Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

Robert looked uncomfortable. He wished she had not reminded him of the return journey. He felt far from happy when he thought of it; far from confident that he dared pass the spot again. He had it in his mind to invite the sympathetic parlourmaid to accompany him.

“Are you quite sure it was a ghost?” Peggy asked suddenly. “I don’t see how a misty sort of thing could knock anyone down. Wasn’t it, perhaps, a dog?”

Robert felt offended, and showed it.

“I reckon I knows a dog when I sees one,” he replied with dignity, “an’ I reckon I knows a ghost. Hannah always allows she seen the ghost in the elm avenue, and it was in the avenue as I seed it. Big, it was – big as a elephant, and misty like. There was two of ’em.”

“Two?” said Peggy, with a questioning intonation. “That’s strange, Robert, because there are supposed to be two ghosts – a lady and a dog. Are you quite sure there wasn’t a dog, after all?”

“There mid ’a’ been a dog,” Robert conceded reluctantly. “But it warn’t like a human dog, nohow. Its eyes was like flames, an’ it didn’ seem to ’ave any legs, seemed to move wi’out touching of the ground. Why not come an’ see for yourself?” he suggested cunningly, “if you don’t believe me. I’ll take care of ’ee.”

Peggy looked thoughtfully at the trembling sexton and appeared to deliberate. It was plain to her that Robert was badly shaken, that his nerve was not equal to the strain of making the return journey alone. She was shrewd enough to penetrate his design in suggesting that she should accompany him, and being of a naturally kindly disposition she fell in with the idea, the more readily because, since reading the note, she was anxious to meet Robert’s ghost, and secure it.

“I don’t disbelieve you,” she returned. “But I should like to see for myself. I should never feel afraid with you.”

So subtle was this flattery and so seemingly sincere, that Robert unconsciously assumed the courageous bearing expected of him; and, when Miss Annersley led him out through a side door into the grounds, he drew himself up and expanded his chest, and bade her keep close to him and he would see she came to no harm. Peggy laughed softly as she drew nearer to him, and the contact of the tall slender figure afforded Robert that comfortable sense of human companionship which helps to minimise the unknown terrors of the dark, even a darkness peopled with misty apparitions. He began to believe quite firmly in his intrepidity.

At the entrance to the avenue they encountered Mr Chadwick; and for a moment it seemed as though Robert’s vaunted courage would desert him, as Diogenes bounded forward out of the gloom and sprang excitedly upon Peggy, greeting her with an effusiveness which, with her uncle looking on, Peggy found secretly embarrassing.

“Is this your ghost?” she asked, glancing up at Robert, while she attempted to restrain the dog, which, in the first moments of joyful recognition, was an impossibility. “I begin to believe we are about to solve the mystery.”

Robert drew his squat figure up to its full height, which was insignificant enough, and eyed her with contemptuous disapproval.

“Be that hanimal as big as a elephant?” he asked. “Be ’e misty like? Would you say, now, that ’e could move wi’out walking, or that ’e shot flames from his eyes? Would you, now?”

“No,” Peggy answered. “I don’t think he tallies with that description.”

“Then ’ow can thicky be wot I seed?”

“True,” she mused. “Plainly it wasn’t Diogenes. We’ll walk on, I think, and look for your ghost.”

Peggy was anxious to walk on. Mr Chadwick was advancing towards them and she was not prepared just then for an encounter. She waved a hand to him.

“I am going to the gate with Robert,” she called to him, “to look for spooks. You can come to meet me, to see that I am not carried away on a broomstick.”

Robert did not approve of the levity of her manner. He felt, indeed, so resentful as he hurried along the avenue at her side, with Diogenes in attendance, that he was doubly relieved when they reached the lodge gates without any further supernatural visitation, the absence of which he attributed, he informed her, to the presence of the dog. But the transfer of half a crown from Peggy’s slim hand to Robert’s horny palm softened his resentment sufficiently to allow him to wish her a friendly good-night, and to further express the hope that “nothing dreadful” met her on the way back.

