“And so there will be, of course,” said Mr. Plomacy. “They’ll all be sporting with the young ladies in the laurel walks. Them’s the sports they care most about now-a-days. If you gets the young men at the quintain, you’ll have all the young women in the pouts.”
“Can’t they look on as their greatgrandmothers did before them?” said Miss Thorne.
“It seems to me that the ladies ain’t contented with looking now-a-days. Whatever the men do they’ll do. If you’ll have side-saddles on the nags; and let them go at the quintain too, it’ll answer capital, no doubt.”
Miss Thorne made no reply. She felt that she had no good ground on which to defend her sex of the present generation from the sarcasm of Mr. Plomacy. She had once declared, in one of her warmer moments, “that now-a-days the gentlemen were all women, and the ladies all men.” She could not alter the debased character of the age. But, such being the case, why should she take on herself to cater for the amusement of people of such degraded tastes? This question she asked herself more than once, and she could only answer herself with a sigh. There was her own brother Wilfred, on whose shoulders rested all the ancient honours of Ullathorne house; it was very doubtful whether even he would consent to “go at the quintain,” as Mr. Plomacy not injudiciously expressed it.
And now the morning arrived. The Ullathorne household was early on the move. Cooks were cooking in the kitchen long before daylight, and men were dragging out tables and hammering red baize on to benches at the earliest dawn. With what dread eagerness did Miss Thorne look out at the weather as soon as the parting veil of night permitted her to look at all! In this respect, at any rate, there was nothing to grieve her. The glass had been rising for the last three days, and the morning broke with that dull, chill, steady, grey haze which in autumn generally presages a clear and dry day. By seven she was dressed and down. Miss Thorne knew nothing of the modern luxury of déshabilles. She would as soon have thought of appearing before her brother without her stockings as without her stays — and Miss Thorne’s stays were no trifle.
And yet there was nothing for her to do when down. She fidgeted out to the lawn and then back into the kitchen. She put on her high-heeled clogs and fidgeted out into the paddock. Then she went into the small home park where the quintain was erected. The pole and cross-bar and the swivel and the target and the bag of flour were all complete. She got up on a carpenter’s bench and touched the target with her hand; it went round with beautiful ease; the swivel had been oiled to perfection. She almost wished to take old Plomacy at his word, to get on a side-saddle and have a tilt at it herself. What must a young man be, thought she, who could prefer maundering among laurel trees with a wishy-washy school-girl to such fun as this? “Well,” said she aloud to herself, “one man can take a horse to water, but a thousand can’t make him drink. There it is. If they haven’t the spirit to enjoy it, the fault shan’t be mine;” and so she returned to the house.
At a little after eight her brother came down, and they had a sort of scrap breakfast in his study. The tea was made without the customary urn, and they dispensed with the usual rolls and toast. Eggs also were missing, for every egg in the parish had been whipped into custards, baked into pies, or boiled into lobster salad. The allowance of fresh butter was short, and Mr. Thorne was obliged to eat the leg of a fowl without having it devilled in the manner he loved.
“I have been looking at the quintain, Wilfred,” said she, “and it appears to be quite right.”
“Oh — ah, yes,” said he. “It seemed to be so yesterday when I saw it.” Mr. Thorne was beginning to be rather bored by his sister’s love of sports, and had especially no affection for this quintain post.
“I wish you’d just try it after breakfast,” said she. “You could have the saddle put on Mark Antony, and the pole is there all handy. You can take the flour bag off, you know, if you think Mark Antony won’t be quick enough,” added Miss Thorne, seeing that her brother’s countenance was not indicative of complete accordance with her little proposition.
Now Mark Antony was a valuable old hunter, excellently suited to Mr. Thorne’s usual requirements, steady indeed at his fences, but extremely sure, very good in deep ground, and safe on the roads. But he had never yet been ridden at a quintain, and Mr. Thorne was not inclined to put him to the trial, either with or without the bag of flour. He hummed and hawed and finally declared that he was afraid Mark Antony would shy.
“Then try the cob,” said the indefatigable Miss Thorne.
“He’s in physic,” said Wilfred.
“There’s the Beelzebub colt,” said his sister. “I know he’s in the stable because I saw Peter exercising him just now.”
“My dear Monica, he’s so wild that it’s as much as I can do to manage him at all. He’d destroy himself and me, too, if I attempted to ride him at such a rattletrap as that.”
A rattletrap! The quintain that she had put up with so much anxious care; the game that she had prepared for the amusement of the stalwart yeomen of the country; the sport that had been honoured by the affection of so many of their ancestors! It cut her to the heart to hear it so denominated by her own brother. There were but the two of them left together in the world, and it had ever been one of the rules by which Miss Thorne had regulated her conduct through life to say nothing that could provoke her brother. She had often had to suffer from his indifference to time-honoured British customs, but she had always suffered in silence. It was part of her creed that the head of the family should never be upbraided in his own house, and Miss Thorne had lived up to her creed. Now, however, she was greatly tried. The colour mounted to her ancient cheek, and the fire blazed in her still bright eyes, but yet she said nothing. She resolved that, at any rate, to him nothing more should be said about the quintain that day.
She sipped her tea in silent sorrow and thought with painful regret of the glorious days when her great ancestor Ealfried had successfully held Ullathorne against a Norman invader. There was no such spirit now left in her family except that small useless spark which burnt in her own bosom. And she herself, was not she at this moment intent on entertaining a descendant of those very Normans, a vain proud countess with a Frenchified name who would only think that she graced Ullathorne too highly by entering its portals? Was it likely that an Honourable John, the son of an Earl De Courcy, should ride at a quintain in company with Saxon yeomen? And why should she expect her brother to do that which her brother’s guests would decline to do?
Some dim faint idea of the impracticability of her own views flitted across her brain. Perhaps it was necessary that races doomed to live on the same soil should give way to each other and adopt each other’s pursuits. 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