Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“I do not think that I took her feelings into consideration,” he answered. “I have a very strong suspicion that John is falling in love with her.”

“I’m not sure,” returned Mrs Errol, smiling, “that that wouldn’t be more amazing than the other thing. I can’t credit it – but I hope he is.”

“Time will show,” the vicar said. “If she is nothing better than a little baggage I hope he isn’t. He deserves a higher reward than the knowledge that he is affording Miss Annersley amusement.”

The Errols were dining with Mr Musgrave that day; an early dinner, according to the invariable custom in Mr Musgrave’s household on Christmas Day. The Musgrave party attended the morning service, at which the party from the Hall was also present. And to Mrs Errol’s surprise – she had never seen him there before – Doctor Fairbridge, who had motored out from Rushleigh, was seated beside Peggy Annersley in one of the Hall pews. Subsequently he accepted Mrs Chadwick’s invitation and returned with her party to the Hall.

Notwithstanding that Mrs Errol had professed scepticism of the romance her husband suspected in connection with John Musgrave and pretty Peggy, she found herself taking a greater interest in the principals in the little comedy, so that her attention wandered a good deal during the service and her watchful eyes travelled more than once from the demurely unconscious face of the girl to the strong, grave, immovable face of Mr Musgrave, which, for all its impassive expression, had once during the singing of the first hymn turned deliberately in Peggy’s direction with a quickness and keenness of look which Mrs Errol described as searching. If there was anything in her husband’s assumption – and she began to think there might be – John Musgrave would be well advised not to dally over his love-making, or the more energetic younger man would anticipate him in the bid for Miss Annersley’s favour. Looking at the young doctor and comparing his youth with Mr Musgrave’s somewhat austere middle-age, Mrs Errol formed the opinion that John’s chances were not great.

After the service the opposing forces met in the churchyard and exchanged greetings. It occurred to Mrs Errol that Peggy, hedged about with a bodyguard of young men, was fairly inaccessible; nevertheless John Musgrave penetrated the group and shook hands with her. The girl, Mrs Errol observed, aided him in his purpose. She drew a little apart and remained chatting with him for some minutes – minutes during which Mr Musgrave’s gaze never left the winsome face with its laughing eyes, which were raised in frank good-fellowship to his own. Whether there was any sentiment in his preference or not, the preference was undoubtedly there.

Mrs Sommers’ eldest boy, John the second, aged five, broke away from his mother and flung himself upon Peggy, interrupting John the elder’s tête-à-tête.

“I wish you were coming with us,” he said.

“That’s very sweet of you,” replied Peggy, with her arm about the child.

“Persuade her to, John,” said Mr Musgrave.

Peggy flashed a look at him.

“I wish I could,” she said; “but…”

“Of course,” he returned promptly. “I understand that it’s not possible.”

“Why can’t you come?” urged John the second, tugging at her hand. “Uncle John wants you, and so do I. Why can’t you come?”

“Miss Annersley has her aunt’s guests to entertain, John,” Mr Musgrave explained. “I am afraid we can’t prefer our claim.”

“She isn’t Miss Annersley, she’s Peggy,” the boy corrected. “Aren’t you?”

Peggy laughed.

“Sometimes I am,” she admitted. “But that’s a special privilege, John.”

“What’s that?” asked John junior.

Mr Musgrave, with a hand on his small nephew’s shoulder, undertook to answer this question.

“It is something you enjoy on account of your youth, and from which I am debarred, though I should better appreciate it, on account of my age. Youth has advantages.”

“I don’t think,” said Peggy, looking amused, “that he is the least bit wiser for your very able explanation.”

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “you can put it more plainly.”

“A special privilege, John,” she returned obligingly – and if she were addressing the child she looked directly at the man – “that sort of special privilege, is a favour one extends to a person one likes, in return for a similar favour. I don’t think that is much clearer,” she added, and suddenly felt herself blushing beneath Mr Musgrave’s steady gaze.

“The definition is perfectly obvious,” he replied. “But I fancy we have both been talking over John’s head.”

Peggy stooped abruptly and kissed the child. When she straightened herself she moved away with him and joined Mrs Sommers.

Chapter Seventeen

John Musgrave Sommers was in disgrace. He had been guilty of impertinence to Eliza; worse, he had committed an assault by kicking her maliciously with intent to do bodily harm. Eliza had complained to Mr Musgrave, and had presented his nephew’s conduct in the light of an enormity which she could not overlook until adequate measures had been taken to correct this infantile depravity, and so insure against a repetition of the offence.