Nothing more dreadful than Mr Chadwick awaited her in the elm avenue; but Peggy at the moment would almost as soon have encountered a ghost as her uncle; a ghost, at least, would not have asked awkward questions.

“What did Robert want?” Mr Chadwick inquired.

“He came with a message – for me.”

“What about?”

“A private message,” Peggy replied.

“Oh?” he said. He threw away his cigar and linked an arm within Peggy’s. “I thought he might have come to fetch Musgrave’s dog. That animal seems pretty much at home here.”

“Y-es,” Peggy returned dubiously.

“I wonder if Musgrave would be inclined to sell him. I’ve half a mind to ask him.”

“Oh, please don’t do that!” Peggy said quickly.

“Why not?”

“I think – he wouldn’t like it. He is so fond of the dog.”

Will Chadwick laughed, and since his niece did not express any curiosity as to the cause of his amusement, he did not explain it. But he wondered why, when they changed the colour of Diogenes’ coat, they had not taken the precaution to buy him a new collar. He had been interested that evening in inspecting the collar and reading his own name and address inscribed thereon.

Chapter Twenty Nine

When Mr Musgrave entered the yard on the following morning, from force of habit rather than in the expectation of finding Diogenes there, it was to discover Diogenes in his kennel, for all the world as though he had never absented himself in the interval.

Diogenes’ welcome of Mr Musgrave was almost as effusive as his greeting of Peggy on the previous evening; he was beginning to realise his position as a dog with two homes and a divided allegiance. Doubtless were he received back at the Hall he would on occasion find his way to Mr Musgrave’s home as a matter of course. There were many things in Mr Musgrave’s home that Diogenes approved of. He approved of Martha’s attentions in the matter of table delicacies, and he appreciated the thick skin rug before the fire in Mr Musgrave’s drawing-room; but the kennel and the chain were indignities against which he felt constrained to protest.

Mr Musgrave unfastened the chain and took Diogenes for his walk, an attention which Diogenes did not merit, but Mr Musgrave felt so ridiculously pleased to see him again that he forgave the overnight defection, as he had forgiven the smashing of his dinner-service; he simply ignored it.

In view of this magnanimous treatment it was distinctly ungracious of Diogenes to repeat his truant performance within a fortnight of his previous escapade; yet repeat it he did, as soon as by his docile behaviour he had allayed Mr Musgrave’s doubts of him so far as to lead to a decrease of vigilance, and a greater laxity in the matter of open doors.

Diogenes broke bounds again at about the same hour on a balmy evening in June; and Mr Musgrave hastened as before to the vicarage with a second note to be entrusted to the handy sexton. But here a check awaited him. Robert, on being appealed to by the vicar, stoutly refused to go to the Hall on any business after dusk.

“Not if you was to offer me a hund’ed pounds, sir,” he affirmed earnestly. “I wouldn’ go up thicky avenue in the dimpsy again, not for a thousand – no, I wouldn’. Leave it bide till the mornin’ an’ I’ll take it.”

Mr Errol returned to John Musgrave with the tale of his non-success.

“I daresay I could find someone else to take it, John,” he said, with a whimsical smile. “But my reputation is likely to suffer, unless you sanction the note being delivered at the door, instead of into Miss Annersley’s own hand. That stipulation is highly compromising.”

Mr Musgrave flushed.

“I am afraid I didn’t think of that,” he said, and took the note from the vicar and tore it in half. “I am glad you mentioned it. It is not fair, either, to Miss Annersley.”

“What is to be done now?” the vicar said.

“I will,” returned Mr Musgrave quietly, “go to the Hall myself, and bring Diogenes back.”

“Well, I rather wonder you didn’t do that before.”

Mr Musgrave wondered also. The idea had not, as a matter of fact, presented itself to him until the delicacy of entrusting the mission to a third person had been pointed out. Now that it had presented itself it occurred to him not only as the proper course to pursue, but the more agreeable. He therefore scattered the fragments of his note to the winds of heaven, and set forth on his walk to the Hall.

