Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

Miss Simpson wore a narrow-shouldered, aesthetic garment, so modestly cut that only the scraggy column of her throat was visible above its lavender folds. Mr Musgrave, whose eyes were attracted towards her by the magnetic force of her gaze, which was riveted on him from the moment of his entry, compared her to her disadvantage with the vicar’s modish little wife, whose extravagance in the matter of her new dress was spoiling one-half of her satisfaction in the knowledge that she compared favourably with the other guests.

Of the rest of the ladies present only one was unknown to Mr Musgrave. His eyes fell upon her as he left his hostess’s side, passed over her face without recognition, and then, as though suddenly reminded of having seen it somewhere amid other surroundings, planted, indeed, in an altogether different setting, they wandered back uncertainly and rested with a puzzled scrutiny on the delicate profile that was half turned from him. Something in the rebellious wave of the brown hair, something in the buoyant grace of the girl’s carriage, appeared vaguely familiar. And then suddenly the stranger turned and faced him squarely, and a pair of darkly grey eyes looked for a second into his and betrayed a flash of recognition. The faintest of smiles lit their grey depths. She was talking to the vicar, and she turned to him and said something in a low voice, as a result of which the vicar summoned Mr Musgrave to his side and presented him, and – quite unnecessarily, John Musgrave thought – left him alone with this exceedingly womanly looking, unwomanly young person.

As Mr Musgrave beheld her now, suitably attired in an exceedingly elegant yet simple white dinner dress, he found it difficult to associate this dainty person with the dreadful vision in blue overalls standing at the top of a long ladder and whistling to the bull-dog. He shuddered when he recalled that sight. How could any refined girl be guilty of such immodest conduct?

But the person in the overalls had done him a service. He felt that it would be only courtesy to acknowledge it. But did not courtesy demand rather that he should ignore that painful episode? It was possible that the girl would be displeased to be reminded of that occasion. Mr Musgrave felt so embarrassed, and was so little successful in concealing this emotion, that the girl, becoming conscious of it, imagined that he was shy. She promptly “started in,” as she would have phrased it, to set him at his ease.

“I’m quite in love with Moresby,” she said brightly. “It’s the prettiest spot I’ve happened upon so far. These old places which have fallen asleep are restful. I was just asking Mr Errol when you arrived to whom that beautiful garden belonged, with the old gabled house standing back from the road, and he replied, ‘Here’s the owner.’ When I looked round and saw you I remembered your face. Diogenes introduced us informally, if you recall the afternoon you called here. He is a dreadfully pushing person, Diogenes; but he’s a dear when you know him.”

“I daresay,” Mr Musgrave answered, correctly surmising that Diogenes was the bull-dog. “But I dislike dogs.”

“I should never have thought that,” replied the girl, looking faintly surprised; “because Diogenes likes you. He never speaks to people he doesn’t like; and dogs as a rule know at once when people are not sympathetic. He quite gushed about you after you had gone. I won’t tell him he has made a mistake, it might hurt his feelings. And after all you are possibly mistaken yourself. You’d love dogs, I expect, if you once allowed yourself to take an interest in them. They are like children; one has to get accustomed to them.”

“On the occasion you refer to,” said Mr Musgrave tactfully, “I was very obliged to you for coming to my assistance. I confess to having felt distinctly nervous of Diogenes.”

“Most people are,” she said. “He looks so ferocious, and he’s noisy. But that was only good-tempered teasing. He always helps me when I am gardening, and he enjoys thinking he is keeping intruders off. You must come and see the gardens some day. Mr Errol tells me you are dreadfully learned about flowers.”

“I am interested in flowers,” John Musgrave allowed modestly.

“So am I – enormously. I just love having this big place to experiment with. And my aunt is such a dear; she gives me a free hand.” She laughed delightfully, showing a set of very pretty teeth. “A free hand constitutes also unlimited funds, and that is such a help in the making of a beautiful garden.”

