I
On the evening of June 23rd, 1852, Old Dick Hammond, then still known as Young Dick, locked the door of the little oil-shop, dropped the key in his pocket, and turned westward up Middle Street in Marshington. Beyond the village, black against the sunset, a broken windmill crowned the swelling hill, even as the hill crowned Marshington.
"One day," he vowed to himself, "my son shall marry a lady and build a house on Miller's Rise."
It was typical of Dick that he made his vow before the first sack had been sold from the factory that eventually brought to him his moderate fortune. Yet more typical was the promptitude with which he forestalled his son and began himself to build the house at Miller's Rise. When Young Arthur Hammond rode to Market Burton to court Rachel Bennet, a house stood already prepared and waiting for his lady. Whatever other objections the Bennet family might have raised against Rachel's lover, at least they could not deny that he was offering her the finest home in Marshington.
Fifteen years after Arthur's wedding, the house was more than a mere dwelling place. Wind and rain had dimmed the aggressive yellow of the brick walls, half covered now by ivy and the spreading fans of ampelopsis. The tender olive and faint silver-green of lichens had crept across the slates roofing the shallow gables. The smooth lawn sloping to the laurel hedge along the road, the kitchen garden overstocked until it suffered from perennial indigestion, the stiff borders by the drive, wherein begonias, lobelia and geraniums were yearly planted out, regardless of expense; all these testified that the vows of Old Dick Hammond had been fulfilled in no grudging spirit.
"Eleven bedrooms, three real good sitting-rooms, and no making up for lost space on the kitchens," Dick had declared. "When you go in for bricks and mortar, go handsome. It's a good investment. Houses is summat."
The house had been something more than the symbol of Old Dick's fulfilment. It had been the fortress from which Rachel Hammond had advanced with patient fortitude to recapture the social ground that she had forfeited by marrying Dick Hammond's son. Old Dick had mercifully died. When his continued existence became the sole obstacle to the fulfilment of his vow, nature performed her last service to him and removed it.
The death of her father-in-law had made it a little easier for Rachel Hammond to live down the origin of his son, but even by 1903 she still spoke with deference to Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and never passed the new store on the site of the old oil-shop without a shudder. She kept her difficulties to herself, and no one but her sister Beatrice knew how great at times had been the travail of her soul. Beatrice alone stood by her when she ignored the early callers from the Avenue and the Terrace. No small amount of courage had enabled a young bride to refuse the proffered friendship of auctioneers' wives and the Nonconformist section of the village, when refusal might have meant perpetual isolation. Old Dick Hammond had been a mighty witness before the Lord among the Primitives; but for a whole year of nerve-racking anxiety his daughter-in-law sat in the new house that he had built, awaiting the calls of that Upper Marshington to whom Church was a symbol of social salvation, and Chapel of more than ecclesiastical Nonconformity.
Beatrice alone supported Mrs. Hammond when she carried the war into the enemies' camp by inviting a formidable series of Bennet relatives, Market Burton acquaintances, and Barlow cousins to purify the social atmosphere of Miller's Rise. Sunday after Sunday these invincible reserves appeared in the Hammond pew. The success of that campaign had been slow but solid, and Mrs. Hammond, sitting in her elm-shadowed garden on this summer afternoon bowed in gracious but satisfactory acknowledgment to the hand that waved from Mrs. Waring's carriage, rolling handsomely along the road.
She put down her sewing and gazed dreamily beyond the garden. The air was heavy with sweet summer sounds and scents, melting together into a murmurous fragrance; the breath of the wind on new-mown grass, the cooing of doves, the sleepy orchestra of bees. On the upper stretch of lawn the two little girls, Muriel and Connie, were making a restless pretence at lessons with the governess, Miss Dyson.
Mrs. Hammond paused in her work, a faint frown on her smooth forehead. Then she spoke, to herself rather than to her sister:
"Mrs. Cartwright said yesterday that Mrs. Waring is sending Adelaide to school."
"School?" echoed Beatrice. Having been offered no clue yet, she knew not whether to approve or to decry. Seventeen years spent as the one unmarried daughter of a large family had taught Beatrice Bennet that she existed only upon other people's sufferance. Since her parents had died, she passed her time in a continual succession of visits from one brother or sister to another, paying for their hospitality by lending her approval, such as it was, to register or to confirm their own opinions.
Mrs. Hammond had not hitherto expressed her opinion on the subject of schools. Beatrice could therefore only wait and listen.
"To school?" she repeated, as her sister kept silence. "Did she say to which school?"
"She was uncertain." Mrs. Hammond resumed her sewing. Her plump, white hands with round, beautifully-polished nails, conveyed in repose a deceptive impression of gentle ineffectiveness. Directly she began to hem, inserting and withdrawing her needle with sharp, decisive movements, the flashing diamonds on her finger cut through the idle softness of that first impression. Her hands never fluttered uncertainly above her work. She moved directly to the achievement of her aim, or she kept still. Just now she sewed, with rapid ease, a petticoat for Connie.
