Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“I am afraid you are bored with this,” his host said, approaching him during an interval in the performance, having observed with the turning up of the lights Mr Musgrave’s serious expression. “Come along to the billiard-room and have a smoke.”

“I am not bored,” John Musgrave answered, as he left his seat and accompanied Will Chadwick with a willingness which seemed to discredit his assertion. “I was interested, and – and surprised.”

“Surprised,” suggested Mr Chadwick, “that people can find amusement in this sort of thing? Very little amuses most of us. I’ve seen quite brainy fellows absorbed in watching flies pitch on a lump of sugar. Their interest was sporting, and had a financial basis, certainly. In this instance it is the pleasure of the senses that is appealed to. I enjoy watching pretty women posturing myself.”

“I have no doubt it is artistic,” returned John Musgrave reflectively.

It passed through his mind that a pretty woman appeals to the senses quite as effectively in the natural poses of everyday life, but he did not voice his thoughts. The suggestion of women posturing for the enjoyment of the other sex jarred his fastidiousness. John Musgrave held women reverently in his thoughts, or, rather, he held his ideal of womanhood in reverence; he knew very little about women in reality.

There was a fair sprinkling of men in the billiard-room when they entered, who had repaired thither for their refreshment during the interval. They were smoking and drinking and criticising, with a freedom which occurred to Mr Musgrave as not in the best of taste, some of the scenes that had been staged and the persons who had taken part in them. John Musgrave found himself standing near a couple of young men from Rushleigh whom he knew very well by sight, though he was not acquainted with them. One of them was engaged in watching two men playing a hundred up; the other was eagerly talking to his inattentive companion about Peggy Annersley, whose posturing had apparently pleased his appreciative eye.

“She’s the gardener,” he was saying, and Mr Musgrave frowned with annoyance when he realised who it was the youth was discussing with such avidity. “A lady gardener – a real lady, you know.”

His friend, if he heard, showed no interest; his attention was centred in the balls. The youth jerked his arm.

“She is,” he insisted, “a real lady. I know it for a fact.”

“All right, my dear chap,” the other returned, unmoved. “I know quite a nice girl who sells shrimps.”

Mr Musgrave felt his anger rising, though why he should feel angry he did not understand. It hurt him that Peggy Annersley’s name – the young cub spoke of her as Peggy – should be bandied about in this fashion. It hurt him more that Peggy should be satisfied to dress up and posture for the delectation of these youths. When the rest of the men left the billiard-room he remained behind alone.

Chapter Fifteen

“Oh,” said Peggy Annersley, “I didn’t suppose there would be anybody here.” This was not strictly accurate, because Peggy had seen Mr Musgrave through the open door as she was passing the billiard-room and had entered on the spur of the moment to discover why he was there, and alone. Such is the bump of feminine curiosity. “Have you been here long?”

“Since the interval,” he answered, rising at her entry, and confronting her with the shame-faced air of a man caught playing truant.

“Then you missed the pictures?”

“I was present during the first half of the programme,” he explained, feeling awkward under the steady regard of the observant grey eyes. To have missed viewing the pictures he began to realise was a breach of his duty as a guest.

“And you didn’t care for them?”

“I would scarcely put it that way,” Mr Musgrave said very earnestly. “The pictures were pretty; but the room was very hot; I preferred remaining here. Are the tableaux finished?”

“Not quite. But my part in them is. I came out became I was so thirsty. I’ve just been murdered by Othello.”

She seated herself on a settee and smiled at John Musgrave, who stood surveying her with gravely-intent gaze. She was still attired in Shakespearian costume and wore a little jewelled cap on her bright hair, which fell about her shoulders and gave her an air of extreme youth. John Musgrave, while he regarded her, was thinking how pretty she looked.

“You appear to have a predilection for being murdered,” he observed. “What shall I get you – lemonade?”

She made a negative movement of her head.

“Champagne, please. I’m frightfully tired.”

Mr Musgrave poured out a glass of the sparkling wine and handed it to her. He stood behind her while she drank it, and when she finished the wine he took the glass from her and replaced it on the table. When he turned about from performing this office he observed Miss Annersley put out a hand towards a box of cigarettes within reach. He had not suspected before that she smoked. Her action occasioned him a most unpleasant shock. Peggy was to experience a shock also. Before she could select a cigarette and withdraw her hand from the box another hand closed suddenly upon hers and held it firmly. John Musgrave had come quickly behind her and imprisoned her hand with his own.

