Kitabı oku: «Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 718», sayfa 4

MAJOR HAMMOND'S RING

'What's this?' cried Miss Hammond, breaking open a letter just handed to her by a servant. 'You read it, Maggie; your eyes are better than mine.'

Small wonder at that indeed, seeing that Maggie is aged about eighteen, and the other sixty-five at the very least, a pleasant-looking, well-preserved spinster, with a brown resolute face and sausage curls over the forehead. Maggie, a handsome modern girl, sits down and reads:

Madam – The parishioners of St Crispin, Gigglesham, in vestry assembled, have determined to rebuild their parish church, pronounced unsafe by the surveyors. Contributions are earnestly requested. The alterations will necessitate the removal of many vaults and graves; among others, that of the Hammond family. It is the wish of the churchwardens to respect the wishes of survivors and others in the disposal of the remains. Any directions you may have to give, you will be good enough to communicate to the undersigned. – Your most humble obedient servants,

Thomas Truscott,

William Bonner,

Churchwardens.

The two Misses Hammond (Margaret and Ellen) are joint proprietors of the comfortable estate of Westbury, near Gigglesham, and of the handsome mansion thereto belonging. Maggie, the young girl, is a distant cousin – although she calls them 'aunt' – and lives with them. There is also a young man, Ralph Grant, somewhere about the place, of whom more anon.

Old Tom Hammond, the father of the two maiden sisters, was born in the year 1740, and might have seen the heads over Temple Bar after the rising of 1745. He lived till 1830. He had married late in life, and left only these two daughters. Thus two generations bridged over a space of time generally occupied by many successive lives; as in the case of another branch of the family, the founder of which, Major Richard Hammond (the uncle of the two old ladies), who had been at the capture of Quebec when General Wolfe was killed, being the great-grandfather of Maggie Lauderdale and Ralph Grant. Major Hammond was the elder of the two brothers, and should have inherited the Westbury estate; but he offended his father, General John Hammond, by what was called a low marriage, and was disinherited in consequence.

Tom Hammond had done his best to remedy his father's injustice, as far as he could without injuring himself and his own, by making a settlement of the estate, in failure of his own issue, upon the lawful descendants of Major Hammond, his brother; providing that if the issue of his elder brother should fail, the estate should go to the issue of a younger brother Henry, who, by the way, had been well provided for by the small estate of Eastbury. This brother Henry was now represented through the female line by a Mr Boodles of Boodle Court, who now also held the Eastbury estate.

The descendants of Major Hammond are now confined to these two young people, Maggie and Ralph. They are both orphans and without means, their forebears having been mostly in the soldiering and official lines. Ralph is a lieutenant in the artillery, and his battery is now in India; but he is at home on sick-leave; and he has taken advantage of his furlough to win the affections of his fair cousin. As the Westbury estate would come to be eventually divided between them, it was considered a most fortunate thing that the young people had come to an understanding. Ralph was to leave the service when he married, and take the home-farm. By-and-by he would fall naturally into his position as country squire; and it was arranged that eventually he should assume the name of Hammond; hoping to continue the old line.

This preamble being necessary, let us now return to the comfortable old-fashioned drawing-room at Westbury.

'What do you think of that, Ellen?' cried Miss Hammond, having read over once more the circular to herself with subdued emphasis. Miss Ellen was sitting looking into the fire, her great wooden knitting-pins and bright-coloured wools lying idle on her lap, as she shook her head while talking gently to herself.

'Do you hear, Ellen?' cried Miss Hammond more sharply. 'What do you think of that letter from Truscott?'

'I don't like the idea at all, Margaret. No, not at all. Why can't they leave our ancestors alone? And I am sure I always looked forward to being buried there myself.'

'La! don't talk about that, Ellen, and you five years the younger!' said Miss Hammond briskly; 'and as we can't prevent its being done, we must make the best of it. Ralph had better go and see to it.'

'Very well, sister; as you like,' said Ellen. Presently she resumed: 'Sister, I've been thinking that this would be a good chance to try to get back Uncle Richard Hammond's ring.'

'Uncle Hammond's ring!' repeated the elder sister. 'I don't understand.'

'You must have heard our father talk about it. The family ring that ought to have gone with the estates – a ruby and sapphire that General Hammond brought home from Ceylon.'

'I ought to know all about it Ellen, I daresay; but you were so much more with my poor father, and had more patience with his stories.'

'My father often tried to get the ring, and had offered to give Major Hammond a large sum for it. But he was so vexed with father for supplanting him, that he vowed he never should have it; and they say, sister, that rather than it should ever fall into his brother's hands, he had it buried with him, upon his finger. Our father always said that if he had a chance he would have the coffin opened to see.'

Maggie, who had retreated to a sofa, and buried her head in a novel, roused up at this, and joined in: 'I hope you will, auntie. I do hope you'll have it looked for.'

'I don't know, my dear,' said Miss Hammond. 'I don't approve of violating the sanctity of the tomb.'

