Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor
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settled in well before Christmas.I dislike delay."
"Yes," said Mr Musgrave, disliking haste equally. "Moresby inhabitantswill be glad to see the Hall occupied again. They have been accustomedto look to the Hall for a lead."
"They will get it, that's certain," Belle put in, smiling. "I am comingdown on you at Christmas, John, to see the fun."
"Of course," he returned readily, though he looked a little doubtful atthe mention of fun. "Christmas festivities are going out of fashion,"he added slowly. "I am not sure it is not as well that is so. Too muchmerry-making leads to unseemly behaviour. It unsettles the people."
"If anyone behaves in an unseemly manner we will put his name in the_Parish Magazine_," Mrs Chadwick said. "That punishment should act asa sufficient restraint on future occasions. The _Parish Magazine_ isthe only thing that appals me in Moresby. I mistrust that organ. I aminformed that in every issue there appears a sonnet by an anonymouspoet. Where in Moresby do you conceal a poet?"
She addressed this question to Mr Musgrave; but though she lookedtowards him expectantly, and waited a sufficient interval for his reply,there was no response forthcoming. Mr Musgrave evaded her glance, andappeared to regard the question as put generally, and the questioner asnot expecting a reply. He looked, Mrs Chadwick observed, guilty.
So John Musgrave was an anonymous poet as well as a confirmed bachelor.She determined to read before leaving his house some of John Musgrave'ssonnets.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
Mrs Chadwick's departure was as abrupt, and therefore as disconcertingto Mr Musgrave, as her arrival had been. She announced her intentionof going one morning, and on the following morning she left. Thisrapidity of movement, and extraordinary energy, reduced Mr Musgrave toa condition of bewildered breathlessness. He fetched Bradshaw's Guidefor the purpose of looking up her train; but she had learnt all aboutthe train service beforehand, and knew to the minute the time of herdeparture. There was nothing left for Mr Musgrave to do save order hiscar for a certain hour to take the ladies into Rushleigh.
Most people would have been relieved to be spared further trouble; butJohn Musgrave was old-fashioned. He felt that in these matters it wasfitting that the woman should depend on the man; just as he would preferthat a woman confronted with a burglar should scream for assistancerather than attempt an encounter with the intruder, physical couragebeing no more a womanly attribute than independence. But Mrs Chadwickbelonged to a type of womanhood he had not met with before. She hadmade herself independent of the sterner sex. She would in allprobability, if she encountered a burglar, tackle him; it wasinconceivable that she would stop to scream. He supposed that residenceabroad accounted possibly for these peculiarities. Women who lived insemi-civilised lands acquired characteristics unbecoming to their sex.
Mr Musgrave would have been surprised could he have penetrated MrsChadwick's opinion of himself. Mrs Chadwick had formed an opinionearly in their intercourse; she saw no reason to modify it later; andshe was confirmed in it when she read some of his sonnets in thecarefully preserved back numbers of the _Parish Magazine_. There weresonnets to the different seasons; sonnets to childhood, to youth, toflowers, to a cloud effect in a windswept sky, and to the autumnaltints. There was not, in the whole, she observed without surprise, asingle reference to love. Verse-making without that essential qualitymust be a difficult process, she reflected. Had Byron possessed JohnMusgrave's temperament, it is doubtful that he would have attained toimmortality. John Musgrave with a touch of the Byronic weakness mighthave been interesting, and would certainly have been lovable. Coldnessof itself is scarcely a virtue, nor is it an endearing characteristic.The man possessed of a big heart and a quite legitimate inclinationtowards the opposite sex is human; and Mrs Chadwick loved humanity.
