IX
"Of course, if it had been your dog, Mu, it would have run into the curate," Connie observed cuttingly.
"But I haven't got a dog," sighed Muriel.
Connie looked at her with pity. Really there were times when she wondered whether Muriel was quite all there.
Mumps at Heathcroft had conspired with measles in London to throw Connie once again into Clare's company. School had broken up early, and Connie arrived at Miller's Rise two days after Clare's spectacular descent upon her family. She failed to appreciate the honour.
"Never in my life did I see any one make so much fuss of a girl. You're all daft. Mother's as set up as a pouter pigeon because she's got Lord Powell's niece staying here, and Mrs. Neale brings Godfrey at last to call—if you can say that it was a call. I wouldn't stand this eleventh hour patronage from a duchess, let alone just Mrs. Neale, and every one knows that she's crazy anyway. And look at Father! The way he goes on as though he'd never seen a girl before."
"Connie, don't be horrid."
"Horrid yourself. You see if I'm not right. And Mother can't stand her really, only she won't say anything before she's had a chance to show her off to the rest of Marshington."
"That isn't true. You're being simply horrid because you think it's clever, and you're jealous of Clare because Father takes a lot of notice of her. It's only because she's a visitor. You're always so unreasonable."
"Wait till she's been in the house a bit longer, and you'll see who's unreasonable."
Muriel turned away and left Connie to her dark prophecies. There were times when her younger sister exasperated her by a shrewd interpretation of their parents' motives which Muriel rejected as both unpleasant and untrue. Connie had no business to go about saying nasty things about people, just to pretend that she knew more about Life than Muriel who was grown up.
That conversation took place the day before Mrs. Hammond opened her campaign. She was sitting before the dressing-table in her room, finishing her morning toilet. She knew that in her dressing-jacket, with her plump arms bare from the elbow, she looked girlish and very charming. The silver in her hair gleamed like moonlight rather than Time's theft of colour. She rather liked to see it spread softly about her shoulders before she coiled it high upon her head.
From the dressing-room she could hear her husband whistling through his teeth, as a stable boy whistles when he grooms a horse. Through the open door she could see him standing before his shaving-glass, brushing vigorously his wiry thatch of hair.
Mrs. Hammond set down her own brush and called softly:
"Arthur!"
The whistling stopped. Mr. Hammond put down his brushes and began to flex and unflex his arms, then ran his hands down the firm line from his arm-pits to his thighs.
"Hardly an ounce of spare flesh, by gosh," he remarked irrelevantly. "Few chaps o' my age could say the same thing. Have you seen Ted Hobson? great coarse-looking, over-fed fellow, he's grown. Lifts his elbow a bit too often they say. Nothing like that for——"
"Arthur, you know I think that while Clare is here we ought to give a dinner-party."
"Of course I don't object to a moderate tipple myself——"
A little pucker of thought appeared on Mrs. Hammond's forehead. "I was thinking of just a few people, the Marshall Gurneys perhaps, and Colonel Cartwright, and Mr. Vaughan now that Delia's away. Arthur! Are you listening?"
"Yes, yes, my dear. Let 'em all come. Have a dozen dinner-parties for all I care."
"And the Neales, Arthur. I returned her call yesterday, but she was out with those everlasting dogs."
"Knows a good dog, the old lady. Yes, go ahead. Ask the Neales. Ask the Prince of Wales. Ask the whole blooming royal family."
"Arthur, I do wish that you would take this seriously. You know perfectly well that it's as much your duty as mine to do what you can for the girls."
"Oho! It's the girls, is it? And what do you expect to get for them out of all this fussification, eh?" He stood in the doorway now between the two rooms, smiling down at her, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "Are you going to marry Connie off to the vicar?"
"You needn't pretend to be stupid when you aren't," snapped Mrs. Hammond. When she saw him in a good temper she could sometimes take a holiday from her habitual patience.
She began to gather up her rings, and slip them one after the other on to her white fingers. Here was the diamond half-hoop, her engagement ring. Arthur had been generous but unoriginal. Here was the emerald that he had bought during their honeymoon. Here, the ruby set between two splendid pearls that he had bought her after that affair. She twisted it round on her finger reflectively. Her gentle face hardened. From the dressing-room she could hear her husband jingling pencils, pennies and his watch, as he transferred them from the chest to his pockets. "Does he still keep her photograph in his watch case?" she wondered. That would be like Arthur, to repent extravagantly, and then to keep one little trace of his misdeed to sigh over.
Mrs. Hammond was not a sentimentalist. She clapped the ruby ring down on top of the emerald and diamond, and smiled faintly without too much bitterness as she heard the faint whirring sound of Arthur winding up his watch. It was his inevitable prelude to descent for breakfast.
"You'll order some more Burgundy, Arthur, won't you?"
"Better have a few bottles of fizz up while we're about it, hadn't we?" Mr. Hammond was dressed and disposed to take the world and the dinner-party more seriously. Like many middle-aged men he laid aside maturity with his clothes, and looked like a schoolboy in pyjamas, feeling like one too.
"Not champagne, I think, Arthur. We don't want to be thought ostentatious. Things must be right."
Reluctantly he agreed. Though his taste in parties differed from hers, he had to admit that in these things she was right. Although he chaffed her, he paid this tribute of acknowledgment to the long years of patient sowing of the social ground in Marshington until now at last the Neales were ripe for harvest.
Half amused at the object of her ambition, pleased to allow her to please herself if that did not interfere with his comfort, proud that she was successful in the quest that she had undertaken, Arthur Hammond went downstairs to order some more of the best Burgundy.