Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“That’s only natural,” the other answered. “She is so bright.”

“Yes.” John Musgrave looked directly at the speaker. “She is bright. She’s companionable. I expect that’s what Charlie thought.”

Walter Errol laughed.

“No doubt,” he agreed.

“Yes, she’s bright,” John Musgrave repeated, as though the realisation of this fact, striking him for the first time, accounted for what he had been at a loss to comprehend before. “I expect that’s why Charlie married her.”

“My dear fellow,” the other said, with a hardly repressed smile, “did it never occur to you that Charlie might have had a better reason?”

“A better reason?” John Musgrave echoed.

“Yes. Don’t you think it possible that he married her for love?”

John Musgrave flushed deeply.

“For love!” he said.

The vicar smiled openly now.

“People do marry for love occasionally,” he remarked.

“Do they?.. Do they indeed?”

John Musgrave was gazing into the fire again, his expression doubtful, faintly discomfited – almost, it seemed to the man watching him in puzzled amusement, shocked.

“Dear me!” he ejaculated softly, and seemed disquieted at the presentment of this extraordinary idea. “Dear me!” he repeated slowly.

The vicar broke into a hearty laugh.

“Oh, Coelebs, my dear old Coelebs,” he said; “it was not without a sufficient reason you gained that nickname at Oxford. What have you been doing, to live in the world so long and never to have learned the biggest and simplest of life’s lessons? From the bottom of my heart I wish it may yet fall to your lot to get some practical experience. Find some one to fill Belle’s place in your home, dear old fellow, and then you will miss her no longer.”

“I wish, Walter,” John Musgrave said, frowning heavily, “that you were given to a greater seriousness in your conversation.”

“I wish, John,” the other retorted amiably, “that you were inclined towards a lesser seriousness. As for me, I was never more in earnest in my life. Fill Belle’s place, and then you will be relieved of the necessity for engaging such a sour-faced person as opened your front door to me yesterday.”

“You mean Eliza?” said John Musgrave, surprised. “She is a most respectable woman.”

“Guaranteed respectability has no need to be so disagreeably assertive of its claim to recognition,” the vicar returned, unmoved. “The lack of amiability in one’s expression suggests an unamiable disposition. A cheerful heart is the supremest of virtues.”

He rose to his feet in response to the agreeable summons of the supper-gong, and placed a hand affectionately on John Musgrave’s shoulder.

“Adam was the first man to take a bite out of an apple,” he said, “but since he created the precedent for eating the fruit, men have developed the taste for apples.”

“For a clergyman, Walter,” his friend returned disapprovingly, “your conversation is at times highly irreverent.”

Chapter Three

A few weeks later John Musgrave set out across the fields in search of the vicar. The vicar on that particular morning was engaged in a search of quite another description, a search which necessitated the company of his sexton, armed with the iron rod with which he prodded in the moundless graveyard where the poor of the parish lay sleeping, to discover where he might, without disturbing an older resident, dig a grave for a fresh interment.

The nature of the soil in the Moresby churchyard was such that it was quite safe, after the lapse of a certain number of years, to bury the present generation in the resting-places of their predecessors. There were no headstones to suggest ownership in this little acre of the dead; and, owing to a whim of the old squire, who during his lifetime had ruled the parish with the despotism of an autocrat, the graves had been dug level with the rest of the ground. Since the advent of the present vicar mounds were insisted upon, and headstones encouraged; so that a man might feel assured when he was laid to rest that his resting-place would remain undisturbed. The old order was changing, even in the matter of interments.

For a while Robert prodded unsuccessfully; wherever he drove his rod in, after a few feet of solid earth it sank suddenly into the unresisting depths of an uncollapsed grave.

“Time most o’ these ’ad a failed in,” he grumbled. “It grows more difficult to find a spot wi’ each fresh buryin’.”

“Try here,” suggested the vicar.

Robert drove his rod in once again. To the depth of about six feet it pierced firm, resisting soil.

“Reckon that’s got it, sir,” he said, as he drew the rod out from the ground. “I’ll carry this back along, an’ fetch my spade.”

