THE LOOKALOFTS AND THE GREENACRES
On the whole, Miss Thorne's provision for the amusement and feeding
of the outer classes in the exoteric paddock was not unsuccessful.
Two little drawbacks to the general happiness did take place, but
they were of a temporary nature, and apparent rather than real. The
first was the downfall of young Harry Greenacre, and the other was
the uprise of Mrs Lookaloft and her family.
As to the quintain, it became more popular among the boys on foot,
than it would ever have been among the men on horseback, even had
young Greenacre been more successful. It was twirled round and
round till it was nearly twisted out of the ground; and the bag of
flour was used with great gusto in powdering the backs and heads of
all who could be coaxed within the vicinity.
Of course it was reported all throughout the assemblage that Harry
was dead, and there was a pathetic scene between him and his mother
when it was found that he had escaped scatheless from the fall. A
good deal of beer was drunk on the occasion, and the quintain was
'dratted' and 'bothered', and very generally anathematised by all
the mothers who had young sons likely to be placed in similar
jeopardy. But the affair of Mrs Lookaloft was of a more serious
nature.
'I do tell 'ee plainly,--face to face--she be there in madam's
drawing-room; herself and Gussy, and them two walloping gals,
dressed up to their very eyeses.' This was said by a very positive,
very indignant, and very fat farmer's wife, who was sitting on the
end of a bench leaning on the handle of a huge cotton umbrella.
'But you didn't zee her, Dame Guffern?' said Mrs Greenacres, whom
this information, joined to the recent peril undergone by her son,
almost overpowered. Mr Greenacres held just as much land as Mr
Lookaloft, paid his rent quite as punctually, and his opinion in
the vestry-room was reckoned to be every whit as good. Mrs
Lookaloft's rise in the world had been wormwood to Mrs Greenacre.
She had not taste herself for the sort of finery which converted
Barleystubb farm into Rosebank, and which had occasionally graced
Mr Lookaloft's letters with the dignity of esquirehood. She had no
wish to convert her own homeland into Violet Villa, or to see her
goodman go about with a new-fangled handle to his name. But it was
a mortal injury to her that Mrs Lookaloft should be successful in
her hunt after such honours. She had abused and ridiculed Mrs
Lookaloft to the extent of her little power. She had pushed against
her going out of church, and had excused herself with all the
easiness of equality. 'Ah, dame, I axes pardon; but you be grown so
mortal stout these time.' She had inquired with apparent cordiality
of Mr Lookaloft after 'the woman that owned him,' and had, as she
thought, been on the whole able to hold her own pretty well against
her aspiring neighbour. Now, however, she found herself distinctly
put into a separate and inferior class. Mrs Lookaloft was asked
into the Ullathorne drawing-room, merely because she called her
house Rosebank, and had talked over her husband into buying pianos
and silk dresses instead of putting his money by to stock farms for
his sons.
Mrs Greenacre, much as she reverenced Miss Thorne, and highly as
she respected her husband's landlord, could not but look on this as
an act of injustice done to her and hers. Hitherto the Lookalofts
had never been recognised as being of a different class from the
Greenacres. Their pretensions were all self-pretensions, their
finery was all paid for by themselves and not granted to them by
others. The local sovereigns of the vicinity, the district
fountains of honour, had hitherto conferred on them the stamp of no
rank. Hitherto their crinoline petticoats, late hours, and mincing
gait had been a fair subject of Mrs Greenacre's raillery, and this
raillery had been a safety valve for her envy. Now, however, and
from henceforward, the case would be very different. Now the
Lookalofts would boast that their aspirations had been sanctioned
by the gentry of the country; now they would declare with some show
of truth that their claims to peculiar consideration had been
recognised. They had sat as equal guests in the presence of bishops
and baronets; they had been curtseyed to by Miss Thorne on her own
drawing-room carpet; they were about to sit down to table in
company with a live countess! Bab Lookaloft, as she had always been
called by the young Greenacres in the days of their juvenile
equality, might possibly sit next to the Honourable George, and
that wretched Gussy might be permitted to hand a custard to the
Lady Margaretta De Courcy.
