Chapter XV: The Annual Excursion

Every year the shop people of Friarton showed themselves so united and independent as to have an excursion and picnic of their own, on one of their summer holidays.

It was something quite different from the day with their employers, which is such a popular piece of patronage on the part of large firms. The _employés_ had nothing to do with this, they had their own day apart. It was the employers themselves, with their wives and families, who met and agreed to disport themselves together. It was as if—supposing the example could be followed on a large scale—all the linendrapers and all the Italian warehousemen in London arranged to assemble with their households at some spot, as much more distant and more select than Epping Forest and Brighton as the masters’ claims to potentiality and dignity are beyond those of their young men and women.

Oliver Constable was prompt in supporting the usual celebration of the day, and in proposing to make one of the company in either of the two omnibuses engaged to carry the pleasure-seekers to their place of entertainment. He discovered to his chagrin that the party consisted chiefly of young people. An American fashion was setting in, which caused Mr. and Mrs. Dadd, and Mrs. Polley, with their contemporaries, not to refuse their countenance altogether, but to withdraw to a considerable extent their presence from the gala. They found the annual excursion, on the whole, a little trying to people of mature years, and they were not impelled to make the sacrifice on their children’s account, since these worthy fathers and mothers were persuaded that their young people were perfectly able to take care of themselves at a picnic, and that to have their seniors looking on proved a restraint on the enjoyment of the juniors. Let the elderly people have their outing also, but let it be distinct and apart from that of the young people, whose limbs, wind, and hilarity were naturally so much more rampant.

But Oliver made so great a stand against this innovation on the part of his fellow-townsmen, and so set his heart on the fathers and mothers accompanying their sons and daughters, that though old Dadd and Mrs. Polley did not know what to think of the young fellow’s urgency, they yielded, and even pressed Mr. Holland, the minister of four-fifths of the shopkeepers of Friarton, into the service, to accompany the excursionists and say grace at the picnic.

It was much more difficult to convince Jack Dadd and ’Mily Polley that the revival of the presence of the elders was an advantage.

‘The guv’nor and his missus will only be in the way, and spoil sport; and what do we want with a feller in a white choker out of chapel? In fact, we have two of ’em; for Constable, though he means to be friendly, is a bit of a stick—all the worse, sometimes, that he don’t show his colours in his coat or his tie, or his hat,’ Jack grumbled and blustered; while ’Mily complained there would be no fun, and threatened not to go, but soon withdrew her threat.

For the first time in a number of summers, Fan Constable announced her intention of being one of the pleasure party. It was a solemn concession to sisterly duty. Oliver was such a fool (with a folly akin to that of Henry, Earl of Morland, and not altogether removed from the madness of the Apostle Paul, when he became all things to all men,) that she could not trust him to spend a whole day in the fields with those riotous lads, and, above all, those bouncing or languishing girls, without the protection of her eye upon him and them.

Ungrateful Oliver had some words with Fan on her going in the spirit in which she went. ‘If you can’t make yourself agreeable, Fan, and do as others do, but must stand aloof with what they call fine-lady airs, you had better stay away,’ said Oliver, with a man’s brutal frankness.

‘I hope my manners will pass muster,’ retorted Fan loftily. ‘As to doing what others do, perhaps you will not object to my forming an exception, if the company begin to pelt each other with gooseberries, or to play at kiss in the ring.’

There might have been another recruit, or couple of recruits, added to the forces, if Oliver had not rejected the suggestion peremptorily.

Harry Stanhope was beginning to find that yeoman work was not so entirely a manly pastime—like hunting and shooting—that it did not require all the play he could obtain to diversify it and prevent it from sinking into dull drudgery. He was not particular in his associates, but showed himself ready to knock up acquaintances in any class, and have a jolly lark with them at any time.

‘Won’t you take me with you to the turn-out?’ Harry put it insinuatingly to Fan. ‘You may fancy I should be in the way, but if they will let me drive one of the shandrydans, I’ll pledge myself you sha’n’t be spilt. Constable knows I’m good to handle the ribbons without an accident. It’s a thundering shame of Constable not to speak to my merits and Horry’s in this and in other respects, to leave us out in the cold, and go and enjoy himself like a selfish beast. I’m convinced it ain’t your blame, Miss Constable, that we have not got a bit of paste-board, or whatever is necessary.’

It was not Fan’s blame, for when Oliver said ‘No, a hundred times, no,’ doggedly, and with nothing save a stern satisfaction in the consideration that he was robbing Jack Dadd and ’Mily Polley of the delight of such an acquisition, Fan remonstrated with him privately. ‘Why can’t Mr. Stanhope go if we go, Oliver?’ she asked.