“Please don’t do that,” he said. He leaned over the settee, his face almost on a level with hers, his eyes meeting hers steadily. “I’ve no right to dictate to you… but I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”

A glint of laughter shone in Peggy’s eyes. The situation was growing increasingly funny. In her world, to see women smoke was such an ordinary matter that it had not struck her that anyone – not even John Musgrave – could possibly object. But John, of course, was Moresby, and Moresby had its traditions, and lived by them.

“Why?” she asked.

“It’s – unwomanly,” he returned seriously.

“Oh!” said Peggy. “What, I wonder, is conveyed exactly by the term ‘womanly’? I understood that that expression belonged to the Middle Ages.”

“I hope not,” Mr Musgrave said.

“Well, define it.”

“A womanly woman,” Mr Musgrave began slowly, weighing his words as though he felt that the subject were deserving of his utmost care in an appropriate selection of language, “is first and foremost a gentlewoman.”

“H’m!” commented Peggy. She was tempted to interrupt him in order to inquire if he did not consider her a gentlewoman, but refrained.

“She is,” Mr Musgrave proceeded, “considerate in her actions and in her conversation. She is always sincere and thoughtful for others; and she would never do anything unbecoming to her sex, or unworthy of herself. That is what I understand by the term womanly.”

“She would be a bit dull, don’t you think?” Peggy hazarded. “She sounds priggish to me. Do you really believe you would like her, Mr Musgrave? I think you’d be fed up in no time. She wouldn’t, for instance, permit you to stand talking to her and holding her hand all the while. That would, according to your definition as I interpret it, be unseemly on her part.”

John Musgrave promptly released her hand and straightened himself and looked grave. Peggy laughed.

“That would have been better left unsaid,” she remarked demurely. “It was an indiscretion of speech. I fear it would take me a long time to learn how to be womanly, don’t you?”

“Don’t you think that possibly you are womanly without knowing it?” he asked.

“Shall I tell you what the term womanly conveys to me?” Peggy said.

“If you will,” he replied.

“It suggests a woman of a big nature and a warm heart. She doesn’t bother her head as to whether what she is doing is becoming; but her conscience troubles her when she does something which is not quite square and honest, which is perhaps a little mean. She strives to be helpful and companionable and sympathetic, and she detests censoriousness and unkind criticism, either in herself or others.”

“I am afraid,” Mr Musgrave said, with an insight which Peggy had not credited him with possessing, “that you are rebuking me for impertinence.”

Peggy flushed, and raised her face quickly to his.

“No,” she contradicted; “no. I think you meant to be kind.”

There was something very bewitching in Peggy’s upturned face, in the unwonted earnestness of her eyes, and the sweetly serious curve of the parted lips. John Musgrave, as he returned her steady gaze, was more powerfully influenced than he had any idea of. He believed that his interest in Peggy was of the paternal, platonic order. Many people become obsessed with the platonic ideal and travel far along the road of life without discovering that between a man and woman platonic affection is unnatural. There have been instances of platonic love, but these are few; it is a rare and an abnormal emotion.

“I wish,” he said with unusual impressment, “that you would do something to please me.”

“What is that?” inquired Peggy, with an instinctive understanding of what he had it in his mind to ask.

“I want you to promise that you will give up smoking.”

Peggy did not alter her position; neither did John Musgrave. As she sat looking up at him, a tiny pucker knitting her brows, he remained bending over her, intently watching her face without the alteration of a muscle in his own. He anticipated her answer; none the less he felt extraordinarily disappointed when she spoke.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “It isn’t,” she added slowly, “that I do not wish to oblige you, nor that it would be exactly difficult for me to make such a promise. But I can’t recognise any reason why I should. It would be tantamount to an admission that I agree with you that the practice is objectionable. I do not. And I do not wish to encourage your mistaken belief by acquiescing in it. I am sorry. But, you see, I should feel myself something of a humbug if I promised that. I will not, however, offend your sensibilities by smoking in your presence.”