“I should have thought,” Mr Musgrave said, “that the making of a garden was unnecessary where a garden already existed. I understood the grounds were always kept up.”

“They have been kept from neglect,” she answered. “But there is a lot to be done. We have got to bring it all up to date.”

“Oh?” he said, and repressed a shudder. He had never liked that expression; since his acquaintance with Mrs Chadwick he had grown to actively dislike it. “I am old-fashioned, I suppose,” he added. “I prefer things left as they are. The associations which cling about familiar things are more beautiful, in my opinion, than change. No outlay of money can improve an old-world garden.”

“The introduction of a quantity of patent manure into the ground helps considerably in its productiveness,” she answered practically. “Wait till the summer comes. When you see the glory of bloom then you’ll admit the utility of money. I should like some time to come and see your garden. Do you work in it yourself?”

“I!” Mr Musgrave appeared taken aback at the suggestion that he should labour among his borders, which were noted in Moresby for their beauty. “I supervise the man, of course,” he said.

“Oh!” she returned in a tone of commiseration for the pleasure that he missed. “Supervising is tame. When one feels the soil with one’s hands one learns what it means to love it, and every little root one buries in the mould becomes as a dear child. You are only scientifically interested in flowers, I suspect. I’ve learnt the science of them, too; but I am trying to forget all that and acquire practical knowledge. Imagine a mother bringing up her child scientifically! I know some people consider it a wise plan, but every child, like every plant, has its little peculiarities, and needs to be made a separate study.”

“You are very young,” Mr Musgrave remarked, looking into the clear eyes with a shade of disapproval in his own, “to entertain views on these subjects.”

To his surprise she laughed.

“I’m twenty-eight,” she answered frankly. “If one hasn’t any views at that age it is safe to predict one will never have any. At twenty-eight lots of women are engaged in experimenting practically in the upbringing of children. I have nephews and nieces ranging up to ten.”

Mr Musgrave was by now firmly convinced that he did not like this young person. He was quite sure that working in overalls was not good for the mind. And yet, when he came to reflect upon what she had said later, he failed to discover what there had been to object to so strongly in her talk. But he had taken a strong objection to the tone of her conversation. Could it be that he was not merely old-fashioned, but slightly priggish? Mr Musgrave did not like to think of himself as a prig. It is a term which Englishmen affect to despise. Nevertheless there are a few prigs in the world. Mr Musgrave was not a prig, but he came perilously near to being one at times.

A move in the direction of the dining-room put an end to their talk. Mr Musgrave was paired off with his legitimate dinner partner, a Rushleigh lady, the importance of whose social position as a member of one of the oldest families in the neighbourhood rendered it seemingly unnecessary for her to support the effort of being even ordinarily conversational. John Musgrave knew her intimately, and was therefore not unduly depressed by her long silences and her chilly acceptance of his stereotyped phrases in an attempt to sustain a courteous soliloquy during the courses.

Farther down, on the opposite side of the table, the grey-eyed girl was chatting animatedly with a young medical man, also from Rushleigh, who appeared, John Musgrave observed with a sense of feeling suddenly bored and out of tune with his surroundings, to be enjoying himself hugely. Mr Musgrave had always understood that young people did not enjoy dinner-parties; as a young man he had found them extraordinarily dull. But this young man was apparently enjoying both the food and the company. The grey-eyed girl was not, however, discussing with him patent manures, or other horticultural matters. At the moment when John Musgrave observed them they were engaged in a flippant conversation which the young man characterised as psychological, but which John Musgrave would not have dignified by such a term. It was the kind of agreeable nonsense which is pleasing only to youth.

The young man considered the grey-eyed girl ripping. The grey-eyed girl – who was called Peggy Annersley – referred to him in her thoughts as a sport. Mr Musgrave would not have approved of either expression. The vocabulary of youth is uncouth.

