Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

She nodded brightly, and left him standing in the roadway looking after her retreating figure, and from it to the shining coins lying in the horny hollow of his palm. Perhaps it was due less to the Byronic temperament than to the natural love of every loyal subject for the King’s portrait set in silver that Mrs Chadwick won from thenceforth Robert’s unshakable respect. Being a man actuated by occasional chivalrous promptings, he drank to her good health conscientiously during the following days. But from a fear of making Hannah “obstroperous” he refrained from mentioning that interview with Mrs Chadwick and its amicable finish; and, in case Hannah went through his pockets while he slept, which experience taught him was the way of wives, he put temptation out of her way by concealing the coins beneath the altar cloth in the church. Familiarity with holy things had bred an undesirable freedom in Robert’s views.

The vicar and his wife stood at the vicarage gate and waved farewell to Mr Musgrave’s guests as the car drove past. Mr Musgrave on this occasion accompanied the ladies, speeding, as Mrs Errol remarked, the departure, if he had not obeyed strictly the prescribed rules of hospitality by welcoming the coming guest.

“Well, that’s over,” she said, as the car turned the bend and disappeared from sight. She tucked her hand within her husband’s arm, and walked with him a few yards down the road. “I shall be glad when they are settled at the Hall. It will make things gayer.”

“It will certainly do that,” he agreed. “Gaiety and Mrs Chadwick are synonymous terms.”

“There is no especial virtue in gravity,” Mrs Errol returned.

“There is not,” he answered readily. “I prefer a cheerful countenance myself.”

The vicar’s road that morning taking him past Robert’s cottage, he looked in to inquire for Mrs Robert, who had been much troubled of late with mysterious pains which attacked equally mysterious parts of her anatomy. To listen to Hannah’s diagnosis of her complaints was to wonder how anyone who suffered so distressingly could continue to live, and to remain on the whole fairly active. The vicar, being accustomed to this exaggerated description of the minor ills of the flesh, was able to be sympathetic, and not unduly pessimistic in regard to the patient’s ultimate recovery. But this morning Hannah, having received a letter from her son, was less concerned with her ailments than with the epistle of Robert the younger, who, after two pages devoted to personal and intimate matters, had sent a filial exhortation to his father, in which he recommended for the latter’s careful study the sixteenth verse of the sixteenth chapter according to Saint Mark.

Robert the elder had insisted upon Hannah hunting up that particular verse in the Bible which stood in the front window, where the vicar’s eye, and the eye of the district visitor, could not fail to light upon it. The vicar’s eye had become so familiarised with this object, which looked as though it had never been displaced since first it had been put there, that he had formed a very fair estimate of its accepted value in the household. Mr Errol held no illusions concerning the piety of Robert and his wife.

Hannah, nothing loth, had found the text, and read it aloud to Robert, whose wrathful disgust had caused her quite pleasantly to forget her pains for the time. There stood the words in relentless black and white: “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Hannah performed the supererogatory task of reading the text aloud to the vicar, who endeavoured while he listened to conceal the smile that found its way to his lips.

“And what has Robert to say to that?” he asked.

Robert had had a good deal to say, but his wife did not feel it necessary to quote him verbatim.

“Robert’s mad,” she answered. “He says he’ll learn ’im. But Bob’s a good boy, sir, and terrible clever.”

“He certainly possesses a strong sense of responsibility,” the vicar allowed.

When later Mr Errol saw Robert, he was reminded of young Robert’s message by the dour look on his old sexton’s face. His expression of wrathful indignation did not convey the suggestion that the seed of his son’s counsel had fallen upon fruitful ground. Robert not only looked upset, he was most unusually taciturn. When he heard that the vicar had been to his cottage that morning he merely grunted. The grunt was expressive of many emotions, the most eloquent of which was unspeakable disgust. At the same time the consciousness of certain coins concealed beneath the altar cloth in the church caused Robert to lower his gaze before his vicar’s eyes.

“So Hannah has heard from Bob,” the vicar observed pleasantly. “Bob seems to fear you are in considerable danger, Robert.”

“’E’ll be in considerable danger if ’e comes ’ome before I’ve ’ad time to cool,” answered Robert grimly. He eyed his horny hand and the wrist muscles, developed like taut leather through long usage with the spade, and smiled darkly. “Reckon I didn’ let in to en enough when ’e were a youngster,” he remarked regretfully. “I only wish ’e were young enough for me to start in again. But I’m more’n ’is match now. Learn ’is father, will ’e? Us’ll see. Thinks ’e knows a sight more’n I do, because ’e’s got a few textes in ’is ’ead. ’Tis about all ’e ’as got there. Proud, ’e is, because ’e reads ’is Bible, which ’e ’lows other folk don’t. Neither they does; but no more didn’t ’e before ’e took up wi’ preaching.”

“Oh, come, Robert,” remonstrated the vicar, smiling. “Plenty of people read their Bibles, even in Moresby.”

“Plenty of people ’as Bibles,” Robert replied darkly. “Keeps ’em for show, they do. I knows. Folks don’t read their Bibles nowadays.”

Robert spoke of the Bible as though it were a relic of prehistoric times which, being a respectable relic, and one the possession of which brought the owner occasional benefits from those in spiritual authority, was therefore worthy of a place even in the front window; but as a book for practical use, the idea was simply a pose.

“Indeed,” the vicar insisted, “I know one or two in the parish who read their Bibles consistently. I have gone in at times and found them reading it.”

Robert eyed the speaker with a gleam in his eyes that suggested affectionate patronage, and a half-contemptuous commiseration for such blind credulity.

“They seed you coming, sir,” he said, with a shake of the head at the depths to which human duplicity will go.

The vicar gazed seriously into the quaint, sincere face of his sexton.

“Don’t you ever read your Bible, Robert?” he asked gravely.

“No, sir. Never ’ear aught of it ’cept wot you reads out in church,” Robert replied with disconcerting candour.

The Rev. Walter Errol turned away abruptly to conceal from the observant eyes regarding him whatever emotion moved him at the outspoken sincerity of this man, who had worked under him for many years in the service of the church. An honest heart is a worthy possession, and truth, no matter what laxity it reveals, is preferable to deceit.

Chapter Nine

The weeks came and passed, and the work at the Hall continued with unabated energy. Early in November everything was in readiness for the occupation of the new tenants; and with the departure of the workmen the servants arrived at the Hall, and were speedily followed by Mr and Mrs Chadwick and the pekinese.

John Musgrave, with punctilious politeness, paid his call within the week, and was admitted and ushered into the drawing-room by a responsible-looking young woman in a neat uniform, who was, Mr Musgrave supposed, Mrs Chadwick’s butler.

Mrs Chadwick, beautifully gowned, rose at his entry to receive him; a very gracious hostess, having discarded her air of bantering satire, which had so often incensed Mr Musgrave, for the easy cordiality of the woman of the world, bent on being agreeable in her own home; bent, too, on maintaining an attitude of sympathetic patience towards the idiosyncrasies of other people. John Musgrave considered her for the first time without reservation a very charming woman. Mr Chadwick, who had a greater right than anyone else to set himself up as an authority on this subject, had never considered her anything else.

Mr Chadwick was present on the occasion of John Musgrave’s call. He was a big man of indolent appearance, who preferred rather to listen than to talk, but who, when he offered an opinion, commanded naturally the respectful attention of his hearers. One felt that the man possessed a mind of his own. Although most people pride themselves on this possession, it is not given to every one to secure its recognition by others. It is usually the case that the people who insist most upon this recognition are the people who do not receive it. John Musgrave, although he had met Mr Chadwick before, had very little knowledge of the man. It surprised him now to discover in him a man he could like and feel at home with. He had been prepared for something quite different. It had even occurred to him that no man of any intelligence could take second place and allow his wife to usurp his privileges as head of the house; but when he talked with Mr Chadwick he found it necessary to modify his views to the extent of admitting that in exceptional circumstances a clever man might do this without the sacrifice of his dignity. Will Chadwick would have solved the question, had Mr Musgrave put it to him, by explaining that he regarded the individual, irrespective of sex, as being under the obligation of filling the place he or she is most fitted to fill. It was not a matter of privilege, in his opinion, but of capacity; and he never bothered about sex problems. His wife and he were companions and not rivals in their domestic relations.

