Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

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.

Mrs Chadwick, in taking the Hall, had stipulated for the right to find her own tenant for the farm. In the end she became the tenant, with full power to do what she liked with the property, providing always that what she did was for the improvement of the farm, and was first of all submitted to the squire for his approval. She had submitted so many schemes to him already that the worthy man, like John Musgrave, had felt his breath taken away; and in order to avoid any further shocks he had applied her to his lawyer, and gone abroad for an indefinite time to escape the worry of these matters. Change was not agreeable to him; but he was not so unwise as to object to the improvement of his estate, and the expenditure of other people’s money upon it.

The lawyer, grasping the main point that Mrs Chadwick intended laying out money on the property, and had plenty of it to disburse, was satisfied to give her a free hand. Provided only that she increased the working value of the farm, he saw no reason against her pulling down all the old buildings and erecting new ones on improved models, and enlarging and improving the dwelling-house. Everything was to be brought up to date. There could be no objection, the lawyer considered, to that. He was not averse to change when it had a sound financial basis; and Mrs Chadwick’s ideas occurred to him as practical. He was not quite so positive that her intention to work the farm principally with female labour would prove satisfactory. But that was her affair. If she liked to run risks of that nature she could afford the whim.

With the passing of the days, with the coming and going of architects and builders, and other persons the nature of whose occupation remained a mystery to John Musgrave, Mrs Chadwick’s host became more and more bewildered, more distinctly opposed to this feverish feminine energy – to this unfeminine encroachment on what he had always considered was the business of his sex. What, he wondered, was Mr Chadwick thinking about to allow his wife to interview these people, and settle without reference to his wishes all the details of the home which was, after all, to be paid for by cheques which he, presumably, would sign?

John Musgrave could not have brought himself to remind any woman of her duty as a wife; but he did in many ways allow Mrs Chadwick to see that he viewed her proceedings with amazement, and with a sort of well-controlled disapproval. His attitude only amused her. In the process of attempting to modernise Mr Musgrave, she took a pleasure occasionally in shocking him.

“Does Mr Chadwick usually leave the conduct of his affairs entirely in your hands?” he asked her once.

“His affairs!” she repeated, with an uplift of her arched brows. “Oh, you mean ‘our’ affairs. Will knows these things interest me; they only bore him. He is a lazy man, except in the matter of organisation; he’s splendid at that. Generally, I suggest a certain scheme and he develops it. He has a genius for developing.”

That certainly was true of Mr Chadwick. In most of his successful undertakings his wife had originated the idea, and he had developed it; hers was the quick, and his the thorough, brain. Quite voluntarily he ceded her a full share for the credit of the enormous fortune he had amassed; and he was lazily interested in her talent for spending it, and quite sincerely in sympathy with many of her schemes for the improvement of the conditions of her sex, with which was closely associated the improved conditions of the race.

It is a surprising, and would be a gratifying, fact, were it not for a feeling that it ought to be the other way about, that men are usually more ready to help a woman in her fight for the good of her sex than persons of the sex she is working for. Men shake off prejudices more readily than women, because their training and mode of life gives them a broader outlook. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. The narrow-minded man is, if more rare, considerably more contracted in his outlook than even the narrow-minded woman.

John Musgrave’s view was certainly contracted; but Mrs Chadwick, in her sanguine moments, entertained the belief that the restricted line of his horizon was due to the accident of circumstances, rather than to a natural deficiency in breadth, and held hopes of a possible development of his view. She did not tell him this; but she confided her belief to Mrs Sommers, who was as sceptical of John’s development as she was of the profitable results of Mrs Chadwick’s enterprises.

Mrs Chadwick told John Musgrave something else, which she deemed of greater importance even than the development of his mind, something which so scandalised Mr Musgrave as to render him speechless, amazed at her audacity, her want of delicacy; and too utterly dumbfounded to defend himself. She informed him, quite seriously, and without any effort to conceal her meaning, that he was not doing his duty by the State.

