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.
“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?”
“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.