“It is the act itself, not the place or time of committing it that is of importance,” he said with a touch of displeasure.

Peggy considered this ungracious of him; he might at least have thanked her for her consideration for his feelings.

“In that case,” she returned audaciously, “perhaps you will be so kind as to light me a cigarette?”

Mr Musgrave felt annoyed, and showed it.

“No,” he answered bluntly. “At the risk of appearing discourteous, I decline to do that.”

Peggy was not affronted. She would have thought less of him if he had complied. If one possessed principles, even when they chanced to be mistaken, one had to be consistent and act in accordance with them. Peggy was faithful to her own principles, and she liked sincerity in others.

At that moment, falling upon the sudden hush in the room which had followed John Musgrave’s curt speech, starting on a single note, thrice repeated, and then bursting into a joyous peal, the Moresby chimes broke softly on the stillness, died away on the wind, and were borne back to their listening ears with a fuller, sweeter cadence, conveying the message of the centuries of peace and good-will upon earth. Peggy, when she caught the sound, rose slowly to her feet.

“They’ll be assembling in the hall now,” she said, and looked at John Musgrave. “We had better join them.”

“Yes,” he said.

Suddenly she held out her hand.

“Peace and good-will,” she said, smiling. “We’ve got to be friends, you know, on Christmas morning.”

“Yes,” agreed John Musgrave, consulting the clock. “But it wants ten minutes to the hour yet.”

Peggy broke into a little laugh and withdrew her hand hastily before he could take it.

“Your speech admits of only one interpretation,” she said; “you don’t wish to befriends before the hour strikes.”

“My remark must have been very misleading to have conveyed that impression,” he returned. “I was not aware that we were upon unfriendly terms. A difference of opinion does not necessitate the breaking of a friendship.”

“Perhaps not,” agreed Peggy, looking amused. “But it strains the relationship somewhat. Come along, Mr Musgrave, and toast the friendship in a bumper of milk punch.”

Mr Musgrave accompanied her from the room, and emerging at her side into the great hall, already thronged with the other guests, was instantly separated from his companion by half a dozen eager young men, who bore Peggy away among them and left Mr Musgrave on the outskirts, as it were, of the festivities, looking, as he felt, utterly stranded and out of touch with his surroundings.

Miss Simpson, who had sought in vain for him throughout the evening, seeing him standing alone, so evidently out of his element, made her determined way across the width of the hall and joined him. Mr Musgrave did not feel as grateful to her as he might have felt. He spent much of his time on these social evenings in carefully avoiding her. But it is not always possible to evade a person whose purpose in life it is to frustrate this aim, particularly when the object of the pursuit shrinks from hurting the pursuer’s feelings, Therefore when Miss Simpson hurried up to Mr Musgrave, with anxiety and determination in her eyes, he received her with the reserved politeness of a perfectly courteous person, accepting the inevitable with a fairly good grace.

“They are going to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’” she said. “I loathe these stupid customs. But one cannot make one’s self conspicuous; one has to do as the rest do.”

“Assuredly,” Mr Musgrave agreed, with his ear inclined towards Miss Simpson and his eye fixed on a huge punch-bowl standing on a table in the centre of the hall, presided over by the female butler and her helpers.

The scene in the hall, thronged with its brilliant assemblage of guests, many of whom wore, as Peggy did, the costumes in which they had appeared in the tableaux, suggested to Mr Musgrave’s mind a scene from an opera. The broad oak staircase, leading up from either side and ending in a gallery connecting both, was crowded with young people. Peggy had joined one of the groups on the stairs, a group composed largely of young men, whose sallies seemed to be affording her considerable amusement. When the punch was served round and every one, glass in hand, waited for the striking of the hour, looking up to where she stood, leaning against the baluster in her emerald velvet robe, her round white arm upraised holding its glass aloft, Mr Musgrave met her eyes fully as the hour chimed forth, and, meeting them, was conscious that she was looking towards him deliberately, with a kindly smile parting her lips. She leaned down towards him, and, putting the glass to her lips, drank to him. John Musgrave made a slight inclination of his head and drank to her in return. Then, scarce knowing what his companion was saying, amid the hum of talk and laughter, and the curious abstraction of his thoughts, he observed sententiously:

“There is a sort of dignity in these old customs. I do not think I have ever enjoyed a Christmas party more.”