She had been in Moresby a week when she made this astounding attack, and the occasion which she chose for making it was one morning when she was returning with her host from an inspection of the village school, which, in a moment of weakness, he had suggested might interest her.

The school did interest her; but the sight of John Musgrave surrounded in the infants’ classroom with a number of greedy, unabashed babies, who felt in his pockets for sweets with a confidence that suggested familiarity with the practice, interested her far more. On the homeward walk she informed him that patronising other people’s babies, while undoubtedly commendable, was not his business in life; that he was not a good citizen, because, from purely selfish motives, he was neglecting his most important duty to the State.

John Musgrave was so embarrassed, and so annoyed, that during the rest of the walk, which fortunately was not of long duration, he could not utter a word. He turned in at his own gate in a seriously displeased frame of mind; and Mrs Chadwick, feeling guilty but unrepentant, preceded him up the path with the wickedest of little smiles playing about her lips.

“Thank you so much, Mr Musgrave,” she said, as they parted in the hall, “for a really enjoyable morning.”

Then she went upstairs to her room, and later she recounted for Belle’s edification the result of her visit to the school.

Mrs Sommers was amused; but she experienced a slight compassion for her brother, who would feel, she realised, as startled at a woman approaching a man on such a subject as he would be averse to the subject itself. People in Moresby left the laws of life alone.

John Musgrave was, as a matter of fact, deeply disgusted. He resented, not only the indelicacy, but the impertinence of this interference with the individual. He summarised the proceeding as a display of bad taste. Nevertheless the idea, once presented to him, was not easily dislodged from his brain. Somehow he had never considered the individual in responsible relationship to the State. The suggestion was new to him, and highly disturbing. He had up to the present considered himself in the light of a very good citizen, an example to other men who disregarded their duties to the borough in which they resided, and gave neither in money nor service to local affairs. He was respected in Moresby as a useful as well as a generous resident. It would have been difficult to fill his place if he left it; he could not conceive anyone filling it satisfactorily. And now he was told that all that counted for nothing, or at least for very little, since he was neglecting the principal duty of all. No wonder that Mr Musgrave was annoyed; that he looked upon Mrs Chadwick as highly objectionable, and resented her presence in his house.

“You are a very daring woman,” commented Mrs Sommers. “Although I have grown up with John I would never have ventured to say such a thing as that.”

“Possibly,” returned Mrs Chadwick calmly, “if I had been brought up with John I would not have adventured either. Familiarity with a person’s prejudices makes one diffident. I am not laying myself out to please Mr Musgrave, but to modernise him, as you suggested. When he is sufficiently modernised I mean to marry him.”

“You will need to obtain a divorce first,” retorted Mrs Sommers, laughing. “And I am sure John would not consider that respectable.”

“You have a mischievous habit of misrepresenting things. You know perfectly well that I am satisfied with my lot in life. I am going to find him a wife.”

“Oh?” said Mrs Sommers. She looked thoughtful. “I think you will have in that a more difficult task than in bringing him up to date.”

“We shall see,” returned Mrs Chadwick, and her tone was confident. “I think myself that lack of opportunity has bred the disinclination. No man is born a bachelor. The state, which is a misfit, results from his circumstances.”

“It isn’t due to lack of opportunity in John’s case,” Belle asserted. “The women who have run after him!..”

“Yes,” said Mrs Chadwick. She was thinking of Miss Simpson. “But that sort of woman doesn’t count, my dear.”

The successful married woman has, as a rule, a very good idea of the kind of women men like. The successful married woman is never the vain woman. The vain woman always imagines that the type she represents is the type men admire; usually she is at fault. Mrs Chadwick was not a vain woman. She knew very well that all men are not drawn towards the same type of woman. Some men prefer looks; others mental qualities; and, by an odd inconsistency in human nature, the perfectly simple-souled and self-disciplined man inclines naturally toward the woman endowed with the captivating wickedness of her sex. There is a big distinction between captivating wickedness and vice. No man, whether he be good or bad in principle, admires vice in the mothers of the race.