With the elder Miss Hammond, a phrase was everything; she delighted to bring a thing within the compass of a well-rounded phrase, upon which she would then make a stand – invincible. So Maggie threw up her head in a kind of despair, and ran off to look for Ralph, who when last heard of was smoking a cigar on the terrace.

'Ralph!' said Maggie as soon as she had found him, and had submitted to a very smoky kiss – they were in the heyday of their young loves, when kisses were appreciated, even when flavoured with tobacco – 'Ralph! auntie is going to give you a commission – to go and see about a vault at St Crispin's where some of our ancestors lie.'

'I know,' said Ralph; 'they are going to pull the old place down. All right; I'll do it.'

Then Maggie went on to tell him about the ring, and how Miss Hammond would not have it searched for. 'But it is a very valuable ring – a family one too. It would be a great pity to miss it, if it's really there.'

Ralph agreed.

'Well, then, mind you look for it, sir; only don't say a word to auntie, or she'll put a stop to it.'

'I'm fly,' said Ralph, with a knowing wink, and attempted a renewal of the oscillatory process; but Maggie escaped him this time, and came fleeing in at the dining-room window panting into the presence of her aunts.

Since she first left the room, a visitor had appeared – a Mr Boodles, a distant relative, who had inherited some of the family property, as before explained; a tall grim-looking man, with thin iron-gray hair, carefully brushed off his temples.

The aunts were looking rather serious, not to say frightened, and both started guiltily when they saw Maggie.

'Leave us, my dear, please,' said Miss Hammond gently.

Maggie had just caught the words, 'No marriage at all,' from Mr Boodles, who seemed to be speaking loudly and excitedly; and she went out wandering what it all meant. Some piece of scandal, no doubt, for Boodles was the quintessence of spitefulness.

'It is very dreadful – very,' said Miss Hammond. 'I never had much opinion of Uncle Richard, you know; but for the sake of the young people, I hope you'll let it be kept a profound secret.'

'Sake of the young people!' screamed Boodles at the top of his harsh voice. 'And what for the sake of old Boodles? I'm the next heir, you'll remember, please, through my maternal grandfather, Henry Hammond.'

Mr Boodles had come to Westbury to announce an important discovery that he had recently made. In turning over some of his grandfather's papers he had come across some letters from General Hammond, in which it was firmly asserted that his son Major Hammond had never been legally married to the woman known as his wife.

'What end do you propose to serve, Mr Boodles, by bringing this ancient scandal to light?' asked Miss Hammond with agitated voice.

'End!' cried Boodles. 'This is only the beginning of it. I am going to a court of law to have myself declared heir to the Westbury estates under the settlement.'

'In that case,' said Miss Hammond, rising with dignity, 'you cannot be received on friendly terms in my house.'

'Oh, very well, very well,' cried Boodles, snatching up his hat and whip, and sweeping out of the room without further ceremony.

As soon as the door had shut upon him the sisters looked at each other in blank consternation.

'I always feared there would be a difficulty,' said Ellen tremulously; 'but oh, to think of Boodles having discovered it!'

'We must send for Smith at once; the carriage shall go in and fetch him,' said Miss Hammond, ringing the bell.

Mr Smith of Gigglesham was the family solicitor, and the carriage was sent off to bring him up at once for a consultation. But Smith brought little encouragement. He had heard from his father that there were curious circumstances attending Major Hammond's marriage, and if Boodles had put his finger on the flaw – Smith shrugged his shoulders for want of words to express the awkwardness of the case.

'But search must be made everywhere; the evidence of the marriage must be found; the children must not suffer, poor things, and always brought up to look upon the property as their own!'

'Why, they could never marry,' cried Miss Ellen; 'they could never live on Ralph's pay.'

'It's altogether dreadful; and not getting married is the very lightest part of the calamity,' said Miss Hammond.

Smith undertook that every possible search should be made, and went away, promising to set to work at once. But his inquiries had no result. He had traced out the family of the reputed wife, who had been the daughter of a small farmer living at Milton in Kent; but they had now fallen to the rank of labourers, and had no papers belonging to them, hardly any family traditions. He had searched all the registries of the neighbouring parishes: no record of such a marriage could be discovered. He had issued advertisements offering a reward for the production of evidence: all of no avail. What more could he do? To be sure there was a presumption in favour of the marriage; but then if Boodles had documents rebutting such a presumption – Again Mr Smith shrugged his shoulders, in hopelessness of finding fitting words to represent the gravity of the crisis. 'And then,' he went on to say, 'the very fact that Boodles is spending money over the case shews that he thinks he has a strong one.'

Boodles did not let the grass grow under his feet; he instituted proceedings at once, and cited all interested to appear. The thing could no longer be kept a secret; and Maggie and Ralph were told of the cloud that had come over their fortunes.

'I don't care if the property does go away,' said Maggie bravely. 'It will make no difference. I shall go to India with Ralph, that's all. I will be a soldier's wife, and go on the baggage-wagons.'

Ralph shook his head. He had never been able to manage on his pay when there was only himself, and there were ever so many lieutenants on the list before him, so that he could not hope to be a captain for many years.

