Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

To Peggy’s consternation the displeased glance of the master of the house fell immediately upon the broken china which strewed the floor – he could not possibly overlook it, since it lay almost at his feet – and then lifted and rested accusingly, it seemed to her, upon her blushing face. Her presence in his kitchen was an event which called for some explanation. Peggy proceeded to explain, and to express her regret for the accident. She hoped, despite a desire to punish her, which from his expression she was positive he was experiencing, he would eject her by the front gate instead of the back. It would be horrible if after all these nerve-shattering happenings she would still be obliged to face the bulls.

“Diogenes only chased the cat for fun,” she finished, loyally excusing the delinquent, who by no means deserved to have his conduct defended. “He would not have hurt it really. He’s rather partial to cats.”

“Indeed!” said Mr Musgrave, and stared up at the cat, who glared back at him defiantly from her position of security. The cat was suffered, not as a pet, but because cats in a house were of use in keeping down the mice. “I think,” added Mr Musgrave, “that the cat would feel happier if Diogenes were removed.”

“Please,” pleaded Peggy humbly, “let us go by the front gate. I am really afraid to cross the fields again. Diogenes chases the bulls.”

“’Orrid brute!” muttered Eliza with a sniff so loud that it drew Mr Musgrave’s eyes in her direction.

“You had better,” he observed drily, “clear away this – rubbish.”

He indicated the broken crockery. Then he stood away from the door and looked at Peggy.

“If you will come with me, Miss Annersley, I will take you through the garden. Kindly keep the dog on the lead.”

Peggy preceded him from the kitchen in a chastened mood, feeling very like a small girl about to be reprimanded. She resented Mr Musgrave’s air of elderly superiority. He might have assured her, before the servants at least, that it did not matter, and told her not to distress herself. She had a conviction that he felt it was only proper she should distress herself, for which reason she determined not to be overwhelmingly contrite. It was his cat that had effected the damage; Diogenes had not scrambled over the furniture.

Mr Musgrave led her through a passage and into the hall, which was wide and spacious, and had a comfortable fire glowing on the low hearth. It was a very nice hall. Peggy looked about her with interested curiosity. It was a nice house altogether; and Mr Musgrave, as he paused and looked down at her a little uncertainly, did not appear so forbidding as he had looked in the kitchen. After all, considering the amount of damage she and Diogenes were responsible for between them, he had shown admirable control. Peggy was relenting. She experienced the desire to more adequately express her regret.

“Would you like to – rest a little while?” Mr Musgrave asked.

The question was so unexpected that Peggy wanted to laugh. She realised that courtesy alone dragged the reluctant suggestion from her unwilling host, and was aware that acceptance of the invitation by increasing his embarrassment would aggravate her former offence. Mischief prompted assent; but the new feeling of kindliness towards him overruled the teasing instinct, and to Mr Musgrave’s relief she declined.

“I think,” she said, “you have seen enough of us for one day. When I come again I will leave Diogenes behind.”

She put out a hand and laid it with girlish impulsiveness on his sleeve.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Mr Musgrave looked down at the small hand as he might have looked at something that had alighted on his sleeve by accident, which could not be brushed off, but must be allowed to remove itself at its own convenience. It was a strong little hand, roughened with labour, and ungloved, because its owner had removed her glove the better to chastise Diogenes; but it was quite a nicely-shaped woman’s hand, and would have been fine and white had it been allowed to become so. Then he looked straight into the upturned face.

“Please don’t think any more about it,” he said, and meeting the grey eyes fully, smiled.

Chapter Thirteen

When Peggy Annersley parted from John Musgrave at his gate and set off down the road accompanied by the joyous Diogenes, now freed from the lead, Mr Musgrave turned about and slowly retraced his steps along the gravelled path he had traversed at Peggy’s side. His mind, despite the early prejudice which the sight of the young lady immodestly attired had excited, and the later annoyance of her unfortunate trespass, which anyone might well have resented, harboured no unkindly thought. He was even conscious of a faint amusement as he recalled the astonishing picture of her unexpected presence in his kitchen, and his own amazement at finding her there. She stimulated alike his interest and his curiosity. It is impossible to experience interest in another human being and remain altogether indifferent in feeling, particularly when that interest is centred in a member of the opposite sex. John Musgrave was not given to self-analysis, nor did he disturb his mind with problems of this nature. Had it occurred to him that a mild interest in a prepossessing young woman held possibilities of unexpected development he would promptly have banished the captivating Peggy from the place she engaged in his thoughts. At that stage in their acquaintance this would have been quite simple of accomplishment. John Musgrave would have thought so, at least. But the mind is an odd store-room, and many things dwell in it which the owner is powerless to eject – small, persistent, elusive thoughts which hide behind the lumber of inconsequent things.