In the drawing-room, following the long dinner, there was a little music, under cover of which many of the guests took refuge in silence, relieved that the necessity to make conversation was temporarily relaxed. The business of enjoying one’s self is a strenuous matter.

Mr Musgrave, moved by a stern sense of duty and the conviction of what was correct, went from one group of acquaintances to another and exchanged civilities with all. Peggy watched his conscientious progress through the room with mischievous, comprehending eyes. He was the quaintest thing in Moresby, she reflected, where everything was quaint.

Later, when the guests had departed, in response to a question put by Mrs Chadwick in reference to him, she stated that he seemed quite a nice old thing. Mrs Chadwick surveyed her niece thoughtfully, and then glanced at her own reflection in a mirror.

“Should you describe me as old?” she asked.

“You!” the girl laughed scoffingly. “You dear! What a question?”

“I am thirty-nine,” Mrs Chadwick said. “And John Musgrave is forty.”

The girl looked unimpressed.

“I daresay. But no one would consider John’s years. He is fossilised,” she said.

Chapter Eleven

Miss Peggy Annersley was a niece of Mr Chadwick, one of a family of four girls whom Fate had deprived of their mother in early childhood, and, as though repenting the evil turn she had wrought them, had remedied the ill as far as she was able by subsequently removing their father also from a world in which, though undoubtedly ornamental, he was not of the slightest use. Having freed them thus far from the only obstacle in the path of any possible success which might fall to their lot, she threw them with light-hearted irresponsibility and an air of having finished with them, if not finally, at least for the time being, into the care of the wealthy uncle who, being childless, was naturally the person best fitted to undertake the charge of four well-grown, unruly, under-educated girls. Mr Chadwick sent them forthwith to a good boarding-school, and, like Fate, having disposed of them temporarily, dismissed them from his thoughts. But Mr Chadwick was possessed of a wife, and that wife was possessed of ideas regarding the race in general and the feminine half of it in particular; she therefore shouldered his neglected responsibilities and made the education of those four girls her special study.

Mr Chadwick’s idea had been to educate them decently, as he expressed it, and give them a small but sufficient income on which to live independently, and leave them to worry out the problem of life for themselves. Mrs Chadwick objected to this plan on the plea that it was charity, and charity, save in exceptional circumstances, was humiliating to the individual and unsatisfactory, inasmuch as it retarded the mental and moral growth, and disorganised the social scheme.

Therefore each girl was educated as a boy might be, with a knowledge that she must earn her livelihood and had therefore better develop any talent and specialise in the choice of a profession.

The arrangement had worked well. The eldest girl, who, like her father, was ornamental rather than useful, had specialised matrimonially and left the schoolroom for a home of her own, and was very well satisfied with her lot. The second girl had become a medical student; and, showing marked ability in the profession she had chosen, took her M.D. and subsequently practised successfully as a doctor in a busy Midland town. The third girl, who was Peggy, had taken up gardening with equal aptitude, and was employed by her aunt for two reasons: the first being that Mrs Chadwick preferred a woman gardener; the second and all-important reason being that she was very fond of Peggy and wished to keep her with her. The fourth girl was an architect, and, being still quite young, was as yet on the lowest rung of the ladder. She was, however, keen, and Mrs Chadwick hoped that she would become an ornament to her profession in time.

Save for Peggy and the eldest girl, who was a beauty, looks were not the chief asset of the family, so that for the doctor and the young architect it was more expedient that they should do well in the work they had taken up.

Mrs Chadwick was on the whole very satisfied with the result of her effort on their behalf. Next to having girls of her own, four nieces with an average share of brains provided admirable material for the development of her feminist schemes. It afforded her immense gratification to watch their progress, and behold, instead of four helpless girls keeping house in bored inactivity on other people’s money, four – or rather three – very capable young persons equal to fighting their own way through life, and privileged to enjoy the bread of independence. If any girl imagines there is a better lot in life she is mistaken. No occupation unfits a woman for the rôle of wife and mother; it gives her rather a greater right to bring children into the world, when she is able to support them if necessary. Mr Musgrave would not have shared this opinion; but Musgravian ideas fill almshouses and orphanages and are responsible for a great deal of genteel and quite needless poverty. That one half – and that the larger half – of the race should depend for its existence on the other half is absurd.