There was no use in sitting brooding over coming misfortunes; and Ralph took the dogcart and drove over to Gigglesham, to see about the family vault at St Crispin's. It was an occupation that agreed well with his temper; the weather too seemed all in keeping – a dull drizzling day.

'Don't forget the ring,' Maggie had said to him at parting; 'that is ours, you know Ralph, if we find it; and perhaps it may be worth a lot of money.'

Ralph shook his head incredulously. And yet it was possible. The ring might be there, and it might prove of great value. In misfortunes, the mind grasps at the smallest alleviations, and Ralph consoled himself in his depression by picturing the finding of a splendid ruby worth say ten thousand pounds. No more artillery-work then – no more India.

Gigglesham boasts of several churches, and St Crispin's lies in a hollow by the river, close to the bridge. A low squat tower and plain ugly nave. But in its nook there – the dark river flowing by, the sail of a barge shewing now and then, the tall piles of deals in the timber-yard beyond, the castle-keep frowning from the heights, and the big water-mill with its weirs and rapids, the noise of which and of the great churning wheel sounded slumbrously all day long – allied with these things, the old church had something homely and pleasant about it, hardly to be replaced by the finest modern Gothic.

Workmen were swarming about it now. The roof was nearly off. There were great piles of sand and mortar in the graveyard. Mr Martin, the plumber and glazier, who took the most lively interest in the underground work, even to the neglect of more profitable business, was on the look-out for Lieutenant Grant, and greeted him cheerily.

'We've got 'em all laid out in the vestry, Cap'n Grant, all the whole family; and now the question is, what are you going to have done with them? Would you like 'em put in the vaults below, where they'll all be done up in lime and plaster? or would you like 'em moved somewhere else – more in the open air, like?'

'The least expensive way, I should say,' replied Ralph grimly. Somehow or other his appreciation of his ancestors was deadened by this last stroke of fate in cutting him adrift from his succession. 'But look here, Martin,' he went on, taking the plumber aside; 'there is one of the coffins, Major Hammond's, I should like to have opened. It can be done?'

'Easy enough, sir,' cried Martin, who, to say the truth, was delighted at the prospect of a little charnel-house work. 'He's a lead 'un, he is. I'll have the top off in no time.'

Ralph looked gravely down at the last remains of the Hammonds. The wife, if she had been a wife, on whom their inheritance hung, was not here; she had died in India. But there was the Major's coffin, the wood-work decayed, but the leaden envelope as sound as ever.

Martin was quickly at work with his tools. The cover was stripped off, and for a moment the Major's features were to be seen much as they had been in life; then all dissolved into dust.

There was no ruby ring – that must have been a fable; but there was something glittering among the remains, and on taking it out, it proved to be a plain gold hoop.

'Well, that's worth a pound, that is,' cried the practical Martin, carefully polishing up the treasure-trove. It had probably been hung round the neck of the departed – a tall bony man – for the ring was a small one, and there were traces of a black ribbon attached to it.

It was a disappointment, no doubt; and yet somehow the sight of the ring had given Ralph a little hope. It was the wedding-ring, he said to himself, his great-grandmother's wedding-ring. The Major must have been fond of her to have had her ring always about him; and it had been buried with him. That had given rise to the story about the ruby. He drove home, after giving directions about the disposal of the coffins, feeling less sore at heart. He was now convinced that they had right on their side, and there was some comfort in that.

When he reached home, he shewed the ring to Maggie, who agreed with his conclusions.

'But there is something inside – some letters, I think,' she cried.

'It is only the Hall-mark,' said Ralph, having looked in his turn. 'But stop. That tells us something: it will give us a date.'

'How can that be?' asked Maggie.

'Because there is a different mark every year. See! you can make it out with a magnifying-glass. King George in a pigtail.'

The silversmith at Gigglesham turned up his tabulated list of Hall-marks, and told them at once the date of the ring – 1760.

'But it might have been made a long time before it was first used,' suggested Maggie.

'True; but it could not have been used before it was made,' replied Ralph. 'It gives us a date approximately, at all events.'

At first, the knowledge of this date did not seem likely to be of much use to them. But it gave them the heart to go on and make further inquiries. Ralph threw himself into the task with fervour. He obtained leave to search the records of the Horse Guards; and ascertained at last where had been stationed the regiment that Richard Hammond then belonged to in that same year.

It was at Canterbury, as it happened; and that seemed significant, for it was not so far from there to his sweetheart's home at Milton. Ralph went over to Canterbury, and with the help of a clerk of Mr Smith's, searched all the parish registers between the two places; but found nothing.

The trial was coming on in a few weeks, and not a scrap of evidence could they get of the marriage of Major Hammond. The other side were full of confidence, and well they might be. Ralph had made up his mind to return home, and was walking disconsolately down the High Street of Canterbury one day when he saw over a shop-window the sign, 'Pilgrim, Goldsmith; established 1715.'

'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'if my great-grandfather bought his wedding-ring there?'

A sudden impulse sent him into the shop. A nice-looking old gentleman, with long white hair, was sitting behind the counter, peering into the works of a watch through an elongated eye-glass.