Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

Martha smiled drily.

“I wonder you don’t give notice,” she said.

“Notice!” sniffed Eliza. “And go to a new place with a two months’ reference! I had a nine-months’ character when I came here.”

Martha, whose service numbered twenty-two years, looked her contempt.

“You might just as well have said nine weeks,” she retorted. “Girls don’t seem able to keep their places nowadays. I don’t think much of a reference that doesn’t run over the year.”

Eliza returned to the dining-room, where her assistant was engaged in laying the table, and aired her grievances anew in Ellen’s more sympathetic ears. Ellen, being in a subordinate position, was forced into the awkward predicament of being obliged to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare. She stood in awe of Eliza, and did her utmost to propitiate her; therefore, upon Eliza’s reiterated complaint that her legs were giving under her, she redoubled her own energies, and did more than her share of the work. But not being a qualified parlourmaid, which Eliza, with a disregard for exactness, professed to be, she could not relieve her superior of the agreeable task of waiting at table, though she performed all the intermediate duties between kitchen and dining-room while the dinner was in progress, and was greatly interested in and impressed with the splendour of Mrs Chadwick, if somewhat disconcerted by this, her first, view of ladies dining in evening dress.

The elegance of the ladies, and the imposing spectacle of Mr Musgrave’s shirt front, filled her with wondering admiration; while the gay, careless chatter of the strangers, and Mr Errol’s easy and amusing talk, caused her to forget at times that she was present in the capacity of servitor, and not an interested spectator of a new kind of kinema.

Eliza’s deportment in its aloof detachment was admirable; the merriest sally of wit was lost upon her, and Mrs Chadwick’s surprising knack of telling daring stories elicited no more than a disapproving sniff. Eliza was as wonderful in her way as the guests, in Ellen’s opinion.

The enjoyment ended for Ellen with the placing of the dessert on the table, and the closing of the dining-room door but she carried the wonder of all she had heard and seen to the kitchen, and there related it for the benefit of Martha and Mr King, who had looked in with a view to dining late himself. Eliza, collapsed in an arm-chair, pronounced herself too weary to eat.

The enjoyment for Mr Musgrave began where it should have ended, with the departure of the ladies from the dining-room. He closed the door upon them with formal politeness, and then returned to his seat with an air as collapsed as Eliza’s, and lighted himself a cigar. The vicar, lighting a cigar also, looked across at him, and smiled.

“She will certainly,” he said, “wake Moresby up.”

John Musgrave took the cigar from his mouth, and examined the lighted end thoughtfully, a frown contracting his brow as though the sight of a cigar annoyed him. Since he was in reality addicted to cigar smoking, the frown was probably induced by his reflections.

“I am not in sympathy with advanced women,” he remarked, after a pause. “A woman should be womanly.”

He frowned again, and regarded the vicar through the chrysanthemums decorating the centre of the table.

“She smokes,” he said presently, and added, after a moment – “so does Belle. Belle used not to do these things. She is much too nice a woman to have a cigarette stuck between her lips.”

Walter Errol took the cigar from between his own lips, waved the cloud of smoke aside, and laughed.

“John,” he said, “what fools we men are!”

Mr Musgrave stared.

“I don’t follow you,” he remarked coldly.

“It’s all prejudice, old fellow,” said the vicar pleasantly. “If there were any real evil in it, should you and I be doing it?”

“You wouldn’t have women do the things men do, would you?” demanded his host.

“Why not?”

John Musgrave fingered the stem of a wineglass, and appeared for the moment at a loss for a suitable reply. Failing to find any logical answer to this perfectly simple question, he said:

“I don’t like to see women adopting men’s habits. It’s unnatural. It – it loses them our respect.”

“That, I take it,” the vicar returned seriously, “depends less on what they do than the spirit in which they do it. I could not, for instance, lose my respect for Mrs Sommers if I saw her smoking a pipe.”

John Musgrave gasped. Such a possibility was beyond his thinking.

“Would you care to see your own wife smoke?” he asked.

“If she wanted to, certainly,” Mr Errol replied without hesitation. “She hasn’t started it yet. But it would not disconcert me if she did. We live in a progressive age.”

“I doubt whether smoking comes under the heading of progress,” Mr Musgrave returned drily.

Walter Errol looked amused.

“Only in the sense, of wearing down a prejudice,” he replied. “We are old-fashioned folk in Moresby, John. We are hedged about with prejudices; and to us a perfectly harmless pleasure appears undesirable because it is an innovation. Human nature is conservative; it takes unkindly to change. But each generation has to reconcile itself to the changes introduced by the next. One has to move with the times, or be left behind and out of sympathy with one’s world. The world won’t put back to wait for us.”

“Then I prefer,” John Musgrave answered, “to remain out of sympathy.”