It was dusk when he started; when he arrived at the gates and passed through, the dusk appeared to deepen perceptibly, and as he pursued his way, as Robert had done, along the avenue beneath the green archway of interlacing boughs, it seemed to him that night descended abruptly and dispersed the last lingering gleams of departing day.

Mr Musgrave was not superstitious, and his thoughts, unlike his footsteps, did not follow in the direction which Robert’s had taken. Nothing was farther from his mind at the moment than ghosts; therefore when an ungainly-looking object pounded towards him in the gloom, instead of his imagination playing him tricks, he recognised immediately the clumsy, familiar figure of Diogenes, even before Diogenes rushed at him with a joyous bark of welcome. Mr Musgrave’s thought on the spur of the moment was to secure Diogenes and take him home; but, as though suspicious of his motives in grabbing at his collar, Diogenes broke away from the controlling hand, and dived hastily for cover, making for some bushes of rhododendrons, into which Mr Musgrave plunged recklessly in pursuit, so intent on the capture of his elusive trust that he failed to note the figure of a man, which, bearing in sight as he broke into the bushes, hurried forward in hot pursuit, and, following close upon his heels, seized him with a pair of strong arms and dragged him, choking and amazed, into the open path.

“Musgrave!” said Mr Chadwick. He released Mr Musgrave’s collar, and stood back and stared at his captive. “What, in the name of fortune, are you up to?”

Mr Musgrave inserted two fingers inside his collar, felt his throat tenderly, and coughed.

“You need not have been so rough,” he complained.

“Upon my word, I mistook you for a tramp,” Mr Chadwick explained, laughing. “What on earth were you playing hide-and-seek in the bushes for? I begin to believe this path must be bewitched, by the extraordinary manner in which people using it behave. Have you been seeing ghosts too?”

“I saw my dog,” Mr Musgrave explained with dignity. “I was following him.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Well, you had better come on to the house. I expect we shall find Diogenes there. He was, before you arrived, taking a stroll with me. Seems to be pretty much at home here. Why can’t you keep him at your place?”

“He is – ” Mr Musgrave coughed again, as though his throat still troubled him – “very much attached to Miss Annersley.”

“Rather sudden in his attachments, isn’t he?” Mr Chadwick suggested.

“Miss Annersley takes considerable notice of him,” Mr Musgrave replied. “I have been thinking that, subject to your permission, I would like to make her a present of the dog.”

“I am at least gratified to find that you realise I have a right to a say in the matter,” Diogenes’ lawful owner remarked with irony. “I should like to ask you a question, Musgrave. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, should you say that constituted the right to give away what doesn’t, in the strict sense of the word, belong to you?”

Mr Musgrave, experiencing further difficulty with his throat, was thereby prevented from replying to this question. His interlocutor tapped him lightly on the chest.

“There is another inquiry I would like to put while we are on the subject,” he said. “Don’t you think you might offer to pay for the collar?”

John Musgrave regained his voice and his composure at the same time.

“No,” he said; “I don’t. If there has been any ill-practice over this transaction, my conscience at least is clear.”

Abruptly Will Chadwick put out a hand and grasped the speaker’s.

“Come along to the house,” he said, “and make your offering to Peggy.”

When they were within full view of the house Mr Musgrave became suddenly aware of two significant facts; these, in their order, being the presence of Peggy walking on the terrace companioned by Diogenes, and the disturbing knowledge that the sight of her pacing leisurely among the shadows beyond the lighted windows filled him with a strange, almost overwhelming shyness, an emotion at once so unaccountable and so impossible to subdue that, had it not been for the restraining influence of Mr Chadwick’s presence at his elbow, he would in all probability have beaten a retreat.

Arrived below the terrace he halted, and Peggy, having advanced to meet them as they approached, leaned down over the low stone parapet and gave him her hand.

“You!” she said softly.

