Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“That wouldn’t have proved so exciting,” Peggy returned. “He doesn’t open out in front of other people. I like John best in his own home.”

She rose with a laugh, and, approaching the sofa, seated herself at Mrs Chadwick’s side.

“I couldn’t help it,” she said with an affectation of contrition. “It all just happened. Things will, you know.”

And then she gave a more detailed account of the afternoon’s doings. Mrs Chadwick was amused, in spite of a slight vexation. Peggy’s veracious version of her intrusion on Mr Musgrave was disconcerting to her listener; and the anecdote of the glove, which lost nothing in the telling, seemed to Mrs Chadwick, who possessed a certain insight into John Musgrave’s sensitive mind, the last straw in the load of prejudice which would bias John Musgrave’s opinion of her niece. She could cheerfully at the moment have boxed Peggy’s ears. But Peggy, laughing and unrepentant, hung over her aunt and kissed her. Mrs Chadwick was as weak as water when Peggy coaxed.

“I hope he doesn’t send you that pair of gloves,” was all she said.

But John Musgrave did send the gloves. He drove into Rushleigh himself for the purpose of matching the torn glove in his possession, and, failing to do this, posted it to London, and received a similar pair by return. He posted this pair to Peggy with a brief note of apology, which, when she had read it, Peggy, for some unexplained reason, locked away in a drawer.

The note read as follows:

“Dear Miss Annersley, —

“You will, I trust, pardon me for having destroyed in a moment of abstraction the glove you dropped in my garden. I believe I have succeeded in matching it, and hope that the pair enclosed will serve as well as that which my awkwardness ruined. I apologise for my carelessness, and the consequent delay in returning your property.

    “Yours faithfully, —
    “John Musgrave.”

“But he hasn’t returned my property,” mused Peggy, with the new pair of gloves in one hand and Mr Musgrave’s note in the other. “I wonder what he has done with it?”

Chapter Fourteen

With the approach of Christmas Mr Musgrave’s quiet home took on the air of an over-populated city. A strange woman in a nurse’s uniform swelled the party in the kitchen when she was not in the nursery with the two youngest members of Mrs Sommers’ family. She was a young, nice-looking woman, and her presence, though welcomed by the other servants, was bitterly resented by Eliza. In Mrs Sommers’ nurse Eliza beheld a rival, though where rivalry came in in a field that admitted no competition it were difficult to say.

When Eliza had condescended to fill the position of housemaid in a bachelor establishment she had not allowed for this objectionable practice of family gathering. Clearly Mr Musgrave should spend Christmas in his sister’s home and not introduce an entire family into his house to the inconvenience of his servants. It was very inconsiderate.

Martha only laughed when Eliza aired her grievance. She liked family gatherings. As well cook for a dozen as for one, she declared. The same amount of trouble with a little extra labour went to the preparation of the larger meals. And Martha loved to have Miss Belle in the house, and Miss Belle’s children. Miss Belle’s husband was there also, and a responsible-looking person who, with an anglicised pronunciation, described himself as a valet. Eliza did not object so strongly to this addition, his manners being irreproachable and the tone of his conversation gentlemanly. Also he saved her trouble by carrying the hot water upstairs and performing many small duties that were not a part of his regular office. He sized Eliza up very quickly, and behaved towards her with such exemplary chivalry that he speedily won her susceptible heart, so that Eliza, with some reluctance, half relinquished the idea that she was destined to become eventually Mrs John Musgrave, in order to entertain the possibility of being selected by Fate as the wife of the gentlemanly valet. The valet, backed with the comfortable safeguard of a wife at home, did nothing to discourage the assumption. Men have not without reason won the distinction of being considered deceivers of the fair sex.

The arrival of the Sommers, and the contemporaneous arrival of a house-party at the Hall, resulted in a succession of entertainments such as Moresby had not previously known. Mrs Chadwick conceived the idea of getting up theatricals and a series of tableaux, in which the Moresby residents were invited to take part. She also got a kinema operator down and invited the entire village to view the films.

The kinema party was fixed for Boxing Night; the tableaux were to follow a dinner to be given on Christmas Eve. The villagers were not bidden to the Christmas Eve party, but the ringers were invited to go up to the Hall after ringing the chime and regale themselves on hot punch.