At this moment the vicar looked up and beheld John Musgrave bearing towards him. He stepped off the grass, where the quiet dead lay unmarked beneath his feet, and went to meet him.

“Are you busy?” Mr Musgrave asked, turning, and falling into step with him as he walked along the broad gravelled path beneath the scanty shade of the thinning trees.

“Not particularly. I have time to spare you, if you want me. We’ve a funeral this afternoon.”

“Yes. Blackmoor, of course; Martha informed me he was to be buried to-day. Mrs Blackmoor assists Martha in the kitchen when she requires help. A very respectable woman.” Walter Errol smiled.

“She is,” he agreed. She had not always been so, as he and John both knew; but a call to grace in later life atoned for the indiscretions of youth. “Blackmoor had his failings,” he added, “but he was a good-hearted man; and that goes a long way towards the redeeming virtues. What was it you wished to see me about, John?”

Mr Musgrave looked worried – more than worried; he appeared annoyed. He did not answer immediately. He passed through the little wicket gate into the lane, which led past the schoolhouse to the vicarage, in a preoccupied silence, upon which the unmusical singing of the school-children broke inharmoniously. Presently he said:

“I have received a very inconsiderate letter from Belle this morning. She writes to say she is coming to me next week – ”

“But that’s great,” interposed Walter Errol. “You’ll enjoy that.”

“I should enjoy having Belle,” Mr Musgrave answered quietly. “But she proposes bringing Mrs Chadwick with her. I was not agreeably prepossessed with this lady, and I do not anticipate pleasure from the visit. The Hall is to be got ready for their immediate occupation, and she wishes to superintend matters, I understand. I do not see the necessity for her superintending the redecoration of the Hall from my house. She could have stayed in Rushleigh.”

“It won’t be a long visit, I suppose?” the vicar suggested encouragingly. “And Mrs Sommers will relieve you of the principal share of the entertaining.”

“I maintain,” John Musgrave pursued, “that it is inconsiderate of Belle. She must be aware that it will put me out. My establishment is not equal to the entertainment of guests. It incommodes the servants.”

“My dear John,” the vicar returned sensibly, “you don’t run a house for the convenience of your servants. A little extra work will not injure the health of the respectable Eliza, and Martha likes company. Whether you like it or not, it is good for you. When do the ladies arrive?”

“On Tuesday,” answered John Musgrave shortly. “Belle desires that I will send the motor into Rushleigh to meet the train.”

“Naturally you would do so,” said the vicar.

“I shall do so, of course. But it is inconvenient. It is King’s day off. He was not pleased when I told him he would be required to meet the afternoon train.”

“Oh, Coelebs,” said the vicar, laughing, “your servants are more arbitrary than a dozen wives. Why should they be unwilling to study your convenience occasionally?”

“My servants are accustomed to system,” Mr Musgrave replied with dignity. “I am systematic myself.”

“No one can dispute that, John. But system, like everything else when carried to excess, becomes wearisome. We will go in and tell Mary your news. She will be most interested.”

“I want you to dine with me on Tuesday evening,” Mr Musgrave said, as they turned in at the vicarage gate, “if Mrs Errol will be so kind. It will help me immensely.”

“She’ll be delighted,” the vicar assured him. “And so shall I. Don’t you worry, Coelebs, we’ll see you through.”

In the interest of John Musgrave’s surprising news the vicar forgot for the time his more important duties. He remained to discuss with his wife and John this unexpected house-party to which the host alone looked forward with manifest misgivings.

Mrs Errol was pleased at the prospect of anything that offered a change from the dead level of monotony to which the social life of Moresby had sunk; and as soon as John Musgrave departed in the company of her husband she ran upstairs to her bedroom to hunt in her wardrobe for some garment which represented an evening gown, and might, with a slight alteration, be adapted to the present mode. In Moresby it was not necessary to be attired in the latest fashion; one simple evening dress did duty for local entertainments for years. But this occasion was different. Mrs Errol was aware that the ladies she would meet on Tuesday would not be garbed in the fashion of a bygone season. They, however, would not be, she felt, unkindly in their criticism; and the knowledge that her dress was shabby did not concern her unduly. The Moresby living did not yield a handsome stipend.