As Mr Musgrave slowly paced the gravel walk, lost in a not unpleasing reverie, he became suddenly aware of an insignificant object lying in his path, and, stooping to examine this object at closer range, discovered that it was a woman’s glove. Since only one woman had used that path recently, since, too, the glove had assuredly not been there when he had accompanied Peggy to the gate, the inference pointed conclusively to the glove being Peggy’s property.

John Musgrave picked it up, and held it between his fingers. Then he placed it across the palm of one hand and examined it with curiosity, after the manner of a collector who has discovered some new object of interest. It was a small glove, absurdly small it seemed to John Musgrave as it lay across his large palm, and it was obviously new. Had Mr Musgrave been more experienced in the matter of women’s dress he would have realised from the fact of its newness that the owner would make some effort to recover her property, an odd glove being useless, and no woman caring to sacrifice a new pair. But Mr Musgrave did not consider this point. He was for the time absorbed in contemplation of the absurd thing.

Having examined it on the one side, he reversed it on his palm and examined it on the other. Then he took it up, and idly, in abstracted mood, thrust his fingers into it and began pulling it over his hand. The futility of attempting to fit a larger object into a smaller was immediately demonstrated; the kid split obligingly at the seams to accommodate the hand that was never intended to fill it, and John Musgrave, gazing at the mischief he had wrought, beheld his large knuckles bursting through the tear. The new glove was no longer a thing of any value.

At the moment of realising what he had done he became aware of a still more disquieting circumstance: the gate behind him clicked and the sound of rapid footsteps fell upon his ear. Hastily, with a change of colour which suggested a conscience not altogether free from guilt, he proceeded to drag the glove off his hand. But the thing resisted stubbornly, and the girl was almost at his elbow. He desisted from his efforts, and swung round and faced her, concealing his hand awkwardly behind his back. There was nothing in the expression of the demure face that met his gaze to betray that the girl had any suspicion why that right arm of his should be doubled behind his back; but to one familiar with Peggy the guilelessness of her look might have suggested knowledge.

“I’m sorry to trouble you again,” she said softly, “but I have dropped a glove. It’s a new glove, and I don’t wish to lose it. I thought it might be in the garden, perhaps.”

Mr Musgrave hesitated, and was lost. He dissembled. To have admitted in the first instance having found the glove, even though he had to confess to having spoilt it, would have been simple, but he had let the opportunity slip; to own to it now would prove embarrassing. He looked with discomfited eyes along the path.

“I do not see it,” he said.

“No,” replied Peggy, “neither do I. But I thought…”

“Perhaps,” said Mr Musgrave quickly, “you left it in the kitchen. I will tell the servants to look. It shall be returned to you.”

“I had it,” Peggy persisted, “when I was talking with you in the hall.”

“Yes?” he said. “Then – then perhaps it is there. It shall be found.”

A spirit of wickedness entered into Peggy.

“Never mind,” she said brightly. “It serves me right if I have lost it. Don’t trouble to hunt for it, Mr Musgrave. I came back because I thought I might find it near the gate; but plainly it isn’t here. Good-bye again.”

She held out a determined hand. Mr Musgrave was faced with the greatest dilemma he had ever experienced. What was he to do? Courtesy demanded that he should take her hand; to ignore it would be unpardonable. To extend the left hand was equally impossible; to offer the right was to acknowledge his duplicity, and might lead to an altogether wrong conception of his motives. A man when he acts upon impulse is not necessarily guided by any motive. For the fraction of a second he hesitated; then, with perfect gravity, he drew his arm from behind his back, and with the hand still wearing the torn fragments of the lost glove he silently touched her fingers. Peggy’s grey eyes were on his face; they did not fall, he observed, once to his hand. He felt grateful to her. A little tact – and tact is but the dictates of a kindly nature – smoothes over many awkward situations.

He returned with her to the gate and opened it for her, and raised his hat gravely as she passed through, to be greeted with boisterous effusiveness by Diogenes, who had reluctantly waited outside.