Peggy Annersley was a young woman of very independent spirit. Had she wished, she might have made her occupation as gardener at the Hall a sinecure. She could have given her orders to those under her and have enjoyed her leisure in any way that appeared agreeable to herself. Mrs Chadwick imposed no conditions or restraints. But Peggy drew a handsome wage, and she liked to fed when she received her monthly cheque that she had earned it; therefore she donned overalls and spoilt her hands, or, as she would have expressed it, hardened them, in the conscientious fulfilment of her duties. She put in her eight hours a day, except in the winter when work was slack, and insisted upon her half-day off during the week. There was only one matter in which she enjoyed any advantage over the rest – she was not liable to dismissal.

On her half-day off Peggy usually went for a walk accompanied by Diogenes. She resolutely refused to give up these half-days to paying calls with her aunt or helping her to entertain visitors. If she were imperatively needed for social duties these had to be worked in in her employers’ time. Peggy was a veritable Trades Union in herself, and refused absolutely to sacrifice her off-time to any object that did not conform with her ideas of pleasurable relaxation.

Thus it fell out that when the guests who had participated in the Chadwicks’ hospitality were, with rigid observance of rule, punctiliously performing their duty in the matter of an after-dinner call, Miss Annersley, in defiance of her aunt’s remonstrance, insisted on going off as usual with the faithful Diogenes. Mrs Chadwick was vexed. Mr Chadwick had that morning met John Musgrave in the village, and had returned with the news that Mr Musgrave had mentioned that it was his purpose to call that same afternoon. Mrs Chadwick for some inexplicable reason desired Peggy’s support on this occasion, and appeared disproportionately annoyed when Peggy departed on her walk and left her aunt to receive Mr Musgrave alone. Mr Chadwick was present, certainly, but the presence of Mr Chadwick could not further her amiable plans for the modernising of John Musgrave.

It was a wild, bright day with a touch of frost in the air, and as she walked briskly across the fields the sun and the wind and the cold air brought a glorious colour into Peggy’s cheeks and lent a sparkle to her eyes. It was regrettable that there was no one there to note these things except Diogenes and a few cows. Peggy was not alarmed of cows; but Diogenes, who was in a boisterous mood, caused her considerable anxiety through displaying a desire to chase these unoffending animals, resenting which, they acted in a manner unseemly in their breed. In one field there were bulls. They were young bulls, and harmless; but Diogenes excited them, and when they began to chase Diogenes he feigned nervousness and sought shelter behind his mistress’s skirts, Peggy, feeling nervous without feigning it, took refuge in the hedge. Then it was that she became aware of a small bearded man, who, having just climbed the stile, walked fearlessly among the herd, which made way before him as before the progress of some royal personage and allowed him to pass unharmed. The small bearded man stopped when he was abreast of Peggy, and stared up at her where she crouched in the hedge with critical, contemptuous eyes.

“Do you like milk?” he asked unexpectedly.

“Yes,” Peggy answered, puzzled to understand why this person, whom she now recognised for the sexton, if he wished to address her should open civilities with such an unusual remark; why, too, he should seem upset with her reply. He looked almost angry.

“Do you like beef?” he proceeded, putting her through this catechism as though he were playing a serious kind of new game.

“Yes,” Peggy repeated with increasing wonder.

The little man looked really fierce now. She was relieved to have Diogenes at hand; this person was more terrifying than the bulls.

“Then wot are you afeard of? Get down out of thicky hedge. They won’t ’urt ’ee.”

Peggy felt indignant; the little man was quite unnecessarily rude.