And Miss Simpson, who had just remarked to him on the want of respect for the day which this hilarity betokened, regarded him with a wondering reproach, and answered flatly:

“It is very gay, certainly – but – dignified! Do you really think so?”

Chapter Sixteen

The vicar, as he took off his surplice after the early celebration on Christmas morning, and turned to hang it on its peg, became aware that Robert had entered the vestry, and was hovering about, busying himself unnecessarily, moving things ostentatiously and replacing them in the same positions, and watching the vicar furtively meanwhile, as a man might whose conscience is not altogether free from reproach. The vicar looked at his sexton with as much severity as he was capable of assuming towards Robert, whose failings were sufficiently familiar to him to have ceased to appear disproportionately grave. But Robert merited rebuke, and was apparently expecting it. In anticipation of reproof he attempted propitiation.

“Never seed a bigger congregation than we ’ad for ’Oly Commoonion this morning, sir,” he observed. “Folks don’t turn up most places like they do at our church.”

Some of the credit for the large congregation he appropriated to himself. The vicar finished disrobing, and then faced deliberately round.

“I am at least relieved,” he said, “that you were capable of putting in an appearance.”

“Oh ay,” Robert answered cheerfully. “I’ve never failed these thirty year – though there ’ave been times, I allow, when I’d rather a laid a-bed. But Hannah sees to that.”

“I heard,” the vicar said gravely, “that you were very drunk last night, Robert.”

“I was, sir,” Robert admitted, unabashed.

When an unpleasant situation had to be faced he liked to face it and get it over. Usually on these occasions he carried matters to a triumphant finish and got as much satisfaction out of them as tribulation. When a thing is done, it’s done, was Robert’s philosophy; no use grizzling over it.

“I am ashamed of you,” the vicar said. “Your conduct was a serious abuse of hospitality. They tell me you were carried home utterly incapable.”

“I was, sir,” Robert admitted again.

“Hadn’t Hannah something to say about that?” the vicar inquired, repressing an inclination to smile. His knowledge of the power and quality of Mrs Robert’s eloquence on these occasions suggested that further reprimanding on his side was superfluous.

Robert slowly stroked his beard and looked, the vicar could not but observe, pleasantly reminiscent.

“I expect she ’ad, sir,” he said. “But, thank God! I was too far gone to bear aught ’er said. Daresay she talked all night, too; she generally does.”

Robert seized the vicar’s overcoat and helped him into it, and, with unusual solicitude for his health, inquired if he had not thought of wearing a muffler.

“The cold’s cruel,” he said. “You ought to take care o’ yer throat. Think o’ the disappointment if you was laid by, and couldn’t preach.”

“I wish,” the vicar observed drily, “that you would study your own constitution as carefully.”

“That’s all right, sir,” Robert answered, wilfully misunderstanding. “I allays wears a old muffler when the weather’s sharp.”

He handed the vicar his hat, performing these supererogatory offices with the patronising air of a man humouring his superior’s peculiarities.

“Milk punch they said it was,” he muttered in the form of a soliloquy. “I thought a babby could ’a’ swallowed it. Milk don’t digest, I reckon, in a stummick come to my age. But ’twas pretty drinking, howsomever.”

So much, the vicar mused, for Robert’s repentance. It were as profitable to rebuke the weather for inclemency as Robert for his sins.

The vicar dismissed Robert from his mind on emerging into the open, and allowed his thoughts to dwell instead on something he had witnessed the previous night, and had reviewed so often since, that, brief as had been his glimpse of the scene, it was photographed on his memory with the distinctness of a picture actually present to his gaze. This scene which was so startlingly fresh in his mind was a glimpse he had obtained in passing the open door of the billiard-room, of John Musgrave holding Peggy Annersley’s hand while he hung over the back of the settee on which she was seated and looked into the upturned face. So quiet had been the grouping of this picture, so utterly unexpected and unreal had it appeared to Walter Errol’s surprised gaze, that it might have been the enactment of another tableau, such as those he had been witnessing in the room he had just left. One long astonished look he had given it, and then, utterly bewildered, like a man who feels his solid world reduced to unsubstantiality, he had passed on and mingled with the other guests in the hall. He had been a witness of the tardy appearance of John Musgrave and Miss Annersley; and for the rest of the night was conscious of a watchful curiosity in regard to them which, against his volition, he found himself exercising until the party broke up.