Since Mr Musgrave reckoned in the category of the simple, self-disciplined soul, plainly the woman for him must have a spice of wickedness in her. Mrs Chadwick may have been mistaken in her deduction, but at least she believed in it firmly.

Had John Musgrave had any idea of what floated through her busy brain while she smilingly confided to him some of her plans for the improvement of Moresby, he would have been horrified. Marriage was the one subject of all others he considered it indelicate to dwell upon. If people married they did it for some good reason; to contemplate the step impartially with, no adequate motive for so serious an undertaking was to him unthinkable. Had he ever reflected upon it, and attempted a portrait of the lady he might have honoured with his preference, it certainly would not have been a woman with any latent wickedness in her. John Musgrave’s ideal, had he been called upon to embody an ideal, would have revealed the picture of a calm-faced woman of unemotional temperament, who would always have said and done the correct thing, would have adorned his home, and revered himself, and would have been in every sense of the word womanly.

Mrs Chadwick could have told him that such a woman did not exist outside a man’s imagination. She would not have done so, of course. She believed in encouraging masculine fallacies when they were harmless; to attempt discouragement was to invite defeat. Opposition is the least effective form of argument. A clever woman seldom makes the mistake of forcing her ideas; and Mrs Chadwick was undoubtedly clever.

“Anything can be accomplished through suggestion,” she had been heard to assert. “Suggestion, plant it where you will, is a seed which never fails to germinate.”

Chapter Six

Miss Simpson contemplated her appearance by the aid of the long mirror in her wardrobe with an eye sharply critical as that of the vainest of her sisters, whose concern for outward things she held generally in contempt. But a visit to the house of a bachelor in regard to whom one entertains matrimonial intentions excuses, as anyone will acknowledge, a greater attentiveness to detail than usual.

The result of her inspection was on the whole satisfactory. The effect of her severely tailored costume and small, unassertive hat was neat in the extreme, so neat, indeed, that Mrs Chadwick, when she beheld it, felt a womanly compassion for the wearer; she preferred to see a woman daintily gowned. But Mrs Chadwick’s taste was not Moresby’s.

One lock of Miss Simpson’s tightly braided hair betrayed a rebellious tendency to escape the hairpins and stray pleasingly over her brow. This could not be permitted. The aid of additional pins was requisitioned, and the unruly lock was brought into subjection, and tucked out of sight beneath the unrelenting brim of the eminently decorous hat.

Woman’s hair never seems to achieve a definite recognition in the scheme of its wearer. Some women regard their hair as an adornment, which it is, and take trouble that other people shall recognise its claim as an asset in feminine decorativeness; with other women it would seem that the human head suffers this objectionable growth only because nature insists upon it as an essential part of her design. They brush it back from the face in strained disapproval, and further abuse it by screwing it into as tight a ball as circumstances permit. No frivolous abandon is allowed; pins, and even pomade, are resorted to, until what is undoubtedly beautiful in itself is rendered sufficiently unbecoming to soothe the most fastidiously decorous mind.

Miss Simpson belonged to this latter category. By instinct Miss Simpson was modest to the verge of prudery. But as, in the inconsistency of human nature, a good person is often streaked with evil, and an evil person possesses a strain of goodness, so Miss Simpson, despite her prudery, had a touch of the softer sentiments which no woman should be without. This weakness led to the cherishing of a romantic passion for Mr Musgrave, which so far overcame her natural decorum as to drive her to open pursuit of the object of her middle-aged affections. From anyone else a written proposal to a man would have appealed to her in the light of an offence against every womanly tradition; but in her own case circumstances allowed for the forsaking of her principles, even demanded this sacrifice of her. Plainly John Musgrave would have liked to propose; but he was a shy man. His gentlemanly refusal of her offer was, she recognised, prompted by this same shyness, and not at all from disinclination towards a life-partnership with herself. Eventually she trusted this not unmanly shyness would be conquered so far as to give him the courage to open the courtship which she felt he was always on the verge of beginning.