This greeting struck Mr Chadwick as peculiar. He was conscious of an immense curiosity to hear Mr Musgrave’s response; he was also conscious of feeling de trop. Plainly he and Diogenes had no place in this conspiracy. They had both been hoodwinked.

“You must not blame me,” Mr Musgrave said. “It is Diogenes who has given us away. I fear the secret is out.”

“You don’t flatter my intelligence,” Mr Chadwick interposed, “by suggesting there was any secret to come out. If it hadn’t been for implicating my niece I would have run you in for dog-stealing. A fine figure you’d cut in court, Musgrave.”

Peggy laughed quietly.

“Don’t take any notice of uncle, Mr Musgrave,” she said. “He is really obliged to you. So am I,” she added, and the grey eyes, looking straight into John Musgrave’s, were very kind. “Come up here and talk to me,” she said.

John Musgrave ascended the steps, and, since the invitation had not seemed to include himself, Mr Chadwick turned on his heel and continued the stroll which Mr Musgrave’s arrival had interrupted. Peggy and John Musgrave paced the terrace slowly side by side; and Mrs Chadwick, reading a novel in solitary enjoyment in the drawing-room, listened to the low hum of their voices as they passed and re-passed the windows, and wondered between the diversion of her story who Peggy was talking with.

“You came to fetch Diogenes?” Peggy said.

“Not altogether,” Mr Musgrave replied. “I wanted… to see you… You haven’t been down for some days.”

“No,” Peggy admitted, and blushed in the darkness.

“Why?” he asked.

The blush deepened. Had it been light enough to see her face Mr Musgrave must have observed how shy she looked at his question. Since it was impossible to explain that those visits, once so light-heartedly made to Diogenes in Mr Musgrave’s stable-yard, had become an embarrassment for reasons too subtle to analyse, she remained silent, in her self-conscious agitation playing with a rose in her belt with nervous, inconsequent fingers.

“I believe,” Mr Musgrave continued, “that Diogenes has felt neglected.”

“He is forgiving,” she answered. “He came to find me.”

John Musgrave looked at her steadily.

“Do you think it is altogether kind – to Diogenes,” he asked, “to stay away so long? Don’t you think that perhaps he misses you – badly?”

Peggy smiled faintly.

“I think it is better he should forget,” she replied.

“It isn’t always possible to forget,” he returned slowly. “I am so sure he will never forget that I am glad our secret is exposed. I am going to return you your pet, Miss Annersley.”

Peggy turned to him quickly in protest, and put out a small hand and laid it on his sleeve.

“No,” she cried, “no. You have more right to him than anyone. You are fond of him too. You must keep him. I want you to keep him.”

John Musgrave looked at the hand on his sleeve. He had seen it there once before, and the sight of it had caused him embarrassment. It did not cause him embarrassment now; he enjoyed the feel of the slight pressure on his arm. Suddenly, without pausing to consider, he put his own hand over it, and kept it there.

“I want you to have him, and I want to keep him too,” he said. “How are we going to get over that?”

Peggy laughed nervously.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t see how that can be.”

“I hoped you would see,” he returned gravely, and halted and imprisoned her other hand, and stood facing her. “There is a way, if only I wasn’t so old and dull for your bright youth.” He released her hands gently. “I suppose you are right, and it isn’t possible.”

“You don’t appear old or dull to me,” she said softly. “I – didn’t mean that.”

He went closer to her and remained gazing earnestly into the downcast face, his own tense features and motionless pose not more still than the girl’s, as she waited quietly in the silent dusk with a heart which thumped so violently that it seemed to her he must hear its rapid beat.

“It appears to me preposterous,” he said, in a voice which held a ring of wonder in its tones, “that I, so much older than you, so unsuited in every sense, should find the courage to tell you how greatly I love you. It is scarcely to be expected that you can care for me sufficiently to allow me any hope… And yet… Miss Annersley, am I too presumptuous?”

“No,” Peggy whispered. She slipped a hand shyly into his and laughed softly. “I think you have discovered the best way of settling the ownership of our dog,” she said.