“He’s rather a dear, Diogenes,” she said, as she proceeded down the road, a little more soberly now. “He made me feel a little mean female cad.”

John Musgrave, returning along the path, drew off the torn glove and slipped it into his pocket. Another link had been formed in the chain of impressions.

By the time Peggy reached the Hall her self-abasement had evaporated, and her usual good spirits reasserted themselves. She made directly for the drawing-room, where Mrs Chadwick, after a disappointing afternoon, lay limply against the cushions of a sofa, solacing herself with the inevitable cigarette. She looked round at Peggy’s entrance, and was so relieved to see some one bright and young and wholesome that the resentment she was prepared to show vanished – in her welcoming smile. Peggy was one of those fortunate people who disarm wrath by reason of unfailing good temper.

“You are late,” Mrs Chadwick said. “If you want fresh tea you will have to ring for it.”

“I don’t mind it cold,” Peggy returned, attending to her needs at the tea-table and smiling pleasantly to herself the while. “Tired?” she asked, dropping comfortably into a seat, and surveying her aunt inquiringly above the tea-cup in her hand.

“Tired and bored,” Mrs Chadwick answered.

“Been entertaining the aborigines, I suppose?”

“Yes. You might have stayed to help me. These people… Peggy, I consider it is in the nature of a solecism to be so dull; it’s a breach of good taste.”

“They can’t help it,” Peggy said soothingly. “I expect if we had lived all our days in Moresby we should be dull too. It’s stultifying. I am sorry you have had such a slow time. I’ve been enjoying myself – hugely. I’ve had most surprising adventures.”

Mrs Chadwick laughed.

“You generally do,” she answered. “But it puzzles me to think how you contrive adventures in Moresby. Nothing ever happens when I pass beyond the gates. It would cause me a shock if it did.”

“It caused me several shocks,” Peggy replied, looking amused. “I experience them again when I review the afternoon’s doings. You’d never guess where I’ve been.”

“Then I won’t try to. Tell me. If you give me a shock it may shake off the ennui I am suffering. You have done something audacious, I suppose.”

Peggy ceased munching her cake and tried to look serious, but failed. Two tantalising dimples played at the corners of her mouth and her eyes shone wickedly.

“A little audacious, perhaps,” she allowed. “In the first place, I’ve been walking out with the sexton. He was quite interesting and agreeable until he began to discuss corpses. That made me feel uncomfortable; so I left him and went to call on Mr Musgrave.”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs Chadwick.

“It is all right,” Peggy proceeded reassuringly. “Nobody saw me. I slipped in through the tradesmen’s entrance and interviewed him in the kitchen chaperoned by the cook and a sour-faced parlourmaid. Having satisfied the proprieties thus far, we proceeded to the hall for more intimate conversation. He is not as fossilised as he looks. He accompanied me through the garden and kept my glove for a souvenir of the visit. And I think,” Peggy paused and looked into the fire with a dancing gleam of mischief in the grey eyes, “I think,” she added, smiling, “that he will send me a present of a new pair. Now confess, you would never have credited John with being such a sport.”

“When you have finished romancing,” Mrs Chadwick said severely, “perhaps you will explain exactly what you have been up to. If you had wished to see Mr Musgrave you could have accomplished your purpose by remaining at home. He was here this afternoon.”

“That wouldn’t have proved so exciting,” Peggy returned. “He doesn’t open out in front of other people. I like John best in his own home.”

She rose with a laugh, and, approaching the sofa, seated herself at Mrs Chadwick’s side.

“I couldn’t help it,” she said with an affectation of contrition. “It all just happened. Things will, you know.”

And then she gave a more detailed account of the afternoon’s doings. Mrs Chadwick was amused, in spite of a slight vexation. Peggy’s veracious version of her intrusion on Mr Musgrave was disconcerting to her listener; and the anecdote of the glove, which lost nothing in the telling, seemed to Mrs Chadwick, who possessed a certain insight into John Musgrave’s sensitive mind, the last straw in the load of prejudice which would bias John Musgrave’s opinion of her niece. She could cheerfully at the moment have boxed Peggy’s ears. But Peggy, laughing and unrepentant, hung over her aunt and kissed her. Mrs Chadwick was as weak as water when Peggy coaxed.

“I hope he doesn’t send you that pair of gloves,” was all she said.