“Coelebs!.. Old Coelebs!” he mused, and laughed softly as he pursued his way to the vicarage, where, in the cosy morning-room, his wife and tiny daughter waited for him with their Christmas gifts.

A happy man was the vicar that Christmas morning, and comparing his comfortable, pleasant home with the lonely elegance of John Musgrave’s house it gave him genuine satisfaction to recall the amazing picture of John Musgrave bending over pretty Peggy Annersley in an attitude which conveyed more to the impartial observer than a merely friendly interest in his charming companion. Possibly last night was the first occasion on which John Musgrave had ever held a girl’s hand in this way and hung over her, looking into her eyes. Such conduct in the case of the average man would have counted for nothing, or for very little… But Coelebs… The man who never looked at a woman with the natural interest of the ordinary male…

The vicar broke into a smile at his own thoughts, and, since nothing had been said to raise a smile, was called upon by his wife to explain the cause of his good humour. His answer was ambiguous.

“I think,” he said, “that Mrs Chadwick is succeeding in some of her schemes with most unlooked-for results.”

“I fail to see that there was anything in last night’s party to suggest extraordinary developments,” Mrs Errol replied. She had not witnessed the scene which her husband had witnessed and he had not spoken of it to her. “And I don’t find anything in that to smile about. You must enjoy an abnormal sense of humour.”

“Perhaps I do,” he allowed. “Tell me what you think of Miss Peggy Annersley.”

Mrs Errol smiled in her turn, and glanced at her husband with the tolerant contempt women show towards their men when they suspect them of falling a victim to the fascinations of a popular member of their sex.

“You, too?” she said.

“There was nothing in my question to justify that remark,” said the vicar, who did not, however, appear to resent it. “Like Miss Dartle, I asked for information.”

“I think she is quite a nice girl,” replied Mrs Errol ungrudgingly; “and, judging by the way in which the men flock after her, they share my opinion. Doctor Fairbridge is crazy about her.”

“Oh!” said the vicar. Plainly this intelligence was not pleasing to him. Doctor Fairbridge was the Rushleigh practitioner, and he was young and good-looking, and unquestionably eligible. “You think that, do you? Should you say that he stands any chance of winning her?”

“She seems to like him,” Mrs Errol answered. “It would be a very suitable match. He is the right age, and his practice is good. They say he is clever. At the same time, I don’t fancy Miss Annersley is the kind of girl who is eager to get married. She will probably be difficult to please.”

“H’m?” remarked the vicar, and looked a trifle serious. He began to entertain doubts of Miss Annersley. “You wouldn’t, I suppose,” he hazarded, “suspect her of being a flirt?”

“That depends on what you mean exactly. Given the opportunity, every woman is a flirt. I wouldn’t accuse her of being unscrupulous. But all girls like attention; it is against human nature to discourage what one derives amusement from.”

“I wish human nature were different in that respect,” the vicar returned.

He was quite convinced that John Musgrave had no thought of flirting, and he did not like to believe that Miss Annersley was merely deriving amusement. She had looked, he recalled, on the previous night quite sweetly serious. But a woman might look serious and yet be inwardly amused. If Peggy Annersley was amusing herself at John Musgrave’s expense it would be the finish, the vicar realised, of his friend’s liking and respect for her sex. John Musgrave was not the type of man to make a heartbreak of it, but assuredly he would not essay a second time.

“I should like to know,” Mrs Errol said, “why you are so particularly concerned with Miss Annersley’s matrimonial affairs? Your interest is most extraordinary.”

Then it was that the vicar told her of the scene he had accidentally witnessed the previous night. She was not so greatly impressed as he had expected her to be, but a scene described is less effective than the same scene actually beheld. He found that he could not adequately depict the expression on the two faces; he could only explain baldly that John seemed very much in earnest.

“John always is,” she retorted. “That’s what makes him so dull. You don’t for one moment imagine, do you, that a pretty girl like Miss Annersley would fall in love with John?”