—I can't do it—you can't do it—but they can manage it amongst them."

Mrs Grantly did not answer; quick as she was in repartee, she had the much rarer gift of sympathetic silence. She laid a kind hand on her daughter's bent head and softly stroked it.

The clock struck four, and still Mr Ffolliot sat on in his chair with Gaston Latour unopened, held loosely in his long slender hands.

A dignified presence with every attribute that goes to make the scholar and the gentleman; though one who judged of character from external appearance might have misdoubted the thin straight lips, the rather pinched nostrils, the eyes too close together, and above all, the head—high and intellectual, but almost devoid of curve at the back. A clean-cut, ascetic, handsome face, as a rule calm and judicial in its dignified repose.