Mr Musgrave carried the complaint to his sister and supported her with his presence, if with little else, in her attempt to bring the delinquent to a proper state of repentance. John Musgrave Sommers presented a defiant front and refused with all the obstinate inflexibility of his five years to acknowledge himself in the wrong.

“It was very wicked of you to kick Eliza,” his mother insisted. “When you are in a better frame of mind you will realise that. You must go to her and tell her you are sorry.”

“I’m not sorry,” John returned stoutly, with a watchful eye on his uncle, whose displeasure was manifest and the quality of whose anger John, not being familiar with, was anxious to test before provoking it further with possible unpleasant results to himself.

This positive assertion of an unrepentant spirit nonplussed his elders. Belle looked helplessly at her brother for inspiration; but Mr Musgrave avoided her eye with a care which suggested a cowardly sympathy with the offender if not with the offence. The punishment of children, while he admitted its necessity, was peculiarly distressing to him. Master John Sommers, with a child’s quick intuition, began to realise that he had very little to apprehend from his uncle, but his mother was a different matter; he had had contests with her before and he could not remember ever having come out of them triumphantly.

“John,” she said gravely, and with a gentleness which John did not find reassuring, because his mother was always gentle even before and after she smacked him, “you are not going to be a naughty little boy and grieve mother. You know it is very wrong to be rude to anyone, and it is dreadful to kick. I insist on your telling Eliza you are sorry. You must be sorry.”

“I’m not,” John persisted.

Belle appealed to her brother direct.

“Uncle John, what is to be done with this very naughty little boy?”

Mr Musgrave flushed and looked almost as uncomfortable as though he were being reprimanded for the kicking of Eliza instead of the chubby, unrepentant little sinner before him. He stared at the culprit and frowned.

“Perhaps,” he suggested hopefully, “if you let him run away and think about it he will change his mind.”

“No,” said Belle firmly, having grasped the fact that she would get no help in this quarter; “he has got to change his mind now. If you won’t say you are sorry, John, you will be punished – severely.”

John began to look sulky, but he showed no indication of a proper sense of his own wickedness. He had kicked Eliza deliberately, and had experienced immense satisfaction in the knowledge that he had thereby got a bit of his own back. Eliza was always annoying him and locking him out from the kitchen. He liked the kitchen. Martha gave him cakes when he found his way there; but Eliza baulked him in his purpose whenever she could by closing the door in his face.

“But I’m not sorry,” muttered John obstinately. “And you told me I mustn’t tell stories.”

It occurred to Mr Musgrave that the situation had come to a deadlock. He did not see how his sister would confute this argument. Clearly if John was not sorry he ought not to be compelled to make a false admission. To frighten a child into telling a lie was mistaken discipline.

Whether Mrs Sommers’ diplomacy would have proved equal to coping with the difficulty remained an undetermined point, for at this moment Mr Sommers entered the room, and his wife, manifestly relieved at his opportune arrival, shifted the responsibility of parental authority to his shoulders. Mr Sommers, while he appreciated the enormity of the offence, admitted in his own mind – though he would not have allowed his son to suspect it – extenuating circumstances. Had he been thirty years younger he would probably have acted in a similar manner. Eliza would exasperate any small boy into committing an assault.

“Come here,” said Charlie Sommers. He seated himself in a chair, and drew his son towards him and held him firmly between his knees. “Why did you kick Eliza?”

“Because she’s a disagreeable cat,” replied John.

“It is very rude to call people names,” his father said with a severity he was far from feeling, his opinion coinciding with his son’s. “And it is very rude to your uncle to behave in this way in his house. I expect he will not invite you again. Don’t you know it is very wrong to kick?”

John deliberated this. He knew very well that it was wrong, but he had a strong disinclination towards admitting it. His father waited for an answer.

“Yes,” he acknowledged grudgingly.

“And aren’t you sorry for doing wrong?”

“No,” the culprit replied with less hesitation this time.

“Then I must make you sorry,” said Mr Sommers resolutely. “Do you want me to spank you, John?”

John began to whimper. Of the three adults present John Musgrave was the most unpleasantly affected by his namesake’s tears; familiarity with John junior’s little tricks had hardened his parents’ sensibilities.