The vicar, on parting from John Musgrave, returned by way of the churchyard, and was reminded as he walked along the elm-lined path of the funeral which worldly matters had banished completely from his thoughts. Robert was busy digging the new grave. The vicar’s glance, travelling in that direction, was arrested at the sight of Robert’s spade, which appeared out of the ground, it seemed, automatically and independently, ejected the freshly turned soil, and disappeared, to reappear with conscientious regularity in the performance of its appointed task. Robert himself was invisible; he was also, which was unusual, inaudible; the only sounds to be heard were those made by the spade and the falling earth.

The vicar stepped upon the grass and approached the open grave, looking about him with the perplexed air of a man whose locality is at fault. Finally he looked into the grave. Robert, perspiring freely, his flannel shirt open at the throat, looked up, and paused in his labours and rested upon his spade.

“You are a good twenty yards from the spot we marked,” said the vicar.

Robert wiped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief, and nodded briefly. The vicar did not appear surprised. Unless he attended at the cutting of the sods, Robert, possessing no bump of locality, frequently overran his distances.

“I ought to ’a’ waited for you,” he said, and mopped his brow again. “Thought this was the place we fixed on. But I mind now it was nearer the old yew tree. I ought to ’a’ waited for you, sir,” he repeated, and looked, the vicar observed, perturbed. “I got wrong somehow.”

“Well, I suppose,” the vicar said, “this spot will serve as well as another.”

Robert spat upon his hands and grasped his spade, but he did not immediately use it. He gazed down into the grave resentfully, and then lifted his bearded face to Walter Errol’s, watching him from above.

“I ’eaved up a corpse,” he said.

And the vicar became abruptly aware of some bones lying partially covered with mould at the side of the grave.

“If it ’ad ’a’ been my first,” Robert proceeded, “it would ’a’ turned me up; but I’ve done it afore. It’ll be all right, though. I’ll get they old bones out o’ the way afore any o’ the mourners come along.”

“Treat them reverently, Robert,” the vicar said gravely.

“Oh, ay. I buried ’em first go off. I’ll fix they up all right.”

Robert spat on his hands again, and prepared to resume his labours.

“Old George been buried this thirty years too… Should ’a’ thought all trace of ’e ’ad gone,” he added in the tone of a man who feels justified in complaining at this want of consideration on the part of old George.

The vicar left him to finish his work, and repaired to the vicarage for the midday meal. This desecration of a grave troubled him more than it troubled Robert. It was not exactly Robert’s fault; he recognised that; though, had Robert been directly responsible, it was doubtful whether the vicar would have found it possible to rebuke the man seriously. Between his sexton and himself existed a mutual bond of affection which had begun from the hour when, as a young man taking over his first living, he had read himself in at Moresby during the lifetime of the old squire, in whose gift the living lay. Robert had constituted himself then director and guide of the new vicar. He had stood, or believed that he stood, as a safeguard between the vicar and the easily aroused displeasure of the irascible old squire.

Following the reading-in, he had drawn Walter Errol’s attention to the omission of rearranging the stand when he left the pulpit, the position of which the vicar had altered for his own convenience.

“Squire can’t abear to see en left askew. You’d get into a row over that,” he said. “Every vicar that ’as come ’as got into a row over thicky stand. I wouldn’t like you to get into a row wi’ squire first go off like, ’cause squire never forgets.”

Walter Errol, who possessed the saving grace of humour, had taken this advice in the spirit in which it was offered, and had thereby gained the sexton’s unswerving devotion.

“Have you been in a row with the squire, Robert?” he had asked.

“Yes, sir, never out o’ one,” Robert had answered, and had seemed to experience a peculiar satisfaction in making the avowal; as though to be in a row with squire conveyed a certain distinction on a man of humble origin. For the vicar to be in a row was, however, another thing.

The vicar, to Robert’s amazement, had kept on friendly terms with the squire to the day of the old man’s death, which to those who knew Walter Errol did not appear so surprising a matter as it did to Robert, familiar with the squire’s irascible temper, and accustomed to hearing himself spoken of as a very ignorant man. The vicar never called Robert ignorant; he showed, indeed, a very proper appreciation of his value; and, because to be appreciated is agreeable to every one, Robert returned in kind with loyal service and devotion. No man, whatever his status, can give more.

