Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“I like air,” Miss Simpson answered coldly, “in moderation.”

Then she returned to the subject of the schools. This outspoken person must be given to understand from the commencement that, though she might pose as grande dame in Moresby by reason of her residence at the Hall, the older residents would not brook interference with existing institutions. Moresby was conservative in principle, and resented innovations.

“The present schools are a feature of the place,” she said. “No one would care to have them done away with. They are picturesque.”

“Yes; they are,” Mrs Chadwick admitted readily. “That is what distresses me in old places – their beauty. One hates to demolish the beautiful. But healthy children are more beautiful than old buildings; and the modern buildings, with up-to-date construction, are healthier for small people.”

“I think our village children are remarkably healthy,” Miss Simpson protested.

“Do you? Half the school, I observed, had colds. Healthy children should not be susceptible to chills. If they worked in properly ventilated rooms they would not be. The lungs of the young have immense powers of resistance, but we weaken these powers with our foolish indifference to overheating and overcrowding. It is little short of criminal to study the picturesque in preference to the well-being of the rising generation.”

“I think we should study both,” Mrs Sommers intervened, with a view to soothing the ruffled feelings of her visitor, who was chafing visibly under this downright attack. “The schools are certainly charming. I should hate to see them pulled down myself. We will have to effect some compromise.”

Compromise, in Mrs Chadwick’s opinion, was as ineffectual as patching a worn-out garment; the worn-out garment could but fulfil its destiny, and become rags. But she let the subject drop. It could be revived at some future date. The schools were being slowly drawn into the network of her revolutionary schemes for the modernising of Moresby.

Miss Simpson, less diplomatic, and more assertive than Mrs Sommers, showed her disapproval by abruptly changing the subject, and introducing an entirely new, and, in Mrs Chadwick’s opinion, distinctly quaint topic of conversation. She referred with considerable vim to certain matters of local importance which had been given prominence in the pages of the current number of the Parish Magazine. Mrs Chadwick betrayed such absorbed interest in these matters that Miss Simpson was beguiled into inquiring whether she had seen the current number of the Parish Magazine. She spoke of the magazine as a lover of the poets might speak of the works of Shakespeare, with a certain reverential awe for the importance of proved literary merit. Mrs Chadwick wore the vaguely distressed look that a well-read woman wears on discovering an unsuspected limitation in her literary attainments. She had not even heard before of the Parish Magazine.

“I am afraid I don’t know it,” she answered. “There are such a number of magazines, aren’t there? And so many new ones always coming out. One can’t keep pace with these things. I stick to the old magazines, like the Century, and the Strand, and the Contemporary Review. If one ought to read the Parish Magazine, of course I should wish to.”

Miss Simpson stared, and Mrs Sommers laughed softly, albeit she did not consider this quizzing altogether fair.

“The publications you refer to are not of the same nature as the Parish Magazine,” the visitor observed crushingly. “Our magazine is a purely local pamphlet for local circulation. It deals solely with parish matters.”

Mrs Chadwick considered this dull, but she did not say so. She appeared politely impressed.

“That must be very interesting to – to Moresby inhabitants,” she said gravely.

“That is its object,” Miss Simpson returned. “Most parishes have their magazines. The people like to know what takes place locally; and they find it all noted down.”

She spoke with the laboured forbearance of one who seeks to instruct a very ignorant person on a subject which should not have required explanation.

“Our magazine is a new venture,” she added, with the conscious pride of the literary aspirant. “I started it last year. I edit it.”

“Indeed!” Mrs Chadwick’s tone expressed admiration. “Please put me down as an annual subscriber.”

Miss Simpson unbent.

“I shall be delighted. It is a monthly pamphlet, issued at one penny.”

“That is not ruinous,” murmured the prospective subscriber.

“The village people could not afford more,” Miss Simpson explained patiently. “They all like to read it. Occasionally some of their names are mentioned. They expect that.”

“I should be afraid,” Mrs Chadwick remarked, surveying the editress seriously, “of letting myself in for a libel action in your place. It is so difficult to be personal without the sacrifice of truth, and refrain from giving offence. I am inclined to think a parish magazine must be a dangerous publication.”

“You haven’t got the idea at all,” Miss Simpson said acidly. “We only mention the things which reflect to the credit of the persons concerned, such as any little gift to the parish, or the participation in local entertainments, and such matters; and, of course, work done on committees. Mr Musgrave’s name appears in its columns frequently.”

“Belle,” said Mrs Chadwick, with one of her radiant smiles, “I insist upon seeing the Parish Magazine. How is it you have kept these things from me? It would amuse me immensely to read of Mr Musgrave’s doings. He is so reticent about such things himself.”

The entrance of Mr Musgrave created a diversion. He came in in advance of Eliza with the tea; and Mrs Chadwick, watching with mercilessly observant glance, noted the fluttering agitation of the visitor, whose austere manner changed as surprisingly as the colour of the chameleon, and became immediately gracious, and demurely coy. Mr Musgrave’s manner was not responsive. It suggested to Mrs Chadwick his attitude towards herself.

“I have just been hearing terrible tales of the things you do, which gain you notoriety in the columns of the Parish Magazine,” she said wickedly. “I am going to read up all the back numbers.”

John Musgrave did not smile. He crossed the room deliberately, and closed the window and fastened it – an act Miss Simpson witnessed with satisfaction.

“So thoughtless of me,” said Mrs Chadwick apologetically. “I always forget your dislike for fresh air.”

“I do not dislike fresh air,” he returned gravely, “in its proper place.”

“What would you describe as its proper place?” she asked.

“Out of doors,” he answered, surprised that a clever woman should ask so obvious a question.

Then, while the three women sat and watched him, he made the tea, taking from the caddy a spoonful for each guest, and an additional spoonful for the requisite strength, according to custom. Mr Musgrave had made his own tea for many years; he saw no reason now for discontinuing this practice, though one person present – the one with the least right – would gladly have relieved him of the task. It was so pathetic, she reflected, to see a man making the tea; it was significant of his lonely state. Clearly a man needed a wife to perform this homely office, a wife of a suitable age, with similar tastes, who would never distress him with any display of unwomanly traits.

“I always think that no one makes tea quite like you do,” she murmured sweetly, as she received her cup from John Musgrave’s hand.

Which speech, in its ambiguity, Mrs Chadwick considered extremely diplomatic.

Chapter Seven

“I have,” said Mrs Chadwick dramatically that same evening to Mrs Sommers, “been exactly a week in Moresby, and I have made two enemies. What will be the result when I have lived here a year?”

This question opened up ground for reflection. Belle reflected. She did it, as she did most things, quickly.

“You will possibly overcome their prejudices, and make them love you.”

“That is a charming answer,” Mrs Chadwick replied. “But I am not sure that their love would not prove equally embarrassing. I would prefer to win their regard.”

“It is merely another term for the same emotion,” Mrs Sommers insisted.

They were seated before the fire in Mrs Chadwick’s bedroom, having a last chat before retiring. Though women live together in the same house, and part, possibly for the first time for the day, outside their bedroom doors, a last chat is a privileged necessity – that is, when women are companions; when the last chat ceases to be a necessity it is a proof of mutual boredom. Mrs Chadwick and Belle Sommers were a long way off the point of boredom.

Belle had begun going to Mrs Chadwick’s bedroom in her capacity of pseudo hostess, thinking that possibly Mrs Chadwick, who had come without a maid in deference to a hint from her friend that strange servants would be unwelcome in Mr Musgrave’s household, might find herself at a loss. But Mrs Chadwick was seldom at a loss in the matter of helping herself; a maid was a luxury, not an essential, in her train of accessories. The pekinese alone was indispensable. She had conceded the point about the maid, but she had refused to be separated from the pekinese. It is conjectural whether Mr Musgrave did not object more to the pekinese than he would have to the maid; but Belle, like Mrs Chadwick, did not consider it wise to humour all his little prejudices.

“I think,” observed Mrs Chadwick, after a pause, during which they had both been gazing reflectively into the fire, “that I have settled everything that was immediately pressing, and can now relieve your brother of the strain of my presence. I cannot begin anything until we are established at the Hall.”

Mrs Sommers looked amused.

“I believe,” she said, “that John is frightening you away.”

“He is,” Mrs Chadwick admitted. “I am afraid of John. His inextinguishable courtesy chills me. How come you and John to be the children of the same parents? I don’t believe you are. I believe that John is a changeling.”

Belle laughed.

“He is our father reproduced,” she said.

“That disposes of my theory. Then you must be the changeling. Plainly, Miss Simpson ought to have been his sister.”

“She would prefer to stand in a closer relationship,” Mrs Sommers said.

“Yes; that’s obvious. But she hasn’t the ghost of a chance. She is an old maid.”

“She would scarcely be eligible for the position if she were not an old maid,” Mrs Sommers pointed out.

“She would be eligible as an unmarried woman,” Mrs Chadwick argued. “There is a distinction. An unmarried woman is not of necessity an old maid.”

Belle allowed this. It was, indeed, irrefutable.

“I see,” she said. “Yes… just as my brother is a confirmed bachelor.”

Mrs Chadwick smiled into the flames.