But John Musgrave did send the gloves. He drove into Rushleigh himself for the purpose of matching the torn glove in his possession, and, failing to do this, posted it to London, and received a similar pair by return. He posted this pair to Peggy with a brief note of apology, which, when she had read it, Peggy, for some unexplained reason, locked away in a drawer.

The note read as follows:

“Dear Miss Annersley, —

“You will, I trust, pardon me for having destroyed in a moment of abstraction the glove you dropped in my garden. I believe I have succeeded in matching it, and hope that the pair enclosed will serve as well as that which my awkwardness ruined. I apologise for my carelessness, and the consequent delay in returning your property.

“Yours faithfully, —“John Musgrave.”

“But he hasn’t returned my property,” mused Peggy, with the new pair of gloves in one hand and Mr Musgrave’s note in the other. “I wonder what he has done with it?”

Chapter Fourteen

With the approach of Christmas Mr Musgrave’s quiet home took on the air of an over-populated city. A strange woman in a nurse’s uniform swelled the party in the kitchen when she was not in the nursery with the two youngest members of Mrs Sommers’ family. She was a young, nice-looking woman, and her presence, though welcomed by the other servants, was bitterly resented by Eliza. In Mrs Sommers’ nurse Eliza beheld a rival, though where rivalry came in in a field that admitted no competition it were difficult to say.

When Eliza had condescended to fill the position of housemaid in a bachelor establishment she had not allowed for this objectionable practice of family gathering. Clearly Mr Musgrave should spend Christmas in his sister’s home and not introduce an entire family into his house to the inconvenience of his servants. It was very inconsiderate.

Martha only laughed when Eliza aired her grievance. She liked family gatherings. As well cook for a dozen as for one, she declared. The same amount of trouble with a little extra labour went to the preparation of the larger meals. And Martha loved to have Miss Belle in the house, and Miss Belle’s children. Miss Belle’s husband was there also, and a responsible-looking person who, with an anglicised pronunciation, described himself as a valet. Eliza did not object so strongly to this addition, his manners being irreproachable and the tone of his conversation gentlemanly. Also he saved her trouble by carrying the hot water upstairs and performing many small duties that were not a part of his regular office. He sized Eliza up very quickly, and behaved towards her with such exemplary chivalry that he speedily won her susceptible heart, so that Eliza, with some reluctance, half relinquished the idea that she was destined to become eventually Mrs John Musgrave, in order to entertain the possibility of being selected by Fate as the wife of the gentlemanly valet. The valet, backed with the comfortable safeguard of a wife at home, did nothing to discourage the assumption. Men have not without reason won the distinction of being considered deceivers of the fair sex.

The arrival of the Sommers, and the contemporaneous arrival of a house-party at the Hall, resulted in a succession of entertainments such as Moresby had not previously known. Mrs Chadwick conceived the idea of getting up theatricals and a series of tableaux, in which the Moresby residents were invited to take part. She also got a kinema operator down and invited the entire village to view the films.

The kinema party was fixed for Boxing Night; the tableaux were to follow a dinner to be given on Christmas Eve. The villagers were not bidden to the Christmas Eve party, but the ringers were invited to go up to the Hall after ringing the chime and regale themselves on hot punch.

Moresby on the whole was pleasantly excited. Things were being done in the good old style, even to the distribution of blankets and coals and other comforts acceptable to the season, though received with a certain grudging mistrust which would appear to be the recognised spirit in which to accept charity. There is an etiquette even in the manner of accepting patronage; the recipient feels it incumbent on him to be patronising to the giver of alms in order to retain a proper sense of independence. Let no one who gives blind himself to the fact that he is receiving as well as distributing favours.

John Musgrave gave regularly at Christmas, and handsomely, to his poorer neighbours; Miss Simpson also gave; but, since she demanded gratitude, and Mr Musgrave demanded nothing, regarding his charity in the light of a duty which his more fortunate circumstances imposed, he received a more generous meed of thanks, and a less grudging acceptance of his gifts. Mr Musgrave’s bounty received his personal supervision, and was packed and ultimately delivered by his chauffeur, with Mr Musgrave’s compliments and the season’s greetings; Miss Simpson was her own almoner, and dispensed with her gifts a little timely homily on the virtues of frugality and sobriety, and the need for a humble and grateful heart. But humility – at best an objectionable virtue – has gone out of fashion, and gratitude is a plant which is not usually fostered with the care it deserves. The poor of Moresby accepted Miss Simpson’s gifts – they were glad enough to accept anything – but they ridiculed her homilies behind her back.

