I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give me an opportunity of describing here one especial episode, a long episode, in the life of the existing squire.
He had once represented his county in Parliament, and when he ceased to do so he still felt an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way with that county’s greatness; he still desired that a Gresham of Greshamsbury should be something more in East Barsetshire, than Jackson of the Grange, or Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Annesgrove. They were all his friends, and very respectable country gentlemen; but Mr Gresham of Greshamsbury should be more than this: even he had enough ambition to be aware of such a longing. Therefore, when an opportunity occurred he took to hunting the county.
For this employment he was in every way well suited;— unless it was in the matter of finance. Though he had in his very earliest manly years given such great offence by indifference to his family politics, and had in a certain degree fostered the ill-feeling by contesting the county in opposition to the wishes of his brother squires, nevertheless, he bore a loved and popular name. Men regretted that he should not have been what they wished him to be, that he should not have been such as was the old squire; but when they found that such was the case, that he could not be great among them as a politician, they were still willing that he should be great in any other way if there were county greatness for which he was suited. Now he was known as an excellent horseman, as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in dogs, and tender-hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young foxes; he had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, and had a fine voice for a view hallo, knew every hound by name, and could wind a horn with sufficient music for all hunting purposes; moreover, he had come to his property, as was well known through all Barsetshire, with a clear income of fourteen thousand a year.
Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground, about a year after Mr Gresham’s last contest for the county, it seemed to all parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that the hounds should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant, indeed, to all except the Lady Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire himself.
All this time he was already considerable encumbered. He had spent much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife, in those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or three children to live in London and keep up their country family mansion; but then the De Courcys were very great people, and Lady Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her sister-inlaw the countess lived; now Lord de Courcy had much more than fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections, with their vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedients to which gentlemen are forced to have recourse who have lived beyond their income and find it impossible to reduce their establishments as to live much below it. Thus when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr Gresham was already a poor man.
Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming; but Lady Arabella, though it could hardly be said of her that she was under her husband’s rule, certainly was not entitled to boast that she had made him under hers. She then made her first grand attack as to the furniture in Portman Square; and was then for the first time specially informed that the furniture there was not matter of much importance, as she would not in future be required to move her family to that residence during the London seasons. The sort of conversation which grew from such a commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her lord less, he might perhaps have considered with more coolness the folly of encountering so prodigious an increase to the expense of his establishment; had he not spent so much money in a pursuit which his wife did not enjoy, she might perhaps have been more sparing in her rebukes as to his indifference to her London pleasures. As it was, the hounds came to Greshamsbury, and Lady Arabella did go to London for some period in each year, and the family expenses were by no means lessened.
The kennels, however, were now again empty. Two years previous to the time at which our story begins, the hounds had been carried off to the seat of some richer sportsman. This was more felt by Mr Gresham than any other misfortune which he had yet incurred. He had been master of hounds for ten years, and that work he had at any rate done well. The popularity among his neighbours which he had lost as a politician he had regained as a sportsman, and he would fain have remained autocratic in the hunt, had it been possible. But he so remained much longer than he should have done, and at last they went away, not without signs and sounds of visible joy on the part of Lady Arabella.
But we have kept the Greshamsbury tenancy waiting under the oak-trees by far too long. Yes; when young Frank came of age there was still enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the squire’s disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast, whole in its skin, one bullock. Frank’s virility came on him not quite unmarked, as that of the parson’s sons might do, or the son of a neighbouring attorney. It could still be reported in the Barsetshire Conservative “Standard” that ‘The beards waggled all,’ at Greshamsbury, now as they had done for many centuries on similar festivals. Yes; it was so reported. But this, like so many other such reports, had but a shadow of truth in it. ‘They poured the liquor in,’ certainly, those who were there; but the beards did not wag as they had been wont to wag in former years. Beards won’t wag for the telling. The squire was at his wits’ end for money, and the tenants one and all had so heard. Rents had been raised on them; timber had fallen fast; the lawyer on the estate was growing rich; tradesmen in Barchester, nay, in Greshamsbury itself, were beginning to mutter; and the squire himself would not be merry. Under such circumstances the throats of the tenantry will still swallow, but their beards will not wag.
‘I minds well,’ said Farmer Oaklerath to his neighbour, ‘when the squire hisself comed of age. Lord love ‘ee! There was fun going that day. There was more yale dranke then than’s been brewed at the big house these two years. T’old squoire was a one’er.’
‘And I minds when the squoire was borned; minds it well,’ said an old farmer sitting opposite. ‘Them was the days! It an’t that long age neither. Squoire a’nt come o’ fifty yet; no, nor an’t nigh it, though he looks it. Things be altered at Greemsbury’— such was the rural pronunciation —‘altered sadly, neebor Oaklerath. Well, well; I’ll soon be gone, I will, and so it an’t no use talking; but arter paying one pound fifteen for them acres for more nor fifty year, I didn’t think I’d ever be axed for forty shilling.’
Such was the style of conversation which went on at the various tables. It had certainly been of a very different tone when the squire was born, when he came of age, and when, just two years subsequently, his son had been born. On each of these events similar rural fetes had been given, and the squire himself had on these occasions been frequent among his guests. On the first, he had been carried round by his father, a whole train of ladies and nurses following. On the second, he had himself mixed in all the sports, the gayest of the gay, and each tenant had squeezed his way up to the lawn to get a sight of the Lady Arabella, who, as was already known, was to come from Courcy Castle to Greshamsbury to be their mistress. It was little they any of them cared now for the Lady Arabella. On the third, he himself had borne him; his child in his arms as his father had before borne him; he was in the zenith of his pride, and though the tenantry had whispered that he was somewhat less familiar with them than of yore, that he had put on somewhat too much of the De Courcy airs, still he was their squire, their master, the rich man in whose hand they lay. The old squire was then gone, and they were proud of the young member and his lady bride in spite of a little hauteur. None of them were proud of him now.
He walked once round among the guests, and spoke a few words of welcome at each table; and as he did so the tenants got up and bowed and wished health to the old squire, happiness to the young one, and prosperity to Greshamsbury; but, nevertheless, it was but a tame affair.
There