The fruition of these honours, or such of them as fell to the lot
of the envied family, was not such as should have caused much envy.
The attention paid to the Lookalofts by the De Courcys was very
limited, and the amount of society was hardly in itself a
recompense for the dull monotony of their day. But of what they
endured Mrs Greenacre took no account; she thought only of what she
considered they must enjoy, and of the dreadfully exalted tone of
living which would be manifested by the Rosebank family, as the
consequence of their present distinction.
'But did 'ee zee 'em there, dame, did 'ee zee 'em then with your
own eyes?' asked poor Mrs Greenacre, still hoping that there might
be some ground for doubt.
'And how could I do that, unless so be I was there myself?' asked
Mrs Guffen. 'I didn't set eyes on none of them this blessed
morning, but I zee'd them as did. You know our John; well, he will
be for keeping company with Betsey Rusk, madam's own maid, you
know. And Betsey isn't one of your common kitchen wenches. So
Betsey, she come out to our John, you know, and she's always vastly
polite to me, is Betsey Rusk, I must say. So before she took so
much as one turn with John, she told me every ha'porth that was
going on up in the house.'
'Did she now?' said Mrs Greenacre.
'Indeed she did,' said Mrs Guffern.
'And she told you them people was up there in the drawing-room?'
'She told me she zee'd them come in--that they was dressed finer by
half nor any of the family, with all their neckses and buzoms stark
naked as a born babby.'
'The minxes!' exclaimed Mrs Greenacre, who felt herself more put
about by this than any other mark of aristocratic distinction which
her enemies had assumed.
'Yes, indeed,' continued Mrs Guffern, 'as naked as you please,
while all the quality was dressed just as you and I be, Mrs
Greenacre.'
'Drat their impudence' said Mrs Greenacre, from whose well-covered
bosom all milk of human kindness was receding, as far as the family
of the Lookalofts were concerned.
'So says I,' said Mrs Guffern; 'and so says my good-man Thomas
Guffern, when he hear'd it. "Molly," says he to me, "if ever you
takes to going about o' mornings with yourself all naked in them
ways, I begs you won't come back no more to the old house." So says
I, "Thomas, no more I wull." "But," says he, "drat it, how the
deuce does she manage with her rheumatiz, and she not a rag on
her:"' said Mrs Giffern, laughed loudly as she though of Mrs
Lookalofts's probable sufferings from rheumatic attacks.
'But to liken herself that way to folk that ha' blood in their
veins,' said Mrs Greenacre.
'Well, but that warn't all neither that Betsey told. There they all
swelled into madam's drawing-room, like so many turkey cocks, as
much to say, "and who dare say no to us?" and Gregory was thinking
of telling them to come down here, only his heart failed him 'cause
of the grand way they was dressed. So in they went; but madam
looked at them as glum as death.'
'Well now,' said Mrs Greenacre, greatly relieved, 'so they wasn't
axed different from us all then?'
'Betsey says that Gregory says that madam wasn't a bit too well
pleased to see them where they was and that, to his believing, they
was expected to come here just like the rest of us.'
There was great consolation in this. Not that Mrs Greenacre was
altogether satisfied. She felt that justice to herself demanded
that Mrs Lookaloft should not only not be encouraged, but that she
should also be absolutely punished.
What had been done at that scriptural banquet, of which Mrs
Greenacre so often read the account to her family? Why had not Miss
Thorne boldly gone to the intruder and said: 'Friend, thou hast
come up hither to high places not fitted for thee. Go down lower,
and thou wilt find thy mates.' Let the Lookalofts be treated at the
present moment with ever so cold a shoulder, they would still be
enabled to boast hereafter of their position, their aspirations,
and their honour.
'Well, with all her grandeur, I do wonder that she be so mean,
continued Mrs Greenacre, unable to dismiss the subject.
'Did you hear, goodman?' she went on, about to repeat the whole
story to her husband who then came up. 'There's dame Lookaloft and
Bab and Gussy and the lot of 'em all sitting as grand as fivepence
in madam's drawing-room, and they not axed no more nor you nor me.