‘Good heavens, Fan! can’t you see the difference?’ demanded Oliver, out of all patience with the suggestion. ‘What business has Harry Stanhope with the Friarton tradespeople? Do you think he would go among them as his equals? He would go as he would intrude on a brewers’ bean-feast, or a bargemen’s saturnalia, or a meeting of thieves, or a pilgrimage to Mecca, without doubt or compunction, to see what he could see, and to take his fun out of the proceedings, while some of the idiots engaged in them might imagine he was there in good faith, as one of themselves. Am I to be an accomplice in such treachery?’ Oliver’s broad shoulders went up to his ears, as he imagined Stanhope letting Jack Dadd suppose he was pumping him, or drawing ’Mily Polley out, and astounding her ignorant audacity.

‘It is a relief to hear that there are idiots who cannot be mistaken for gentlemen and ladies,’ was Fan’s parting shot. After all, she was not sorry that Harry Stanhope would not be present when she resumed her place in her father’s circle.

It will occur to every experienced person that the planning and carrying out of a large picnic, where the details are not confided to a public purveyor, or left to qualified servants, must be a little troublesome. But the amount of business in hurrying to and fro, consulting, fussing and wrangling, which the annual excursion caused in Friarton, among businesspeople, too, who ought to have known how to supply the provisions required with the greatest despatch and the least difficulty, offered a curious speculation to Oliver. He found it the simplest matter in the world, by a single reference to Jim Hull, and to former estimates of contributions to the entertainment, to order and send to the managing committee the quota of pies, tarts, and what Jim generalised as ‘flummery,’ with which Constable’s bakehouse had always furnished the excursionists. Why could not all the entrusted butchers, fishmongers, and grocers do the same? He must conclude that they, or their wives and daughters for them, took pleasure in first creating, and then overcoming, obstacles and objections, though Mrs. Polley asserted she was ‘that wore out’ with all she had undergone in conducting the preparations and putting down the senseless proposals of some people, that she would a deal rather have three market-days on end.

The young women did not give much help, though they ran backwards and forwards incessantly between the houses of the chief managers, for three days preceding the excursion. The girls’ principal interest was absorbed by their costumes for the occasion. As they had imparted every detail to each other long before, and as they saw each other every day—both in slovenly deshabilles and what might be called smart toilettes—Oliver stupidly failed to see how the dresses could be of much consequence to anybody.

What attention the young people had to spare was bestowed more on the style of the feast, and the good things which were to figure at it, than on the locality of the picnic. Oliver imagined this lack of concern in what was, in a measure, the object of the ten miles’ drive—the visit to a well-known ‘hanger,’ or high wooded bank, which sloped down to Buller’s Brook—might arise from the circumstance that the same bourn had formed the termination of the expedition ever since he could remember. The place was pretty and suitable enough, but there were other places, a little nearer, or a little farther off—an old deserted mansion, with a park open on certain conditions to the public; an ancient church, a treasure to archæologists; a bend of the Brook, famous for water-lilies; while variety was charming. He ventured to name a different halting-place, and was put down for a reason which proved unanswerable to his audience, and which he could not set aside. There was a rarely used barn near Finchhanger, and the owner placed it at the disposal of the company in case of rain. In a climate like ours, such a retreat with its possibilities of indoor games and dancing—even to no better music than impromptu whistling and singing—to while away the lagging hours, was what no wise man could ask his neighbours to despise. And the probability of seeking refuge in the barn was rather in the ascendancy this year; not because the skies were more inclined to weep than usual, but because Jack Dadd had struck out the brilliant improvement of taking down a detachment of the volunteer band on the top of his omnibus, and, as everybody knew, dancing on the grass was better in theory than practice.

Oliver ended by being sceptical whether a change of place, even if he could have answered for the weather, would have gained his end or proved acceptable to anybody save himself perhaps. That was after he had spoken on the rival merits of the old park and church before ’Mily Polley. ‘Oh! bother the place!’ cried ’Mily frankly; ‘who cares for the place? One is as good as another, and then there is the barn. I rather hope the rain will only stop off till we’ve got there, and after that come down in a pelt this year, so as to send us all in where we can eat comfortable, without old Bales’ (to wit the senior Mr. Dadd, with his rotund figure and his linendrapery business) ‘keeping us waiting till he has poked about and hunted out the least damp spot for his lumbago, and mother has made a fright of herself by tying her pocket-handkerchief round her throat to guard against a crick in the neck. And have you heard of young Scissors being so sharp as to secure ever so many of your band with their instruments, in case we should have nothing else to do but take a hop? I’m sure I don’t know that we could do anything better. Oh, I say, Mr. Oliver, I’ll tell you what is of a great deal more consequence than a park when we ain’t proposing to pick cowslips, or a church when none of us means to get married just at present. Will you see—a word at headquarters mayn’t be amiss—that Jim Hull of yours lets us have oyster and lobster patties this year instead of cherry pies? “I’m so partial,” as ’Liza says, I would give my ears for oyster patties. And oh! fancy Jack Dadd has got his father to fork out two bottles of sherry and two of champagne—the real, not the gooseberry thing, instead of the lemonade, which was all we used to have. I don’t care for sherry, but “I adore champagne,” that’s ’Liza again. I should like to swig it like beer—that’s me. But sha’n’t we have a guzzle?’