The vicar, as he sat at dinner with his wife, filled the sympathetic rôle of listener while she gave, with a certain quiet humour of her own, a graphic account of the meagre resources of her wardrobe. His own clothes also, she stated, were somewhat shabby.

“We shall look the typical country vicar and vicaress,” she said, with a most unclerical dimple coming into play when she smiled. “I hate dowdiness, Walter.”

“Can’t you get something made in the time?” he asked.

“No. I wouldn’t if I could. For one dinner! Imagine it! Why shouldn’t I look a country vicaress? That’s what I am.”

“You always look pretty,” he said, “and so do your clothes.”

“I believe,” she observed, with a fair imitation of John Musgrave’s tone and manner, “that I compare very favourably with other clergymen’s wives.”

He laughed.

“John considers you smart.”

“Oh, John?” She waved a small hand, as though she waved aside John’s opinion as of no account. “Was that man ever young, Walter?” she asked. “Somehow, I can never picture him as a boy.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t, either. When I knew him first he was an elderly young man with a predilection for botany. But I believe at heart he is one of the kindest and best of fellows, incapable of a mean action or thought. I admire John.”

She looked across at him, smiling.

“He suggests veal to me,” she said – “which possesses no nature, according to the butcher. When John matures I shall perhaps appreciate him better. He is new wine in an old bottle – the outside crusted, and the inside thin and bloodless.”

“New wine is apt to break old bottles,” he reminded her.

“I know,” she said. “I am waiting for John to break through his crust.”

Chapter Four

The kitchen of John Musgrave’s establishment presented on Tuesday evening a scene of unusual activity. Martha, whose love for “Miss” Belle was even deeper than her affection for her master, was bent on doing her best for the honour of the house. It was an important occasion.

To Martha, as to all the old residents of Moresby, the Hall stood as the symbol of greatness, rather as Buckingham Palace might stand in the regard of the nation. Indeed, in local opinion it is possible that the Hall ranked above Buckingham Palace in importance, as tangible greatness surpasses legendary splendour. Moresby was accustomed to look with awe upon the Hall, which, since the reign of the old squire, had remained for the greater part of the time unoccupied, the present squire for private reasons preferring to live elsewhere.

The Hall still retained its importance in Moresby opinion; but had ceased to be the centre of magnificent bounty, such as it had been in the past. Now that it was let to wealthy people, local interest was stirred to a pitch of tremendous curiosity, and still greater expectation. The poor of Moresby – and save for John Musgrave, and Miss Simpson, who lived alone as Mr Musgrave did in isolated comfort, Moresby inhabitants were mainly poor – looked forward to a Christmas of the good old order, when feasting at the Hall was a yearly institution and, in local phraseology, things had not been backward in the way of good cheer.

Since to John Musgrave had fallen the unique honour of entertaining the new mistress of the Hall, Martha felt that some of the glory of the great house had descended upon Mr Musgrave’s roof, and spread itself with benign condescension over each individual member of the household. A generous share of it enveloped Martha. Eliza, not being a native, could not be expected to participate in this reverence for local grandeur; she was, indeed, sufficiently lacking in appreciation to complain unceasingly of the extra labour imposed upon herself by the arrival of visitors in Mr Musgrave’s house, notwithstanding that Mr Musgrave had engaged a younger girl to assist her in the heavier part of her duties.

“I didn’t know there was company kept,” she observed to Martha. “I’ve always set my face against company every place I’ve been to. It makes such a lot of extra work. Does Mr Musgrave keep much company?”

“I don’t count Miss Belle as company,” Martha replied. “She comes sometimes, and her husband, and the children. Three of them,” she added, with the amiable intention of firing Eliza’s resentment – “boys, and that full o’ mischief, you never!”

“I can’t put up with children,” returned Eliza decidedly, “and dogs are worse. I couldn’t stay in a house where there were animals kept, unless it was a cat – a clean cat. I can’t abear dogs.”

Neither could John Musgrave; and Mrs Chadwick had brought a pekinese with her.

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.”