When Mr Musgrave left – and he was less conventional in timing his departure than he had been in the selection of the hour and date of his call – he carried with him a very pleasant picture of the perfectly organised and harmonious home of cultured and agreeable people. There was a good deal, after all, to be said in favour of English home-life. It was regrettable that home-life was going out of fashion.

As he walked down the broad gravelled drive Mr Musgrave pondered deeply over these matters. He glanced about him upon the beautiful wooded lands surrounding the Hall, and thought how many old English homes of equal dignity were passing into the hands of wealthy strangers because their owners preferred to live in moderate comfort abroad to clinging to their birthright and all it symbolised in defiance of a meagre purse. The privilege conferred by birth, and the dignity of ancient things, were fetishes with Mr Musgrave, to whom poverty in a good old English home would have been preferable to the easy freedom of continental life. This was one of John Musgrave’s many old-fashioned ideas; and old-fashioned ideas are occasionally worthy to stand beside and sometimes even in advance of the modern trend of thought.

While thinking of these things Mr Musgrave was suddenly brought face to face with something so essentially modern that, prepared as he was for surprises in Mrs Chadwick’s household, he was nevertheless taken completely aback. The first intimation of this extreme modernity rushed upon him disconcertingly, after the manner of a noisy herald preparing the way for some one of importance, in the shape of a very ugly and extraordinarily fierce-looking bull-dog. The bull-dog sprang out upon him from behind a wall and growled ferociously, showing his teeth, which is the custom of the well-bred bull, who cannot conceal them, as Mr Musgrave knew. Mr Musgrave, who disliked dogs, was nevertheless not so utterly foolish as to raise his stick, or otherwise show the alarm he felt; but he was very greatly relieved when a sharp, clear whistle called the bull-dog off and assured him that some one, who seemingly had authority, was at hand for his protection. Then it was that, looking up to trace the whistle to its source, he was confronted with the most astonishing sight he had ever beheld.

Against the wall a long ladder leaned, and standing at the top of the ladder doing something apparently to a climbing rose-bush – or, to be exact, not doing anything to the climbing rose-bush at that moment, but looking down at himself – was a young woman. For a second John Musgrave thought it was a boy; during the next second it dawned upon his startled intelligence that this was no boy, but an exceedingly well-grown young woman – a young woman in male attire; that is to say, while the upper part of her was clothed in quite feminine fashion, the lower half – John Musgrave blushed as he grasped the horrible reality – was garbed in a man’s overalls, a serviceable pair of loose-fitting blue trousers, buckled in at the waist with a workmanlike belt, in which was thrust pruning-knife, hammer, and other things necessary to a gardener at the top of a long ladder with no mate at the foot.

“It is all right; he is quite gentle,” the girl called down the ladder reassuringly to the astonished, upturned face of Mr Musgrave.

She was, Mr Musgrave could not fail to observe, a very pretty girl, and she looked unquestionably well in the immodest get-up. Her hair, which was uncovered, was brown, and broke into curls at her temples; and a pair of smiling, darkly grey eyes gazed down at him amiably, with serene indifference to her embarrassing attire. Mr Musgrave imagined this male attire must be even more embarrassing to its wearer than it was to him to behold, in which he was quite mistaken. The girl was beautifully unconscious of anything in her appearance to attract comment. She wore trousers for use; and the serviceability of a thing explains and justifies its existence.

Since the person who addressed him was a woman, natural instinct suggested to Mr Musgrave the raising of his hat; but the sight of those objectionable overalls decided him that the courtesy was uncalled for; then, meeting the grey eyes fully, natural instinct prevailed with him.

The top of a ladder is not a comfortable place for social amenities, and the young person in the overalls had a long nail between her lips, which she had removed in order to call out her reassurance and had since replaced; she inclined her head nevertheless.

“That Moresby,” murmured the owner of the grey eyes, as they followed Mr Musgrave’s retreat. “Moresby does not like two-legged females; it prefers the skirt, and cherishes the fond delusion that the feet are attached quite decorously somewhere to the hem.”

Then she returned to her work, and dismissed Mr Musgrave from her thoughts. The head gardener at the Hall had something else to do besides occupying her mind with idle speculations.