“Don’t you think,” said Mr Musgrave uneasily, “that you are – frightening the child?”

Charlie Sommers looked at his brother-in-law with amusement.

“He is less frightened than you are,” he answered. “He is only bent on getting his own way. Ring the bell, Uncle John, for Eliza. John is going to tell her he is sorry.”

“I’m n-not sorry,” blubbered John.

“You will be presently. If you won’t tell Eliza you are sorry for kicking her I am going to spank you.”

Mr Musgrave rang the bell and Eliza answered it in person, looking more sour than usual by reason of her outraged feelings. When her glance fell on Master John Sommers, sulky and unrepentant, but decidedly less confident, she sniffed indignantly and looked with cold disapproval on the assembled group. Mr Musgrave walked away to the window and stood with his back to the room. For the first time since he had engaged her he was not sure that he approved of Eliza, and he had never before felt so irritated with her habit of sniffing.

“I regret to hear that my little boy has been rude to you,” Mr Sommers said. “I have troubled you to come here in order that he shall apologise. Now, John, tell Eliza that you are sorry for being naughty.”

“I’m – ”

John felt the sudden tightening of the hand upon his arm, and hesitated. Then he faced Eliza with all the malevolence which a small boy is capable of expressing in his countenance, and muttered ungraciously:

“I’m sorry, because I’ve got to be.”

“Try again,” said Mr Sommers relentlessly; and Eliza sniffed louder, her light eyes on the child’s angry face.

John capitulated before overwhelming odds.

“I’m sorry,” he said more politely, and looked at his foot in preference to Eliza’s hard face, the foot which had committed, the assault.

“I’ve never been accustomed to be treated like that by children,” said Eliza acidly. “Boys are troublesome, I know, but they oughtn’t to be rude. I’m not used to it. I wouldn’t take a place where there were children, especially boys – ”

“That will do, Eliza,” observed Mr Musgrave, turning round. “You may go.”

At the curt finality of his tone Eliza withered. For a moment she appeared to be about to break, forth again, but, changing her mind, sniffed herself out of the room and closed the door viciously. Charlie Sommers, still holding his son between his knees, gazed sternly into the small rebellious face.

“You cut away upstairs, John,” he said. “And if ever you kick anyone again I’ll whip you.”

He got up when his son, obeying his instructions with extraordinary alacrity, had made his exit, and faced his brother-in-law with a laugh.

“John,” he said, “I am of the opinion that the punishment was in excess of the fault. How can you endure that sour-faced she-devil in the house? The look of her is enough to put a man off his meals.”

“She is perhaps a little unsympathetic,” John Musgrave allowed, recalling the look in Eliza’s eyes while they had rested on the boy. “But she serves my purpose. In a bachelor establishment a middle-aged woman is more satisfactory than a – a younger person.”

“The single state has its disadvantages,” Charlie Sommers said. “If to employ an Eliza is the penalty for bachelorhood I’d sooner be a Mormon.”

“I really think,” remarked Belle, who during this discussion had been pursuing a train of thought of her own, “that John ought not to be allowed to go to the kinema party this afternoon. He deserves some punishment. A disappointment like that would leave a more lasting impression.”

“Isn’t that,” asked her brother quickly, “being unnecessarily severe? He is a very small sinner, remember.”

“You old dear?” she said, smiling. “You spoil that child. One has to be severe with John; he forgets his sins so readily.”

“So did you when you were his age,” he answered. “As far as my memory serves, you were indulged more than John is; and I don’t think it had a deteriorating effect on your character.”

“That settles it,” Charlie Sommers put in. “John goes to the Hall.”

So John went to the Hall, and in a burst of confidence after the performance confessed to Peggy his wickedness of the morning, for which he expressed still an unrepentant spirit. Peggy carried him for punishment to the mistletoe and kissed him, struggling and resisting, beneath the bough, to Mr Musgrave’s open amusement. He wriggled away from her, and pointing a chubby finger at his uncle commanded her to punish Uncle John too.

“But Uncle John doesn’t merit punishment,” she said, with a bright blush and laughter in her eyes.

“That form of punishment is another special privilege, John,” Mr Musgrave remarked, with his gaze on Peggy’s rosy face.

“It is a special privilege which is any man’s due,” broke in Charlie Sommers, coming up and catching Peggy round the waist and kissing her soundly, “when a girl stands deliberately under the mistletoe.”