The vicar was abruptly reminded of this conversation with his host when later they rejoined the ladies. The atmosphere of John Musgrave’s drawing-room struck foreign. It was a rule of Mr Musgrave never to smoke there. There were other rooms in a house in which a man could smoke, he asserted; the drawing-room was the woman’s sanctum, and should be kept free from the objectionable fumes. Although there was no longer a woman to occupy Mr Musgrave’s drawing-room, he adhered to his rule strictly, because adhering to rule was his practice, and men of John Musgrave’s temperament do not change the habit of a lifetime merely on account of the removal of the reason for a stricture. But unmistakably on this particular night the rule had been violated; the fragrance of cigarette smoke lingered in the air, and on a small table beside Mrs Chadwick’s coffee-cup an ash-tray, containing a partially smoked cigarette, confessed unblushingly that Mrs Chadwick had been enjoying her after-dinner smoke. On a cushion beside Mrs Chadwick, who was seated on the sofa, reposed the pampered pekinese, the presence of which both Eliza and her master resented equally.

John Musgrave gravely ignored both these objectionable novelties, and, crossing the room in his deliberate fashion, seated himself beside Mrs Errol, as a man adrift in uncongenial surroundings seeks refuge in the society of one upon whom the mantle of respectability still rested, and who embodied for him safe and familiar things.

Walter Errol shared the sofa with the pekinese and the pekinese’s mistress, and smoothed the little creature’s silken coat while he chatted with its owner and Mrs Sommers, who, a devoted admirer of the vicar’s, sat on the other side of him.

“I’ve been hearing such a lot about the parish from your wife,” Mrs Chadwick said. “I’m quite charmed with the place. I have always longed to find a spot that has been passed over by time, so that I could bring it up to date in a hurry. It takes the people’s breath away at first; but they grow to like it – like riding on a switchback and standing on a moving staircase. When one learns to balance one’s self these things are delightful.”

“I can well believe it,” the vicar answered, and wondered whether she suspected that she had already succeeded in taking away the breath of one of Moresby’s inhabitants. “But I doubt whether you will find us exactly grateful.”

She looked him directly in the eyes and smiled. She was, he observed, a very handsome woman, and her smile was radiant.

“I never look for gratitude,” she answered; “it is a waste of time. And why should people be grateful? Whatever we do, even though it be ostensibly for the benefit of others, we do in a measure for ourselves. Therefore there is no sufficient ground for gratitude. I shall simply love modernising Moresby. Modernising is one of my cranks. The improvement of women’s economic position is another. I don’t employ any men servants, except for the rough and hard work. I have a woman butler, women chauffeurs, women gardeners – head gardeners; they have lads under them. And their wages are at the same rate as men’s wages. It works admirably. You must come and inspect every department when we are settled in. And if you can help with any ideas I shall be grateful.”

“So you permit yourself the grace of gratitude?” he said, smiling.

“Oh, that’s a figure of speech, of course. I hope you will be kind to me, and let me poke about the schools, and interfere generally?”

“If that is a kindness, you can count on it,” he said. “I shall be grateful for ideas too. I’ve grown behind the times with the rest.”

“You humbug!” remarked Mrs Sommers with a laugh. “He is the only progressive person in Moresby,” she added, turning to Mrs Chadwick, who was watching the vicar’s caressing hand as it played with her dog’s ears. “You’ll find he will possibly think ahead of you. Where you will need to start – and I very much doubt whether you will get beyond the starting-point – is with my brother, John. Modernise him, my dear, and I will believe in woman’s power.”

Mrs Chadwick glanced towards John Musgrave, seated erect in his chair, conversing seriously with the vicar’s bored little wife; then her eyes wandered back to Belle’s face and rested there affectionately.

“You have set me something of a task,” she said. “But I am going to attempt it.”

Walter Errol laughed softly.

“Since I possess already unshakable faith in your sex,” he said, “I predict enormous changes. ‘Ce n’est pas une simple émeute, c’est un révolution.’”

Chapter Five

Mrs Chadwick’s purpose in coming to Moresby was not concerned only, or even chiefly, with the interior decoration of the Hall, which was kept, as far as the squire’s means permitted, in very good order both inside and out. There was a certain amount of work to be done, and Mrs Chadwick purposed having a voice in this, as in other things; but her presence was more concerned with the home farm than with the palatial residence she intended to occupy. The home farm came within the range of her scheme for the development of women’s energies.

For several generations this farm had been worked on conservative lines by tenants who from father to son had succeeded to the place in unbroken succession, after the manner, indeed, of the family at the Hall. Though merely tenants, they had looked upon the farm as their rightful inheritance, quite as if it had been entailed property of their own. That anyone should seek to dispossess them would never have occurred to them in the light of possibility. But the present fanner was a bad tenant, and the farm was going to ruin. With the expiration of his lease had come the order for his eviction.