Mr Musgrave passed out through the lodge gates feeling inexpressibly shocked. He knew, because she herself had told him when unfolding some of her schemes, that it was Mrs Chadwick’s practice to employ female labour whenever possible. In that respect, although it was unusual – for which reason alone it did not appeal to him as desirable – she was, he allowed, experimenting in a perfectly legitimate manner; but he could not see the necessity for the substitution of male attire. Because a young woman was employed in an unwomanly capacity it was no argument that she should further unsex herself by encroaching on the right of man to this very proper assertion of being, as the young woman would have expressed it, a biped. But Mr Musgrave in his very natural prejudice overlooked two essential points: that clothes in the first instance are worn for decency and comfort; and that the fashion of them has been decided with regard to utility and convenience, rather than the important question of sex. Plainly a skirt is neither useful nor convenient for climbing ladders in; it is also highly dangerous. Mr Musgrave might have argued: why climb ladders? To which the grey-eyed girl would have replied: because thereby she could earn a living in a perfectly honest and agreeable manner by following the occupation which most interested her, and in which she was undoubtedly skilled. Also the climbing of ladders is quite as simple to many women as it is to the average man. It is a matter of balance. Some people enjoy climbing, just as others prefer going down-hill, and the more equable natures, like Mr Musgrave, have a predilection for a flat road.

But – Mr Musgrave blushed again as he recalled a mental picture of the girl in the overalls – she was such a pretty girl. She looked the kind of girl one places instinctively in a refined home, engaged in the ladylike occupation of painting flowers on satin, or working at plain sewing for the poor. Mr Musgrave’s idea of a suitable setting would not have raised a pang of regret in the contented breast of the head gardener. She would not have vacated her position at the top of the ladder for the most elegant drawing-room, nor have relinquished her pruning-scissors in favour of the daintiest satin-work in the world. She, like Mr Chadwick, believed in the individual doing what she was best fitted to do. And gardening was her “job.”

It is a noteworthy fact that had the head gardener been plain and middle-aged her unsuitable occupation and unseemly attire would not have worried John Musgrave to the extent that it did. He would have dismissed the matter from his thoughts as simply objectionable, and therefore not to be dwelt on; but the youth of this girl and the beauty of her aroused his sympathies. The clear grey eyes were responsible for this. Chivalry in the male breast, even when that, breast belongs to a middle-aged bachelor, is an emotion which, contrary to all right principles, responds most readily to the curve of young lips and the call to laughter from bright eyes.

Chapter Ten

The residents of Moresby – by which is usually understood not the bulk of the community, but that select portion which gathers in the drawing-rooms and about the tables of its social equals – were moved to a mild and almost pained surprise at being hospitably bidden to dine at the Hall within a month of the Chadwicks’ arrival. This was, Moresby recognised with chill ingratitude, a grave breach of social etiquette. Plainly it was the duty of Moresby to show hospitality to the new-comers and then accept in return whatever the Hall saw fit to offer in acknowledgment of its welcome.

But Mrs Chadwick, who needed no precedent in anything she wished to do, was not prepared to wait on Moresby hospitality, which, she rightly guessed, would be slow in asserting itself. She wanted to gather her new neighbours together, and she did not mind in the least whether or no they invited her back to their houses. As soon, therefore, as they had called and she had returned the calls, she asked them to dine; and despite the general feeling of perturbed wonder which this unexpected invitation occasioned, no one – their numbers were but four, because Moresby had its limitations – declined.

Thus it came about that on a certain cold December night John Musgrave foregathered with his neighbours and one or two people from Rushleigh in the great drawing-room at the Hall, where, as a young man in the old squire’s time, he had been wont to attend functions of a similar nature, more formal and dull perhaps, as suited the day and prestige of the entertainer, but certainly not more splendid nor more kindly in tone.

It was so long since John Musgrave had taken part in any entertainment other than an informal supper at the vicarage or an equally quiet home-dinner, that he felt rather bewildered as he looked about him on this assemblage of, for the greater part, familiar faces rendered unfamiliar by reason of an unwonted magnificence of attire. Even little Mrs Errol was gowned with unusual elegance. As Mr Musgrave’s eyes fell upon her he was conscious for the first time that she was a very pretty woman. He had not thought of her as pretty before; he had merely considered her womanly. It was possible, he realised, to be womanly and pretty at the same time. Her dress was eminently becoming.