Mr Musgrave, who had witnessed this attack with amazement, turned away with a sense of annoyance at his brother-in-law’s bucolic humour. To kiss a woman beneath the mistletoe appeared to him as vulgar as kissing her without that flimsy excuse. He was surprised that Peggy did not show greater resentment at this treatment.

Charlie Sommers and Peggy looked at Mr Musgrave’s retreating back, and then at one another, and smiled.

“You have disgusted Mr Musgrave,” she said.

“I rather suspect him of jealousy,” he replied. “He hadn’t spunk enough or he’d have done the same himself.”

She flushed quickly.

“John would never be guilty of impertinence,” she returned.

“His sins are those of omission,” he retorted. “I think John’s an ass.”

“I think he is an eminently discreet and comfortable person,” she replied. “I should never feel afraid of mistletoe in his presence.”

“It appears to me,” he observed, eyeing the mistletoe above her head, “that you do not show particular trepidation in regard to the plant in anyone’s presence.”

Peggy received this remark in scornful silence. It is not always the case that a woman enjoys the last word.

But later in the afternoon, when John Musgrave was departing and she was wishing him good-bye, standing beneath the identical branch of mistletoe in the big dim hall, she saw his eyes travel to the bough and then to her lips, and she stood looking at him, smiling and ironical. John Musgrave might be an eminently discreet and comfortable person, but he was not without certain human weaknesses.

“The druids regarded it as a sacred plant,” he remarked, feeling constrained to say something on observing her gaze follow his.

“Did they? They were rather musty old people, weren’t they?”

“I think,” he returned, “that perhaps I am a little musty too.”

He took her hand and raised it and kissed it – under the mistletoe. There was in his action in doing this something so courtly and respectful, something so much more impressive in its significance than in Charlie Sommers’ careless embrace, that Peggy found, herself blushing warmly, felt her cheeks glow and her eyes grow bright as Mr Musgrave very gently released her hand and stood again erect, tall and unsmiling, while he bade her farewell. She felt like one of the gentlewomen of bygone times who smiled down at her from faded frames on the walls and who would have curtsied sedately in response to this respectful salutation. Peggy had an idea that she ought to curtsey: instead she said gaily:

“I’m so glad you came. It has been a ripping afternoon, hasn’t, it?”

Later, in the solitude of her own room, seated in a low chair before the fire, resting between the kinema entertainment of the afternoon, which had been for the young people of the village, and a similar entertainment to be held the same evening for the older inhabitants, her idle hands lying listlessly over the arms of her chair, a mischievous smile playing about her lips, she pictured the scene again, and Mr Musgrave’s face, and laughed softly. A pleasing light of satisfaction shone in her eyes, the satisfaction which a woman knows when she realises the sense of her own power.

“I believe,” she said, half aloud, which, since there was no one present to overhear her, was immaterial, “that John is falling in love with me.”

The dimple at the corner of her mouth deepened and the laughter in her eyes increased. Peggy was conscious of a feeling of triumph. She liked people to fall in love with her. She experienced a distinct disinclination, however, to fall in love herself. She was a very long way, she believed, from falling in love with fossilised John Musgrave.

Chapter Eighteen

With the New Year – or, rather, in advance of it – Peggy’s youngest sister arrived at the Hall. Mrs Chadwick had invited the entire family; but the Midland doctor could not leave her practice, and the children of the married niece had inconveniently developed whooping-cough; so Sophy, the architect, had divided her holiday, spending Christmas with her married sister and coming on to the Hall for the finish of the festivities, which included a dance to be held on New Year’s Eve and a round of somewhat dull dinners and similar entertainments wherewith the Chadwicks’ guests sought to make a return of hospitality.

Sophy hated dinner-parties, but she looked forward with considerable enthusiasm to the coming dance. Mrs Chadwick had provided both nieces with dresses for the occasion, and, in order that these independent young women should not feel unduly indebted, she called these her Christmas gifts.

“Aunt Ruby is a brick,” remarked Sophy, as she surveyed herself complacently in the mirror in her sister’s room and wondered what use the gauzy creation would serve when she got back to her plans and her desk. “I look really chic, don’t I?”

“You look sweet,” Peggy said with warm sincerity; and her sister caught her round the waist and drew her to the glass and stood holding her and surveying their double reflections with critical, unenvious eyes.