"Connie's hard on her things," she observed. "You'd hardly believe how fast she grows, and then she tears them like a great tom-boy." She sighed, clipping off a thread with her sharp scissors. "Mrs. Waring seems to be thinking of York for Adelaide."
"There are good schools in York," suggested Beatrice.
"Well, there's the Red Manor School. Miss Burdass is a lady. Daisy and Marjorie are going there, and now perhaps Adelaide. But I'm not sure."
"Mrs. Marshall Gurney's little girl still has a governess, hasn't she?" suggested Beatrice with a helpful air.
Mrs. Hammond's eyes turned for one instant to the drooping figure of Miss Dyson, now trailing wearily towards the house.
"Mrs. Marshall Gurney found a treasure in Miss Evans," she remarked dryly. "I have already tried five for the children. You know that; but they seem to be either feeble sorts of creatures like this Miss Dyson or pert young minxes like that Porter girl. Mrs. Marshall Gurney hasn't got to deal with Arthur."
Mrs. Hammond never alluded directly to those other troubles of her married life unconnected with her husband's social position; but Beatrice nodded now in perfect comprehension. With a spinster's licence, she always believed the worst of husbands.
"Besides," her sister continued, "it's not only governesses. I was talking it over last night with Mr. Hammond." She called her husband Mr. Hammond sometimes from habit, because her subconscious mind recognized that conversation with Beatrice was conversation with an inferior, and prompted her accordingly. "He agreed with me that the girls must go somewhere where they'll make nice friends. After all, there are really very few nice people round Kingsport."
Beatrice followed her sister's glance beyond the flat meadows to where Kingsport lay veiled in a light haze from the river Leame. The city rose so slightly from the fields and gardens that its silver houses gleamed like a pool of mercury poured on stretched green cloth, leaving little drops and flattened balls before it had rolled together Marshington, Danes, Kepplethorpe, and Swanfield over on the pale horizon.
"I have to think of the future," Mrs. Hammond remarked.
Her sister nodded.
"Have you decided, then?"
"I did mention Heathcroft to Arthur. Mrs. Hancock's school is not very large, but the dear Bishop recommends it, and I understand that even the Setons of Edenthorpe thought of sending their little girls there."
"The Setons. Now, let me see, aren't they some connection of the Neales?"
"Mrs. Neale was a Miss Henessey, and the Henesseys are cousins to the West Riding Setons."
All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.
A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at their feet.
"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?" boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.
They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them, ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his women.
"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"
His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of his great virility.
"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said, her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many advantages."
"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."
It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.
"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs. Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she had already made up her mind.
"Ay, ay. Do what ye will with the lasses. If they'd 'a been lads, I might ha' had sommat to say."
He lowered his great bulk slowly into the third garden chair. The little girls came running across the daisied lawn, Connie dancing ahead, Muriel following more sedately. Though she was fourteen, Muriel still looked a child in her short holland dress and round straw hat.
"Father, Father," shrilled Connie. "When did you come home? Have you been to Kingsport? How did the new bay mare go?"
They were singularly alike, Arthur Hammond and his younger daughter. He smiled down at her with fond assurance.
"She went like old Miss Deale goes when she sees the curate coming round t' corner."
"What do you mean, father? How does she go?"
"Arthur, I wish that you wouldn't say such things before the children," reproved his wife's sweet voice.
He laughed enormously, putting his hand out and drawing Connie closer to him, and thinking what a jolly thing it was to be sitting in his pleasant garden with the day's work done, and an evening of uninterrupted domesticity before him.
"Ay, Connie," he asked, "how would you like to go to school, eh? At Hardrascliffe with old Mrs. Hancock, who'd beat you like anything if you're a bad girl?"
"Oh, Father!" Connie glowed rapturously, understanding exactly how far his threats were serious.
Muriel stood quietly before them, her slim hands clasped, her grave eyes contemplative. She saw the sun lighting the pale brown of her mother's hair to the soft shadow of gold. She saw the deep blue of her aunt's flowing skirt against the speckled green and white of the unmown stretch of lawn. She saw her father and sister, their two red heads together, plotting some game of boisterous childishness that was peculiarly theirs. She saw the wind among the lime trees tumbling their leaves to delicate patterns of green light and shade.
Her wide eyes narrowed with the intensity of her secret thought.
"Mother," she asked unexpectedly, "do you suppose that there are many families in Marshington as happy as we are?"
A faint shadow crossed her mother's face, like a wind-blown cloud across a flower. Then she answered with the gentleness that she reserved especially for her children.
"Well, dear, I hope that many families are happy."
But Mr. Hammond, thrusting Connie aside, clapped his hand against his thigh and guffawed loudly. "Well, if that doesn't beat everything. That's a real good 'un, that is. A happy family, well, well, well. Which puts me in mind, Bee, did you ever hear tell of Bob Hickson and his happy family?"
Beatrice, part of whose profession it was to have heard no tale before, gathered her scattered wits to give attention. Connie, bored by the prospect of a tale that she had heard before, danced off among the grass and buttercups; but Muriel, who had put her question seriously, stood patiently watching, a little puzzled, a little rebuffed, a little sad.