Proof that he enjoyed her companionship was forthcoming in the fact that he adhered to the practice of seeking it publicly. If he did not enjoy her companionship he would assuredly retire from the committee of school management, and other local matters in which they were jointly interested. Every one knows that interests in common form a substantial basis for mutual regard; and John Musgrave and Miss Simpson had a common bond in their insatiable love for busying themselves in parish affairs. They considered themselves – it is not an uncommon conceit – indispensable to the efficient working of the social machinery of Moresby. If the vicar held opposite views he was too wise a man to air them; and being good-natured, and tactful beyond the ordinary run of persons in authority, he allowed them their amiable conceit, and was grateful that they in return allowed him to occupy his own pulpit and generally conduct the services. Interference in his particular department was the one thing he would have resented. On this amicable footing was the parish of Moresby run.

But with the advent of Mrs Chadwick the vicar, at least, foresaw complications, and awaited their development with curiosity. Miss Simpson alone harboured no thought of change in the conduct of Moresby affairs. That the coming of a stranger should foreshadow interference in parish matters would never have occurred to her. The coming of the vicar’s wife had not effected that.

But this afternoon, setting forth to call on Mrs Sommers, with a pleasurable thrill of anticipation which the prospective society of the ladies would scarcely seem to justify, it entered her mind for the first time that Mrs Chadwick’s residence at the Hall must work some sort of change in the pleasant routine of their daily lives.

She was not sure that she approved of Mrs Chadwick. She was very sure, when she arrived and was shown into Mr Musgrave’s drawing-room, that she, disapproved of her. Mrs Chadwick was seated at the open window, although the day was cold, and she was smoking a cigarette. She threw the cigarette away on the visitor’s entrance, and smilingly apologised.

“I hope you don’t object to smoke,” she said. “It is an incurable bad habit with me.”

Miss Simpson did not object to smoke from the proper quarter – the proper quarter being as it issued from between the lips of the sterner sex, who were privileged in the matter of bad habits, which is a feminine fallacy that is slipping out of date; she very strongly objected to smoking when her own sex indulged in it – indeed, save for Mrs Chadwick, she had never seen a woman smoke. It was, she considered, a disgusting and unfeminine practice.

She murmured “Really!” And shaking hands somewhat frigidly, addressed herself pointedly to Mrs Sommers for the first few minutes after sitting down.

Mrs Chadwick caressed the pekinese, and watched the visitor with curious interest the while. It was not, however, in Mrs Chadwick’s nature to remain outside any conversation for long; and she gracefully insinuated herself into the talk, to Miss Simpson’s further surprise. She expected, when she took the trouble to show her displeasure, to see the object thereof properly quelled. That, too, is a characteristic of parish omnipotence. And, amazingly, Mrs Chadwick was already betraying a desire to interfere in Moresby arrangements.

“I visited the schools this morning,” she observed, breaking in on Miss Simpson’s gossip about the new schoolmaster, who, seemingly, gave every satisfaction, being a great improvement on his predecessor, who was, as Miss Simpson expressed it, a horrid Radical. “It was all very amusing. They are such quaint, blunt little people. I liked them. But the schools want pulling down and rebuilding. Everything is obsolete. The ceilings are too low and the ventilation inadequate. I am all for fresh air.”

She laughed at sight of Miss Simpson’s wooden expression, and at the shiver which ran through her narrow frame as she glanced meaningly at the wide-open window.

“Do you feel this too much?” she asked pleasantly, and obligingly drew the window partially down. “Mrs Sommers and I are seasoned; but we blow Mr Musgrave away at times.”

That, of course, accounted for the absence of the master of the house which Miss Simpson had regretfully noticed. The draughts and the smoke would naturally drive Mr Musgrave away; no self-respecting man would stand it.