Did you ever hear tell the like o' that?'
'Well, and what for shouldn't they?' said Farmer Greenacre.
'Likening theyselves to the quality, as though they was estated
folk, or the like o' that!' said Mrs Guffern.
'Well, if they likes it and madam likes it, they's welcome for me,'
said the farmer. 'Now I likes the place better, cause I be more at
home like, and don't have to pay for them fine clothes for the
missus. Every one to his taste, Mrs Guffern, and if neighbour
Lookaloft thinks that he has the best of it, he's welcome.'
Mrs Greenacre sat down by her husband's side to begin the heavy
work of the banquet, and she did so in some measure of restored
tranquillity, but nevertheless she shook her head at her gossip to
show that in this instance she did not quite approve of her
husband's doctrine.
'And I'll tell 'ee what, dames,' continued he; 'if so be that we
cannot enjoy the dinner that madam gives us because Mother
Lookaloft is sitting up there on a grand sofa, I think we ought all
to go home. If we greet at that, what'll we do when true sorrow
comes across us? How would you be now, dame, if the boy there had
broke his neck when he got the tumble?'
Mrs Greenacre was humbled, and said nothing further on the matter.
But let prudent men, such as Mr Greenacre, preach as they will, the
family of the Lookalofts certainly does occasion a good deal of
heart-burning in the world at large.
It was pleasant to see Mr Plomacy, as leaning on his stout stick he
went about among the rural guests, acting as a sort of head
constable as well as master of the revels. 'Now, young 'un, if you
can't manage to get along without that screeching, you'd better go
to the other side of the twelve-acre field, and take your dinner
with you. Come, girls, what do you stand there for, twirling of
your thumbs? come out, and let the lads see you; you've no need to
be so ashamed of your faces. Hello! there, who are you? how did you
make your way in here?'
This last disagreeable question was put to a young man of about
twenty-four, who did not, in Mr Plomacy's eye, bear sufficient
vestiges of a rural education and residence.
'If you please, your worship, Master Barrell the coachman let me in
at the church wicket, 'cause I do be working mostly al'ays for the
family.'
'Then Master Barrell the coachman may let you out again,' said Mr
Plomacy, not even conciliated by the magisterial dignity which had
been conceded to him. 'What's your name? And what trade are you,
and who do you work for?'
'I'm Stubbs, your worship, Bob Stubbs; and--and--and--'
'And what's your trade, Stubbs?'
'Plaisterer, please your worship.'
'I'll plaister you and Barrell too; you'll just walk out of this
'ere field as quick as you walked in. We don't want no plaisterers;
when we do, we'll send for 'em. Come, my buck, walk.'
Stubbs the plasterer was much downcast at the dreadful edict. He
was a sprightly fellow, and had contrived since his egress into the
Ullathorne elysium to attract to himself a forest nymph, to whom he
was whispering a plasterer's usual soft nothings, when he was
encountered by the great Mr Plomacy. It was dreadful to be thus
dissevered from the dryad, and sent howling back to a Barchester
pandemonium just as the nectar and ambrosia were about to descend
on the fields of asphodel. He began to try what prayers would do,
but city prayers were vain against the great rural potentate. Not
only did Mr Plomacy order his exit, but raising his stick to show
the way which led to the gate that had been left in the custody of
that false Cerberus Barrell, proceeded himself to see the edict of
banishment carried out.
The goddess Mercy, however, the sweetest goddess that ever sat upon
a cloud, and the dearest to poor frail erring man appeared on the
field in the person of Mr Greenacre. Never was interceding goddess
more welcome.
'Come, man,' said Mr Greenacre, 'never stick at trifles such a day
as this. I know the lad well. Let him bide at my axing. Madam won't
miss what he can eat and drink, I know.'
Now Mr Plomacy and Mr Greenacre were sworn friends. Mr Plomacy had
at his own disposal as comfortable a room as there was in
Ullathorne House; but he was a bachelor, and alone there; and,
moreover, smoking in the house was not allowed even to Mr Plomacy.