Moresby on the whole was pleasantly excited. Things were being done in the good old style, even to the distribution of blankets and coals and other comforts acceptable to the season, though received with a certain grudging mistrust which would appear to be the recognised spirit in which to accept charity. There is an etiquette even in the manner of accepting patronage; the recipient feels it incumbent on him to be patronising to the giver of alms in order to retain a proper sense of independence. Let no one who gives blind himself to the fact that he is receiving as well as distributing favours.

John Musgrave gave regularly at Christmas, and handsomely, to his poorer neighbours; Miss Simpson also gave; but, since she demanded gratitude, and Mr Musgrave demanded nothing, regarding his charity in the light of a duty which his more fortunate circumstances imposed, he received a more generous meed of thanks, and a less grudging acceptance of his gifts. Mr Musgrave’s bounty received his personal supervision, and was packed and ultimately delivered by his chauffeur, with Mr Musgrave’s compliments and the season’s greetings; Miss Simpson was her own almoner, and dispensed with her gifts a little timely homily on the virtues of frugality and sobriety, and the need for a humble and grateful heart. But humility – at best an objectionable virtue – has gone out of fashion, and gratitude is a plant which is not usually fostered with the care it deserves. The poor of Moresby accepted Miss Simpson’s gifts – they were glad enough to accept anything – but they ridiculed her homilies behind her back.

“I always believe in a word in season,” she informed the vicar.

“So do I,” he returned. “Only it is so difficult to recognise the season.”

Miss Simpson attended the Hall parties, not because she enjoyed them, but she could not keep away. She made unkind remarks about the Chadwicks and their doings. She was, though she would not have admitted it, jealous. She resented the coming of these people; their careless patronage of the village, which their immense wealth made so easy that it could scarcely be counted to them as a kindness; their untiring social efforts to bring Moresby and Rushleigh into contact, and to gather all sorts and conditions of men and women beneath their hospitable roof. The Chadwicks were altogether too democratic. But above and beyond everything else, the bright, gay personality of saucy Peggy Annersley proved the canker in the rose of her happiness. She suspected Peggy Annersley of having designs on Mr Musgrave, which was unjust. Peggy had designs on no one at that period in her career.

John Musgrave, despite the pressure that was brought to bear to shake his resolution, refused to take part in the theatricals or to pose in the groups for the living pictures. Mrs Chadwick asked him; Belle attempted persuasion; and Peggy coaxed unsuccessfully. Mr Musgrave was embarrassed at the mere suggestion of dressing in character and posturing before the footlights of the newly-erected stage for the edification of Moresby and the amusement of Mrs Chadwick’s guests. He was embarrassed, too, at being compelled to repeatedly refuse his persistent tormentors.

“I did so hope you would be Lancelot to my Guinevere,” Peggy said reproachfully. “And I wanted you to be Tristram and Othello to my Isolde and Desdemona. They are all lovely impersonations, and the costumes are gorgeous. You’d make a heavenly gladiator, too.”

“I should not be at home in these parts,” he said gravely.

“But,” urged Peggy, “it’s so simple. I’ll rehearse you. You’d find it awfully amusing.”

“I do not think so,” he replied.

“Then will you be Bill Sykes, with Diogenes and a revolver? – and I’ll be Nancy. You would only have to murder me. If you don’t like the lover parts you’d enjoy that.”

There was a gleam in the grey eyes that John Musgrave was unable to account for; he saw nothing funny in such a sordid scene.

“I do not like that idea any better,” he said. Then he made a sudden appeal to her generosity, his air slightly apologetic, almost, it occurred to Peggy, humble. “Please leave me out of it,” he begged. “I’m a very prosy person. These things are better suited to the younger generation. Many men will enjoy filling these parts with you; I shall enjoy looking on.”

Peggy gave in. She had not expected Mr Musgrave to agree to her proposes; she had, indeed, been guilty of teasing him. But she endeavoured with some success to make him believe in her acute disappointment, so that when he left her it was with a sense of his own ungraciousness, and a desire to make amends in any way possible for having been disobliging, if not actually discourteous, to a young lady who was, he could not but admit, both amiable and charming. The difficulty was how to make amends. After considering the matter seriously and developing and rejecting many ideas, he decided that he would be forced to remain indebted until the opportunity presented itself for discharging the obligation. He really felt extremely and quite unnecessarily grateful to Miss Annersley. There was, on the face of it, no obligation to discharge. Mr Musgrave was advancing a little way along the road of complexities that go to the making of human emotions. He had begun by feeling an interest in this young woman. Interest is a comprehensive term embodying many sentiments and capable of unforeseen developments. Peggy was undoubtedly a dangerously pretty person to become an object of interest to a middle-aged bachelor.