The most human types she had as yet discovered in Moresby were those ofthe vicar and his wife, and Robert. Robert and the new mistress of theHall were allies. Robert held the sex, as a sex, in contempt; that wasthe code of his class; and a very pronounced dread of the length ofHannah's tongue, added to a proper recognition of Hannah's musculardevelopment, had accomplished little towards mitigating this sense ofmasculine superiority. He considered the utterance of Saint Paul, thatit is better to marry than to burn, the most supreme wisdom that a manhas ever given expression to. On Occasions he was a little doubtfulwhether it were not better to burn. He had tried marriage, but he hadnot tried burning, and so could not give a definite opinion. But forMrs Chadwick he entertained an unbounded respect. Robert perhaps had atouch of the Byronic temperament; and Mrs Chadwick on coming out ofchurch had given him one of her radiant smiles. Subsequently shestopped him in the road and chatted with him in an easy, intimate waythat Robert described as "haffable." She began by asking him if he hada wife. Robert admitted this possession reluctantly; and, upon furtherinquiries, owned with even less enthusiasm to a son.
"Only one?" she said.
"One's more'n enough for me," Robert answered sourly. "Brought uprespectable, 'e was, and confirmed under Mr Errol; and then," Robertjerked his thumb over his shoulder as though in indication of thedirection the errant youth had followed, "'e takes up with a youngwoman, and turns Plymouth Brother to please 'er. Preaches, 'e does...they mostly do. Dresses 'isself up, and tramps five miles, and 'ollersto a lot more of 'em about their sins. Disgraceful, that's wot I callsit."
"Perhaps he thinks he is doing good," she suggested.
Robert smiled grimly.
"Precious little good 'e ever done, or ever will do, mum. And 'ispreaching! You should 'ear 'im."
"Do you tramp five miles to hear him preach?" she asked.
"Wot, me? And wot would the vicar do without me, do you suppose? I'ear quite enough without going to 'is old meeting-place. 'E practises'is old sarmons night-times, after me and the missis is a-bed. You'dreckon it was a nuisance if 'e waked you up, as he wakes me and Hannahin the dead o' night sometimes, screeching an' 'ollering. `Is your Lorddeaf?' I asks en; `because if 'E be, us bain't,' I says, `and us can'tsleep for your noise.' 'E's gone away now. Got a job at a farm near'is young woman; an' I 'opes 'e stops there. I don't 'old wi' religionoutside o' church, and then I likes it shortened like. Our vicar is thebest vicar Moresby's ever 'ad, but 'e do make 'is sarmons long. Seems Icould say as much as 'e do in 'alf the time."
Mrs Chadwick laughed. Robert's garrulity would seem to discredit thisconceit.
"I like his sermons, Robert," she said. "I'm glad I am going to live atMoresby. Later I shall visit Mrs Robert, if you think she won't mind."
"She won't mind, mum," Robert answered. "She'll be proud. I'm not sureit won't make 'er over proud," he added reflectively. "Hannah getsobstroperous when she's took notice of. Better let 'er think you cometo see me, I reckon."
She nodded brightly, and left him standing in the roadway looking afterher retreating figure, and from it to the shining coins lying in thehorny hollow of his palm. Perhaps it was due less to the Byronictemperament than to the natural love of every loyal subject for theKing's portrait set in silver that Mrs Chadwick won from thenceforthRobert's unshakable respect. Being a man actuated by occasionalchivalrous promptings, he drank to her good health conscientiouslyduring the following days. But from a fear of making Hannah"obstroperous" he refrained from mentioning that interview with MrsChadwick and its amicable finish; and, in case Hannah went through hispockets while he slept, which experience taught him was the way ofwives, he put temptation out of her way by concealing the coins beneaththe altar cloth in the church. Familiarity with holy things had bred anundesirable freedom in Robert's views.
The vicar and his wife stood at the vicarage gate and waved farewell toMr Musgrave's guests as the car drove past. Mr Musgrave on thisoccasion accompanied the ladies, speeding, as Mrs Errol remarked, thedeparture, if he had not obeyed strictly the prescribed rules ofhospitality by welcoming the coming guest.
"Well, that's over," she said, as the car turned the bend anddisappeared from sight. She t
ucked her hand within her husband's arm,and walked with him a few yards down the road. "I shall be glad whenthey are settled at the Hall. It will make things gayer."
"It will certainly do that," he agreed. "Gaiety and Mrs Chadwick aresynonymous terms."
"There is no especial virtue in gravity," Mrs Errol returned.
"There is not," he answered readily. "I prefer a cheerful countenancemyself."
The vicar's road that morning