’Mily called a spade a spade. Oliver was reminded of a market-day when he had seen a stout country lass gazing longingly into the window of the shop which Jim Hull had caused to be filled with tarts and cakes for the occasion. The rustic damsel had great difficulty in tearing herself away from the contemplation; as she did so she exclaimed with effusion to a companion, ‘I could eat the whole window full.’

Oliver sought to make atonement for his recoil from ’Mily’s speech, by honestly weighing the comparative demerits of what might be classed as gluttony and gourmandism. It was the fashion for some ‘great swells,’ as ’Mily would have called them, not only to indulge in the last, but to boast of the practice, and hold it up to admiration as an elegant accomplishment—an essential element of high civilisation. ‘Plain living and high thinking’ were exploded with them also.

‘If you will allow me,’ said Oliver meekly, ‘I’ll mix claret cup for you.’

‘Thank you for nothing.’ ’Mily rejected the proposal flippantly. ‘Nasty flat trash. I’m for as much champagne as I can get for my share, without mother interfering. There!’

Had ‘the girl of the period,’ with the fine fast tone which was found to have such a rousing effect on the jaded languor and formal worldly propriety of Mayfair, come down to dwell among the shopkeepers of Friarton?

Oliver showed himself so far amenable to domestic and feminine influence as to make the concession to Fan’s having vouchsafed her company, and as it were pledged herself to civility, of taking his place with her in the omnibus of her choice—that which did not contain Jack Dadd and his detachment from the volunteer band. But even without Jack and his musical performers—who took time by the forelock, and were guilty of such enthusiasm in their duties as to seize their instruments at the very moment of starting, and fill the air with a truly military combination of fife and drum, serving as a summons to the rest of the townspeople to contemplate the setting forth of the shopkeepers on their great holiday—the other omnibus, filled with a company of girls dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, with rivulets of curls running in every direction; matrons with bonnets which supported thickets of flowers among cascades of lace; and men in their Sunday suits, was in itself so hilarious and so unconscious of any just cause for moderating its hilarity, that the girls’ giggles rose into screams of laughter, the matrons shouted through the din to each other, and the men outshouted their womankind, until the one vehicle was as noisy in a different way as the other.

‘Ain’t you a glum sort?’ a brother-volunteer said, in the freedom of the moment, to Oliver.

‘No,’ Oliver denied, ‘but I don’t see why I should disturb my neighbours with my pleasure.’

‘Oh! as to that,’ the other merrymaker turned off the implied censure, ‘though we ain’t workpeople, we don’t take our pleasures so often that we should hold ourselves in when we do, lest we should disturb them as has no business save pleasure.’

It was true enough, and it was also true that here was an instance of Englishmen’s not taking their pleasure sadly. After all, it was a mere ebullition of excitement at starting, so far as the seniors were concerned. Very soon such members of the party as old Dadd and Mrs. Polley subsided into sobriety, verging on drowsiness and tartness, although their manners might not have the repose

Which stamps the class of Vere de Vere.

But it was in the very height of the outburst, when Fan looked as if she could have crept beneath her seat to hide her diminished head, and Oliver drew down on himself the accusation of being ‘a glum sort,’ that the omnibus rattled past the Meadows, and revealed near the gate, through the vista of thick shrubs, Mrs. Hilliard throwing up her plump white hands in comic protest at the glare and blare of the cavalcade, with the share taken in it by her cousins—half a dozen times removed. For of course as Louisa Hilliard knew everything, she had been made aware beforehand that Fan and Oliver were to be there. She was stationed at the best point to get a passing glimpse of them. She meant them to see her also, and she indulged in that gesture with the mischievous intention of conveying to the brother and sister her pretended opinion that they two were at the bottom of all that blazing colour and deafening noise.

Catherine Hilliard with her dogs stood just behind her cousin. She had been lured to the spot without guessing what was to happen. She was in the act of turning away with fretful impatience to avoid the disagreeable shock of the spectacle. It was in violent antagonism to the shadowy, stately world in which she lived, much as a group from the crowded sands at Margate in the season is in opposition to a trio from a Greek play. If she never interfered with the employments and enjoyments of those human beings who had nothing in common with her—save the same origin in the first, and, it was to be hoped, the same interest in the second, Adam—why should they roughly intrude on her notice, compelling her attention and summarily dissolving the spell of memories and fancies which formed her refuge?