If Mr Musgrave thought Peggy pretty – and he did consider her pretty – on ordinary occasions, he found her amazingly lovely tricked out in stage attire, when, at the conclusion of the Christmas Eve dinner, he repaired with the other guests to the temporary theatre and viewed a succession of brilliantly arranged tableaux which, despite the fact that they were exceedingly well done and perfectly staged, he mentally pronounced a stupid form of entertainment for intelligent adults. Mummery of any kind appealed to him as undignified. Never in all his forty years had he felt the slightest temptation to play the fool; it always surprised him to see other people doing it. And this histrionic grouping was but playing the fool in serious fashion; it was a game of vanity better suited to children. But the pictures were pretty. He admitted that. Most of the guests appeared to enjoy them.

“I am afraid you are bored with this,” his host said, approaching him during an interval in the performance, having observed with the turning up of the lights Mr Musgrave’s serious expression. “Come along to the billiard-room and have a smoke.”

“I am not bored,” John Musgrave answered, as he left his seat and accompanied Will Chadwick with a willingness which seemed to discredit his assertion. “I was interested, and – and surprised.”

“Surprised,” suggested Mr Chadwick, “that people can find amusement in this sort of thing? Very little amuses most of us. I’ve seen quite brainy fellows absorbed in watching flies pitch on a lump of sugar. Their interest was sporting, and had a financial basis, certainly. In this instance it is the pleasure of the senses that is appealed to. I enjoy watching pretty women posturing myself.”

“I have no doubt it is artistic,” returned John Musgrave reflectively.

It passed through his mind that a pretty woman appeals to the senses quite as effectively in the natural poses of everyday life, but he did not voice his thoughts. The suggestion of women posturing for the enjoyment of the other sex jarred his fastidiousness. John Musgrave held women reverently in his thoughts, or, rather, he held his ideal of womanhood in reverence; he knew very little about women in reality.

There was a fair sprinkling of men in the billiard-room when they entered, who had repaired thither for their refreshment during the interval. They were smoking and drinking and criticising, with a freedom which occurred to Mr Musgrave as not in the best of taste, some of the scenes that had been staged and the persons who had taken part in them. John Musgrave found himself standing near a couple of young men from Rushleigh whom he knew very well by sight, though he was not acquainted with them. One of them was engaged in watching two men playing a hundred up; the other was eagerly talking to his inattentive companion about Peggy Annersley, whose posturing had apparently pleased his appreciative eye.

“She’s the gardener,” he was saying, and Mr Musgrave frowned with annoyance when he realised who it was the youth was discussing with such avidity. “A lady gardener – a real lady, you know.”

His friend, if he heard, showed no interest; his attention was centred in the balls. The youth jerked his arm.

“She is,” he insisted, “a real lady. I know it for a fact.”

“All right, my dear chap,” the other returned, unmoved. “I know quite a nice girl who sells shrimps.”

Mr Musgrave felt his anger rising, though why he should feel angry he did not understand. It hurt him that Peggy Annersley’s name – the young cub spoke of her as Peggy – should be bandied about in this fashion. It hurt him more that Peggy should be satisfied to dress up and posture for the delectation of these youths. When the rest of the men left the billiard-room he remained behind alone.

Chapter Fifteen

“Oh,” said Peggy Annersley, “I didn’t suppose there would be anybody here.” This was not strictly accurate, because Peggy had seen Mr Musgrave through the open door as she was passing the billiard-room and had entered on the spur of the moment to discover why he was there, and alone. Such is the bump of feminine curiosity. “Have you been here long?”

“Since the interval,” he answered, rising at her entry, and confronting her with the shame-faced air of a man caught playing truant.

“Then you missed the pictures?”

“I was present during the first half of the programme,” he explained, feeling awkward under the steady regard of the observant grey eyes. To have missed viewing the pictures he began to realise was a breach of his duty as a guest.

“And you didn’t care for them?”