His moments of truest happiness were spent in a huge arm-chair in
the warmest corner of Mrs Greenacre's beautifully clean front
kitchen. 'Twas there that the inner man dissolved itself, and
poured itself out in streams of pleasant chat; 'twas there, and
perhaps there only, that he could unburden himself from the
ceremonies of life without offending the dignity of those above
him, or incurring the familiarity of those below. 'Twas there that
his long pipe was always to be found on the accustomed chimney
board, not only permitted but encouraged.
Such being the state of the case, it was not to be supposed that Mr
Plomacy could refuse such a favour to Mr Greenacre; but
nevertheless he not grant it without some further show of austere
authority.
'Eat and drink, Mr Greenacre! No. it's not what he eats and drinks;
but the example such a chap shows, coming in where he's not
invited--a chap of his age too. He too that never did a day's work
about Ullathorne since he was born. Plaisterer! I'll plaister him!'
'He worked long enough for me, then Mr Plomacy. And a good hand he
is at setting tiles as any in Barchester,' said the other, not
sticking quite to veracity, as indeed mercy never should. 'Come,
come, let him alone to-day, and quarrel with him to-morrow. You
wouldn't shame him before his lass there?'
'It goes against the grain with me, then,' said Mr Plomacy. 'And
take care, you Stubbs, and behave yourself. If I hear a row, I
shall know where it comes from. I'm up to you Barchester
journeymen; I know what stuff you're made of.'
And so Stubbs went off happy, pulling at the forelock of his shock
head of hair in honour of the steward's clemency, and giving
another double pull at it in honour of the farmer's kindness. And
as he went he swore within his grateful heart, that if ever Farmer
Greenacre wanted a day's work done for nothing, he was the lad to
do it for him. Which promise it was not probable that he would ever
be called upon to perform.
But Mr Plomacy was not quite happy in his mind for he thought of
the unjust steward, and began to reflect whether he had not made
for himself friends at the mammon of unrighteousness. This,
however, did not interfere with the manner in which he performed
his duties at the bottom of the long board; nor did Mr Greenacre
perform his the worse at the top on account of the good wishes of
Stubbs the plasterer. Moreover, the guests did not think it
anything amiss when Mr Plomacy, rising to say grace, prayed that
God would make them all truly thankful for the good things which
Madam Thorne in her great liberality had set out before them!
All this time the quality in the tent on the lawn were getting on
swimmingly; that is, champagne without restrictions can enable
quality fold to swim. Sir Harkaway Gorse proposed the health of
Miss Thorne, and likened her to a blood race-horse, always in
condition, and not to be tired down by any amount of work. Mr
Thorne returned thanks, saying he hoped his sister would always be
found able to run when called upon, and than gave the health and
prosperity of the De Courcy family. His sister was very much
honoured by seeing so many of them at her poor board. They were all
aware that important avocations made the absence of the earl
necessary. As his duty to his prince had called him from his family
hearth he, Mr Thorne, could not venture to regret that he did not
see him at Ullathorne; but nevertheless he would venture to
say--And so Mr Thorne became somewhat gravelled as a country
gentleman in similar circumstances usually do; but he ultimately
sat down, declaring that he had much satisfaction in drinking the
noble earl's health, together with that of the countess, and all
the family of De Courcy castle.
And then the Honourable George returned thanks. We will not follow
him through the different periods of his somewhat irregular
eloquence. Those immediately in his neighbourhood found it at first
rather difficult to get him to his legs, but much greater
difficulty was soon experience in inducing him to resume his seat.
One of two arrangements should certainly be made in these days:
either let all speech-making on festive occasions be utterly
tabooed and made as it were impossible; or else let those who are
to exercise the privilege be first subjected to a competing
examination before the civil service examining commissioners. As it
is now, the Honourable Georges do but little honour to our
exertions in favour of British education.
In the dining-room the bishop went through the honours of the day
with much more neatness and propriety. He also drank Miss Thorne's
health, and did it in a manner becoming the bench which he adorned.
The party there, was perhaps a little more dull, a shade less
lively than that in the tent.
But what was lost in mirth, was fully made up in decorum.
And so the banquet passed off at the various tables with great
eclat and universal delight.