Perhaps it was impossible that after more than five centuries of close intercourse, Normans should remain Normans, and Saxons, Saxons. Perhaps, after all, her neighbours were wiser than herself. Such ideas did occasionally present themselves to Miss Thorne’s mind and make her sad enough. But it never occurred to her that her favourite quintain was but a modern copy of a Norman knight’s amusement, an adaptation of the noble tourney to the tastes and habits of the Saxon yeomen. Of this she was ignorant, and it would have been cruelty to instruct her.
When Mr. Thorne saw the tear in her eye, he repented himself of his contemptuous expression. By him also it was recognized as a binding law that every whim of his sister was to be respected. He was not perhaps so firm in his observances to her as she was in hers to him. But his intentions were equally good, and whenever he found that he had forgotten them, it was matter of grief to him.
“My dear Monica,” said he, “I beg your pardon. I don’t in the least mean to speak ill of the game. When I called it a rattletrap, I merely meant that it was so for a man of my age. You know you always forget that I an’t a young man.”
“I am quite sure you are not an old man, Wilfred,” said she, accepting the apology in her heart and smiling at him with the tear still on her cheek.
“If I was five-and-twenty, or thirty,” continued he, “I should like nothing better than riding at the quintain all day.”
“But you are not too old to hunt or to shoot,” said she. “If you can jump over a ditch and hedge, I am sure you could turn the quintain round.”
“But when I ride over the hedges, my dear — and it isn’t very often I do that — but when I do ride over the hedges, there isn’t any bag of flour coming after me. Think how I’d look taking the countess out to breakfast with the back of my head all covered with meal.”
Miss, Thorne said nothing further. She didn’t like the allusion to the countess. She couldn’t be satisfied with the reflection that the sports at Ullathorne should be interfered with by the personal attentions necessary for a Lady De Courcy. But she saw that it was useless for her to push the matter further. It was conceded that Mr. Thorne was to be spared the quintain, and Miss Thorne determined to trust wholly to a youthful knight of hers, an immense favourite, who, as she often declared, was a pattern to the young men of the age and an excellent sample of an English yeoman.
This was Farmer Greenacre’s eldest son, who, to tell the truth, had from his earliest years taken the exact measure of Miss Thorne’s foot. In his boyhood he had never failed to obtain from her apples, pocket-money, and forgiveness for his numerous trespasses, and now in his early manhood he got privileges and immunities which were equally valuable. He was allowed a day or two’s shooting in September; he schooled the squire’s horses; got slips of trees out of the orchard and roots of flowers out of the garden; and had the fishing of the little river altogether in his own hands. He had undertaken to come mounted on a nag of his father’s and show the way at the quintain post. Whatever young Greenacre did the others would do after him. The juvenile Lookalofts might stand aloof, but the rest of the youth of Ullathorne would be sure to venture if Harry Greenacre showed the way. And so Miss Thorne made up her mind to dispense with the noble Johns and Georges and trust, as her ancestors had done before her, to the thews and sinews of native Ullathorne growth.
At about nine the lower orders began to congregate in the paddock and park, under the surveillance of Mr. Plomacy and the head gardener and head groom, who were sworn in as his deputies and were to assist him in keeping the peace and promoting the sports. Many of the younger inhabitants of the neighbourhood, thinking that they could not have too much of a good thing, had come at a very early hour, and the road between the house and the church had been thronged for some time before the gates were thrown open.
And then another difficulty of huge dimensions arose, a difficulty which Mr. Plomacy had indeed foreseen and for which he was in some sort provided. Some of those who wished to share Miss Thorne’s hospitality were not so particular as they should have been as to the preliminary ceremony of an invitation. They doubtless conceived that they had been overlooked by accident, and instead of taking this in dudgeon, as their betters would have done, they good-naturedly put up with the slight and showed that they did so by presenting themselves at the gate in their Sunday best.
Mr. Plomacy, however, well-knew who were welcome and who were not. To some, even though uninvited, he allowed ingress. “Don’t be too particular, Plomacy,” his mistress had said, “especially with the children. If they live anywhere near, let them in.”
Acting on this hint, Mr. Plomacy did let in many an eager urchin and a few tidily dressed girls with their swains who in no way belonged to the property. But to the denizens of the city he was inexorable. Many a Barchester apprentice made his appearance there that day and urged with piteous supplication that he had been working all the week in making saddles and boots for the use of Ullathorne, in compounding doses for the horses, or cutting up carcasses for the kitchen. No such claim was allowed. Mr. Plomacy knew nothing about the city apprentices; he was to admit the tenants and labourers on the estate; Miss Thorne wasn’t going to take in the whole city of Barchester; and so on.
Nevertheless, before the day was half over, all this was found to be useless. Almost anybody who chose to come made his way into the park, and the care of the guardians was transferred to the tables on which the banquet was spread. Even here there was many an unauthorised claimant for a place, of whom it was impossible to get quit without more commotion than the place and food were worth.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Ullathorne Sports — Act I
The trouble in civilized life of entertaining company, as it is called too generally without much regard to strict veracity, is so great that it cannot but be matter of wonder that people are so fond of attempting it. It is difficult to ascertain what is the quid pro quo. If they who give such laborious parties and who endure such toil and turmoil in the vain hope of giving them successfully really enjoyed the parties given by others, the matter could be understood. A sense of justice would induce men and women to undergo, in behalf of others, those miseries which others had undergone in their behalf. But they all profess that going out is as great a bore as receiving, and to look at them when they are out, one cannot but believe them.
Entertain! Who shall have sufficient self-assurance, who shall feel sufficient confidence in his own powers to dare to boast that he can entertain his company? A clown can sometimes do so, and sometimes a dancer in short petticoats and stuffed pink legs; occasionally, perhaps, a singer. But beyond these, success in this art of entertaining is not often achieved. Young men and girls linking themselves kind with kind, pairing like birds in spring because nature wills it, they, after a simple fashion, do entertain each other. Few others even try.
Ladies, when they open their houses, modestly confessing, it may be presumed, their own incapacity, mainly trust to wax candles and upholstery. Gentlemen seem to rely on their white waistcoats. To these are added, for the delight of the more sensual, champagne and such good things of the table as fashion allows to be still considered as comestible. Even in this respect the world is deteriorating. All the good soups are now tabooed, and at the houses of one’s accustomed friends — small barristers, doctors, government clerks, and such-like (for we cannot all of us always live as grandees, surrounded by an elysium of livery servants)— one gets a cold potato handed to one as a sort of finale to one’s slice of mutton. Alas for those happy days when one could say to one’s neighbour, “Jones, shall I give you some mashed turnip? May I trouble you for a little cabbage?” And then the pleasure of drinking wine with Mrs. Jones and Miss Smith — with all the Joneses and all the Smiths!