“I wouldn’t be so positive on that head,” she replied. “You should visit the schools with him, as I did to-day. I think it might shake your opinion. A man who is a confirmed bachelor has not the paternal instinct. He ought to have married ten years ago, in which event he would not now make the tea, and fuss about draughts. I think, you have been neglectful of your duty to him. Before you married you should have found him a wife.”

“He doesn’t like the women I like,” said Belle slowly. “He considers them too – ”

“Modern,” suggested Mrs Chadwick. She stirred the fire thoughtfully. “The very modernest of modern wives would be the saving of him. If he doesn’t find her soon he will be doomed to eternal bachelorhood, and develop hypochondria, and take up homeopathy.”

Belle laughed outright.

“Poor old John?” she said, and relapsed once more into contemplative silence.

John Musgrave, meanwhile, was going his usual nightly round of the house; which, perforce, was later than he was in the habit of making it, because the ladies did not retire, as he did when alone, at ten o’clock. He carefully examined all the gas-jets to satisfy himself that these were safely turned off. He inspected the bars and locks of doors and windows, not because he feared burglars, who were a class unknown in Moresby, but because he had always seen to the securing of his house, as his father had done before him. He placed a guard before the drawing-room fire, and examined the kitchen range to assure himself that Martha had not left too large a fire for safety – which Martha never by any chance did. John Musgrave did not expect to find any of these matters overlooked; but he enjoyed presumably satisfying himself that his instructions were faithfully observed. Then he turned off the light in the hall, and quietly mounted the stairs.

Belle, stepping forth from Mrs Chadwick’s room at the moment, with her beautiful hair falling over her shoulders, met him on the landing. He appeared slightly taken aback; and she felt instinctively that he was on the verge of apologising for surprising her in this becoming deshabille. She forestalled the apology by catching him by the lapels of his coat and kissing him in her impulsive, affectionate way.

“You old dear!” she said softly.

“I thought you were in bed,” Mr Musgrave said, feeling, without understanding why, that the touch of Belle’s soft cheek was very agreeable, that the sight of a woman standing in the dim light of the landing was pleasing, particularly with her hair streaming over her blue peignoir. It was, of course, because the woman was Belle, and that therefore it was natural that she should be standing there, that he found the picture attractive. He experienced a twinge of regret at the thought that she would go away and leave him to his solitude shortly. When he came upstairs after she had left him, he would recall the sight of her standing there, smiling at him; and the big landing would seem doubly solitary.

“I’ve been gossiping,” she explained.

He looked surprised. It baffled him to understand what she found to talk about, considering she had done nothing else all day.

“More schemes?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, and laughed unexpectedly.

If only John guessed what the latest scheme was! Had she allowed him a hundred guesses she believed he would never have arrived at the right one.

“I hope you won’t take up schemes, Belle,” he said, with a faint uneasiness in his voice. He looked at her wistfully. “You are too nice to be caught with fads, my dear.”

She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him on the lips.

“I’m too lazy,” she said, “and have my hands too full to trouble myself about anything beyond my boys. But a childless woman, John, dear, has to mother something.”

“I suppose that’s it,” he answered, a little relieved, it occurred to her, by this explanation of what had appeared to him inexplicable. “Yes; that’s the reason, undoubtedly. I am glad you have your boys, Belle.”

“So am I,” she returned gently, and kissed him good-night, and left him standing alone on the dim landing with his lighted candle in his hand.

He sighed as he listened to the closing of her bedroom door. Then he entered his own room, his mind still intent upon her, so that for a long time he remained Inactive, gazing abstractedly at a picture of his mother hanging on his wall, comparing the sweet, lined face with the younger face of the daughter, who came and went in the old home, bringing the sunshine with her, and taking it with her again when she left. He envied Charlie Sommers more than he envied any man on earth.

And yet John Musgrave would have been surprised had anyone told him that he was lonely. He enjoyed, he believed, all the companionship that a man requires. But no one, unless he be a misanthropist, is entirely happy in the possession of a solitary hearth.

On the following morning Mrs Chadwick introduced the subject of her departure. She did not expect Mr Musgrave to be overwhelmed with distress at the announcement of her intention; nor was he; nevertheless, with the memory of his overnight reflections flooding his brain, he did not feel the relief he imagined he would feel at the prospect of having his house to himself once more. He was, oddly enough, growing accustomed to Mrs Chadwick. When she was not personal she was decidedly interesting, and not infrequently amusing. And when she left he knew Belle purposed leaving also. It was not convenient for her to be away from home just then. She had come solely to oblige Mrs Chadwick, whose recognition of this service influenced her more than her pretended alarm of her host in hastening her arrangements.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.