“I am not thinking of the dog,” he answered, bending over her.

“I wasn’t thinking of the dog either,” she replied.

With her hand still in John Musgrave’s she walked to the parapet and sat down. Mr Musgrave seated himself beside her, and, gaining courage from the contact of the warm hand lying so confidingly in his own, he felt emboldened to proceed with his avowal of love.

“My feeling for you, Miss Annersley, is as unchangeable as it is deep. It has developed so imperceptibly that, until you went away, and I realised how greatly I missed you, what a blank in my days your absence made, I never suspected how dear you were becoming to me. When I suspected it I was distressed, because it seemed to me incredible that you, young and beautiful and so greatly admired, could ever entertain for me any kinder feeling than that of friendship. I can scarcely believe even now that you feel more than friendship for me. I must appear old to you, and my ideas are old-fashioned, and, I begin to see now, intolerant.”

“Not intolerant,” Peggy corrected. “If I wasn’t confident that your heart is so kind, and your sympathies so wide, that it will be as easy for you to give and take as for me to meet you in this respect, I should be afraid to risk the happiness of both our futures. But I haven’t any fears at all. I think I have loved you from the moment when you met me weeping in the road, and took charge of Diogenes.”

“That,” he said a little doubtfully, “is gratitude.”

She shook her head.

“No,” she insisted, “it is something more enduring than that.”

At which interesting point in the discussion, to John Musgrave’s annoyance, a shrill scream penetrated the stillness, and Mrs Chadwick’s voice was heard exclaiming in accents of astonishment and delight:

“Oh, Diogenes, Diogenes, dear old fellow!.. Wherever did you come from? And how did you get your coat in that horrible mess?”

Diogenes, finding it slow on the terrace, had sauntered into the drawing-room and discovered himself to Mrs Chadwick.

Peggy glanced swiftly into the face of the man beside her and laughed happily, and John Musgrave, finding to his vast amazement the laughing face held firmly between his two hands, bent his head suddenly and kissed the curving lips.

It is possible that could he have looked back into the days before he knew Peggy he would have failed to recognise as himself the man who, in response to the vicar’s assertion that occasionally people married for love, had made the shocked ejaculation: “Do they, indeed?” John Musgrave was learning.

Chapter Thirty

The Rev. Walter Errol, removing, his surplice in the little vestry at the finish of one of the simplest and most pleasing ceremonies at which he had ever been required to officiate, looked forth through the mullioned window to watch his oldest and best-loved friend passing along the gravelled path in the sunlight with his bride upon his arm.

The sight of John Musgrave married gave him greater satisfaction than anything that had befallen since his own happy marriage-day. The one thing lacking to make his friend the most lovable of men was supplied in the newly-made contract which bound him for good and ill to the woman at his side. There would be, in the vicar’s opinion, so much of good in the union that ill would be crowded out and find no place in the lives of this well-assorted pair, who, during the brief period of their engagement, had practised so successfully that deference to each other’s opinions which smooths away difficulties and prevents a dissimilarity in ideas from approaching disagreement. The future happiness of Mr and Mrs John Musgrave was based on the sure foundation of mutual respect.

While the vicar stood at the window, arrested in the business of disrobing by the engrossment of his thoughts, Robert, having finished rolling up the red carpet in the aisle, entered the vestry and approached the window and stood, as he so often did, at the vicar’s elbow, and gazed also after the newly-married couple, a frown knitting his heavy brows, and, notwithstanding the handsome fee in his pocket, an expression of most unmistakable contempt in his eyes as they rested upon the bridegroom.

“They be done for, sir,” he said, with a gloomy jerk of the head in the direction of the vanishing pair.

The vicar turned his face towards the speaker, the old whimsical smile lighting his features.

“Not done for, Robert. They are just beginning life,” he said.

“They be done for,” Robert persisted obstinately, and stared at the open register which John Musgrave and his wife had signed. “Ay, they be done for.”

“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: