Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“When you married Hannah were you done for?” the vicar inquired.

“Yes, sir, I were,” Robert answered with sour conviction.

It passed through Walter Errol’s mind to wonder whether the non-success of Robert’s marital relations was due solely to Hannah’s fault.

“How came you to marry Hannah?” he asked.

“Did I never tell you ’ow that came about?” Robert said. “I didn’ go wi’ Hannah, not first along. I went wi’ a young woman from Cross-ways. Me an’ ’er had been walking out for a goodish while when ’er says to me one night, ‘Will ’ee come in a-Toosday?’ I says, ‘Yes, I will.’ Well, sir, you never seed rain like it rained that Toosday. I wasn’t goin’ to get into my best clothes to go out there an’ get soaked to the skin in; so I brushed myself up as I was, an’ changed my boots; an’ when I got out ’er turned up ’er nose at me. So I went straight off an’ took up with Hannah.”

“I think,” observed the vicar, “that you were a little hasty.”

“I’ve thought so since, sir,” Robert admitted. “The mistake I made was in ’avin’ further truck wi’ any of them. Leave the wimmin alone, I says, if you want to be comfortable. A man when ’e marries is done for.”

Walter Errol, having finished disrobing, took his soft hat and went out to the motor, which had returned from the Hall to fetch him, and was driven swiftly to the scene of the festivities, the joyous pealing of the bells sounding harmoniously in the lazy stillness of the summer day. Past John Musgrave’s home the motor bore him; past Miss Simpson’s comfortable house, where the blinds were jealously lowered as though a funeral, instead of a wedding, were in progress. And, indeed, for the Moresby spinster the chiming of the marriage-peal was as the funeral knell ringing the last rites over the grave of her dead hopes. Miss Simpson was the only person in Moresby who sympathised with the sexton’s opinion that John Musgrave was done for.

At the Hall only the immediate members of both families were present, with the exception of the vicar and his wife. John Musgrave had stipulated for a quiet wedding. Very proud and happy he looked as, with his wife beside him, he greeted his oldest friend; and the vicar, with an affectionate hand on his shoulder, exclaimed:

“It isn’t Coelebs any longer, John. You were a wise man and waited patiently for the right woman.”

“I hope I shall prove to be the right woman, John,” Peggy whispered, drawing more closely to him as the vicar passed on, and looking up in her husband’s face with wide, diffident grey eyes, eyes that were wells of happiness, despite their anxious questioning.

“My only doubt,” John Musgrave answered gently, “is whether I shall prove worthy of your love, my wife.”

The End