“I always believe in a word in season,” she informed the vicar.

“So do I,” he returned. “Only it is so difficult to recognise the season.”

Miss Simpson attended the Hall parties, not because she enjoyed them, but she could not keep away. She made unkind remarks about the Chadwicks and their doings. She was, though she would not have admitted it, jealous. She resented the coming of these people; their careless patronage of the village, which their immense wealth made so easy that it could scarcely be counted to them as a kindness; their untiring social efforts to bring Moresby and Rushleigh into contact, and to gather all sorts and conditions of men and women beneath their hospitable roof. The Chadwicks were altogether too democratic. But above and beyond everything else, the bright, gay personality of saucy Peggy Annersley proved the canker in the rose of her happiness. She suspected Peggy Annersley of having designs on Mr Musgrave, which was unjust. Peggy had designs on no one at that period in her career.

John Musgrave, despite the pressure that was brought to bear to shake his resolution, refused to take part in the theatricals or to pose in the groups for the living pictures. Mrs Chadwick asked him; Belle attempted persuasion; and Peggy coaxed unsuccessfully. Mr Musgrave was embarrassed at the mere suggestion of dressing in character and posturing before the footlights of the newly-erected stage for the edification of Moresby and the amusement of Mrs Chadwick’s guests. He was embarrassed, too, at being compelled to repeatedly refuse his persistent tormentors.

“I did so hope you would be Lancelot to my Guinevere,” Peggy said reproachfully. “And I wanted you to be Tristram and Othello to my Isolde and Desdemona. They are all lovely impersonations, and the costumes are gorgeous. You’d make a heavenly gladiator, too.”

“I should not be at home in these parts,” he said gravely.

“But,” urged Peggy, “it’s so simple. I’ll rehearse you. You’d find it awfully amusing.”

“I do not think so,” he replied.

“Then will you be Bill Sykes, with Diogenes and a revolver? – and I’ll be Nancy. You would only have to murder me. If you don’t like the lover parts you’d enjoy that.”

There was a gleam in the grey eyes that John Musgrave was unable to account for; he saw nothing funny in such a sordid scene.

“I do not like that idea any better,” he said. Then he made a sudden appeal to her generosity, his air slightly apologetic, almost, it occurred to Peggy, humble. “Please leave me out of it,” he begged. “I’m a very prosy person. These things are better suited to the younger generation. Many men will enjoy filling these parts with you; I shall enjoy looking on.”

Peggy gave in. She had not expected Mr Musgrave to agree to her proposes; she had, indeed, been guilty of teasing him. But she endeavoured with some success to make him believe in her acute disappointment, so that when he left her it was with a sense of his own ungraciousness, and a desire to make amends in any way possible for having been disobliging, if not actually discourteous, to a young lady who was, he could not but admit, both amiable and charming. The difficulty was how to make amends. After considering the matter seriously and developing and rejecting many ideas, he decided that he would be forced to remain indebted until the opportunity presented itself for discharging the obligation. He really felt extremely and quite unnecessarily grateful to Miss Annersley. There was, on the face of it, no obligation to discharge. Mr Musgrave was advancing a little way along the road of complexities that go to the making of human emotions. He had begun by feeling an interest in this young woman. Interest is a comprehensive term embodying many sentiments and capable of unforeseen developments. Peggy was undoubtedly a dangerously pretty person to become an object of interest to a middle-aged bachelor.

If Mr Musgrave thought Peggy pretty – and he did consider her pretty – on ordinary occasions, he found her amazingly lovely tricked out in stage attire, when, at the conclusion of the Christmas Eve dinner, he repaired with the other guests to the temporary theatre and viewed a succession of brilliantly arranged tableaux which, despite the fact that they were exceedingly well done and perfectly staged, he mentally pronounced a stupid form of entertainment for intelligent adults. Mummery of any kind appealed to him as undignified. Never in all his forty years had he felt the slightest temptation to play the fool; it always surprised him to see other people doing it. And this histrionic grouping was but playing the fool in serious fashion; it was a game of vanity better suited to children. But the pictures were pretty. He admitted that. Most of the guests appeared to enjoy them.