When Finchhanger was reached, there was no time wasted in walking about, though the day, which had begun by being doubtful, was turning out fine. The dinner was the great event of the day, and till it was accomplished successfully—nay, triumphantly, it was not to be thought that any of the picnic party could care for anything else. Oliver, while he cast a regretful glance on the fleeting lights and shades on wood and water which his companions were overlooking, admitted the reasonableness of the principle when a picnic without servants was in question. He was thankful at least for the absence of false assumption. He laboured to fall in with the requirements of the moment. He put himself in the experienced hands of Jack Dadd, with the intention of acting under him in the capacity of an amateur waiter, in spite of Oliver’s peculiar disqualifications for that onerous office, and though he had the mortification to receive regularly, after the discharge of every two out of three commissions entrusted to him, a plain dismissal, though it was couched in tones of jovial mockery and recalled the next moment. ‘Get along with you, Constable, you are only in a man’s way. Was that the style in which you handled plates and knives at your University spreads? You must have been a rare blessing to the crockery shops. I’m blowed if I know how you escaped losing half your cutlery, or carving your own hands and feet. You had better attempt to carry them with your toes, or in your teeth at once. My good feller, you ought to have stuck to your books. You ain’t fit for the ordinary business of life.’

No fault could be found either with Fan’s qualifications or behaviour—in so far as rendering every assistance with a fine capacity and expertness which were in broad contrast to Oliver’s helpless, hopeless _gaucheries_. If she had only not been so much in earnest in her work!

‘Drat it!’ Jack Dadd broke out aside to ’Liza and ’Mily Polley, who were languishing and romping over the tasks assigned them, not showing a tithe of the power to become excellent table-maids which Fan displayed. ‘I can’t stand Fan Constable, though she’ll have everything put out in apple-pie order before we can say Jack Robinson. I wish she would sit down. Ain’t she going about setting us an example how to mind our businesses, as if we were all in shop or at Sunday-school? I’ll throw a dish at her head before I’ve done,’—an extreme expression of feeling which delighted his hearers immensely.

But as Fan was very much in earnest at all times, Oliver could hardly complain of her conduct in this instance, and certainly he could not call her aside and reproach her for devoting herself for the rest of the day to a girl far more delicate than ’Liza Polley, who had come out in her anxiety not to lose the excursion when she was quite unfit for the fatigue.

Oliver had already made more than one private note to study at leisure the amount of sickliness among the girls of his class in Friarton. He was reluctant to ascribe any proportion of it worth mentioning to those Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun illnesses which Mrs. Polley attributed unhesitatingly to the sufferers having ‘tucked into’ stuffed goose and plum pudding, ducklings and pancakes, the first pickled walnuts, sliced cucumbers and greengage tarts, according to the season. ‘Girls—and boys too for that matter—will take their treats without any thought of the consequences,’ she said, referring to the mode in which dissenters still emulate good church people in keeping those festivals which their chapel ignores otherwise. But Oliver preferred to believe the unsatisfactory bill of health was the result of a wilful and wonderful ignorance of God’s laws of physical life in such elementary obligations as have to do with fresh air, regular exercise, scrupulous cleanliness, enough and suitable clothing, not too much food, together with a sustaining interest and object in existence—even that subject to the injunction to be temperate in all things.

The evil effects of these neglected and outraged laws must be intensified in the case of girls, whose indolent and self-indulgent practices alternating with spasmodic exertions in any occupation they could not possibly avoid or really cared about, and in the pursuit of such pleasure as came in their way, exposed them to grave harm, which men, by their established tasks and better balanced habits, avoided. The aimlessness, with a single signal reservation, of these girls’ lives tended also to mental vacuity and its train of disorders.

There was only one disadvantage from which the average tradesmen’s daughters of Friarton were happily exempted: that was the unsatisfied craving, the wearing away and eating into itself, of such a nature as Catherine Hilliard’s, over-stimulated and cultivated to the utmost, but finding no essentially human food for its support, or field for its exercise.

Oliver could not blame Fan, though he could have wished her less grave and absorbed in her philanthropy. At the same time he was sensible that everybody, except Celia Reid, whom Fan was waiting upon, looked askance at her present benevolence as at her previous diligence. ‘It ain’t natural in a girl to come out for a day’s pleasure and shelve herself at a moment’s notice, that she may nurse the first person as has a headache or is sickified. She might have left that to one of the older people. It is just like Fan Constable with her airs. We ain’t good enough for her to enjoy herself with us, but she will play the Good Samaritan for our benefit—set her up! Celia Reid is a mean-spirited thing to give in and allow it. Could not she have stopped at home rather than afford Miss Fan a back-door to get out of, that she might not feel obliged to be free and pleasant like the other girls?’

Oliver clearly comprehended the judgment that was passed on Fan’s sister-of-mercy performance; but he had no idea that he, with his eyes open and a very different disposition towards the company, ran any risk of being indicted for a similar offence.