“I look just a plain young gawk beside you,” she said. “You are pretty, Peggy. You grow prettier every year. Is the masculine breast of Moresby susceptible? – or is Moresby wholly feminine? A bachelor – an eligible bachelor – would be an anomaly in a place like this.”

“There is John,” said Peggy, smiling.

Her sister’s brows lifted ironically.

“John! Has it come to that already? Who is John?”

“We passed him on the road from Rushleigh,” Peggy explained. “The comfortable-looking person in the motor with the fur on his coat.”

Sophy laughed.

“Is that all Moresby can produce?.. You poor dear! John looks about as romantic as a city alderman. I can tell you exactly the kind of man he is: he attends church regularly and collects the offertory, and he subscribes handsomely to all the local charities. His opinion carries weight, not because it is really worth anything, but because he is a local institution and because the motor and the fur coat give him an air of prosperous distinction. He stands for usage in Moresby; and usage, coupled with a substantial banking account, gains respect. I shall enter the lists and try to cut you out with John.”

Peggy received this intimation with amusement.

“Your tongue is too sharp,” she said. “John likes womenly women.”

“Heavens!” ejaculated Sophy, with a curious little twist of the lips. “I hope he is prepared to match his ideal’s womanliness with a corresponding manliness. That is a point these fastidious people are apt to overlook.” She scrutinised her sister with a wicked little smile and touched the becoming dimple at the corner of Peggy’s mouth with the tip of a long, well-shaped finger. “I believe you are cultivating the quality,” she said.

“What quality?”

“Womanliness, my innocent,” Sophy retorted, and laughed again. “Don’t do it, my Pegtop. It is not womanly to tamper with a fastidious middle-aged heart.”

“John wouldn’t consider it womanly of us to be discussing him in this manner,” Peggy returned.

“And I’m equally convinced he wouldn’t consider it womanly of you to take liberties with his Christian name,” said Sophy. “I think it will be a good day for John when Aunt Ruby takes you abroad in the spring. By the way, isn’t John Mrs Sommers’ brother? Yes! Well, she is all right. He can’t be such an absolute bore, after all.”

One thing Sophy discovered during the New Year’s Eve ball, which was that if Moresby could not produce any young men, Rushleigh could; that one of these was well-favoured and agreeable; that, moreover, he was very unmistakably in love with her sister. It was significant in Sophy’s opinion, that her sister, while speaking of John with such ready flippancy, had refrained from mentioning Doctor Fairbridge altogether. Clearly such unnatural reserve on Peggy’s side did not originate from a lack of interest; no girl, Sophy’s experience assured her, lacks interest in a good-looking man who favours her with a generous share of that same quality. The conclusion she arrived at, therefore, was that Peggy, being pleasantly embarrassed by his devotion, was desirous of appearing unconscious of it.

Peggy introduced Doctor Fairbridge to her sister; and Sophy danced with him several times, and found him extremely entertaining. He was, and she knew it, exerting himself to create a good impression, which amiability, though not disinterested, pleased Sophy. She ranged herself promptly on his side, prepared to champion him whole-heartedly in his bid for her sister’s favour. John Musgrave she refused to consider in the light of a possible rival.

Mr Musgrave did not care about dancing, but he sat through one of the intervals beside Sophy in the warmth of the great fire in the hall and asked her several astonished questions relative to her work, and showed surprise when she informed him that she had drawn up some of the plans for the reconstruction of the home farm-buildings. He did not, she perceived, take either herself or her work quite seriously; but that did not trouble Sophy.

“It is such an amazing profession for a young lady,” he remarked gravely.

“Why?” inquired Sophy.

“It seems so to me,” he replied, unable, he found, to explain further. “These new ideas appear to me fantastic. It’s a reversion of things. Women’s sphere should be the home.”

“Well,” said Sophy, smiling, “that’s where my sphere lies mainly. I plan homes – for other people. It isn’t a new idea really. Abroad, you know, the women build the home – the blacks, I mean. Aunt Ruby says the women make all those jolly ill-constructed huts; they cut the poles, and do everything. I’d like to go out and teach them how to construct them properly, with some idea of ventilation other than a doorway.” She laughed cheerfully, and held a daintily-gloved hand to the flames. “Wouldn’t it be awful if we had to sit here with the door open to let the smoke escape?”