"I have," said Mrs Chadwick dramatically that same evening to Mrs
Sommers, "been exactly a week in Moresby, and I have made two enemies.
What will be the result when I have lived here a year?"
This question opened up ground for reflection. Belle reflected. She
did it, as she did most things, quickly.
"You will possibly overcome their prejudices, and make them love you."
"That is a charming answer," Mrs Chadwick replied. "But I am not sure
that their love would not prove equally embarrassing. I would prefer to
win their regard."
"It is merely another term for the same emotion," Mrs Sommers insisted.
They were seated before the fire in Mrs Chadwick's bedroom, having a
last chat before retiring. Though women live together in the same
house, and part, possibly for the first time for the day, outside their
bedroom doors, a last chat is a privileged necessity--that is, when
women are companions; when the last chat ceases to be a necessity it is
a proof of mutual boredom. Mrs Chadwick and Belle Sommers were a long
way off the point of boredom.
Belle had begun going to Mrs Chadwick's bedroom in her capacity of
pseudo hostess, thinking that possibly Mrs Chadwick, who had come
without a maid in deference to a hint from her friend that strange
servants would be unwelcome in Mr Musgrave's household, might find
herself at a loss. But Mrs Chadwick was seldom at a loss in the matter
of helping herself; a maid was a luxury, not an essential, in her train
of accessories. The pekinese alone was indispensable. She had conceded
the point about the maid, but she had refused to be separated from the
pekinese. It is conjectural whether Mr Musgrave did not object more to
the pekinese than he would have to the maid; but Belle, like Mrs
Chadwick, did not consider it wise to humour all his little prejudices.
"I think," observed Mrs Chadwick, after a pause, during which they had
both been gazing reflectively into the fire, "that I have settled
everything that was immediately pressing, and can now relieve your
brother of the strain of my presence. I cannot begin anything until we
are established at the Hall."
Mrs Sommers looked amused.
"I believe," she said, "that John is frightening you away."
"He is," Mrs Chadwick admitted. "I am afraid of John. His
inextinguishable courtesy chills me. How come you and John to be the
children of the same parents? I don't believe you are. I believe that
John is a changeling."
Belle laughed.
"He is our father reproduced," she said.
"That disposes of my theory. Then you must be the changeling. Plainly,
Miss Simpson ought to have been his sister."
"She would prefer to stand in a closer relationship," Mrs Sommers said.
"Yes; that's obvious. But she hasn't the ghost of a chance. She is an
old maid."
"She would scarcely be eligible for the position if she were not an old
maid," Mrs Sommers pointed out.
"She would be eligible as an unmarried woman," Mrs Chadwick argued.
"There is a distinction. An unmarried woman is not of necessity an old
maid."
Belle allowed this. It was, indeed, irrefutable.
"I see," she said. "Yes... just as my brother is a confirmed bachelor."
Mrs Chadwick smiled into the flames.
"I wouldn't be so positive on that head," she replied. "You should
visit the schools with him, as I did to-day. I think it might shake
your opinion. A man who is a confirmed bachelor has not the paternal
instinct. He ought to have married ten years ago, in which event he
would not now make the tea, and fuss about draughts. I think, you have
been neglectful of your duty to him. Before you married you should have
found him a wife."
"He doesn't like the women I like," said Belle slowly. "He considers
them too--"
"Modern," suggested Mrs Chadwick. She stirred the fire thoughtfully.
"The very modernest of modern wives would be the saving of him. If he
doesn't find her soon he will be doomed to eternal bachelorhood, and
develop hypochondria, and take up homeopathy."
Belle laughed outright.
"Poor old John?" she said, and relapsed once more into contemplative
silence.
John Musgrave, meanwhile, was going his usual nightly round of the
house; which, perforce, was later than he was in the habit of making it,
because the ladies did not retire, as he did when alone, at ten o'clock.
He carefully examined all the gas-jets to satisfy himself that these
were safely turned off. He inspected the bars and locks of doors and
windows, not because he feared burglars, who were a class unknown in
Moresby, but because he had always seen to the securing of his house, as
his father had done before him. He placed a guard before the
drawing-room fire, and examined the kitchen range to assure himself that
Martha had not left too large a fire for safety--which Martha never by
any chance did. John Musgrave did not expect to find any of these
matters overlooked; but he enjoyed presumably satisfying himself that
his instructions were faithfully observed. Then he turned off the light
in the hall, and quietly mounted the stairs.
Belle, stepping forth from Mrs Chadwick's room at the moment, with her
beautiful hair falling over her shoulders, met him on the landing. He
appeared slightly taken aback; and she felt instinctively that he was on
the verge of apologising for surprising her in this becoming deshabille.
She forestalled the apology by catching him by the lapels of his coat
and kissing him in her impulsive, affectionate way.
"You old dear!" she said softly.
"I thought you were in bed," Mr Musgrave said, feeling, without
understanding why, that the touch of Belle's soft cheek was very
agreeable, that the sight of a woman standing in the dim light of the
landing was pleasing, particularly with her hair streaming over her blue
_peignoir_. It was, of course, because the woman was Belle, and that
therefore it was natural that she should be standing there, that he
found the picture attractive. He experienced a twinge of regret at the
thought that she would go away and leave him to his solitude shortly.
When he came upstairs after she had left him, he would recall the sight
of her standing there, smiling at him; and the big landing would seem
doubly solitary.
"I've been gossiping," she explained.
He looked surprised. It baffled him to understand what she found to
talk about, considering she had done nothing else all day.
"More schemes?" he said.
"Yes," she answered, and laughed unexpectedly.
If only John guessed what the latest scheme was! Had she allowed him a
hundred guesses she believed he would never have arrived at the right
one.
"I hope you won't take up schemes, Belle," he said, with a faint
uneasiness in his voice. He looked at her wistfully. "You are too nice
to be caught with fads, my dear."
She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him on the lips.
"I'm too lazy," she said, "and have my hands too full to trouble myself
about anything beyond my boys. But a childless woman, John, dear, has
to mother something."
"I suppose that's it," he answered, a little relieved, it occurred to
her, by this explanation of what had appeared to him inexplicable.
"Yes; that's the reason, undoubtedly. I am glad you have your boys,
Belle."
"So am I," she returned gently, and kissed him good-night, and left him
standing alone on the dim landing with his lighted candle in his hand.
He sighed as he listened to the closing of her bedroom door. Then he
entered his own room, his mind still intent upon her, so that for a long
time he remained Inactive, gazing abstractedly at a picture of his
mother hanging on his wall, comparing the sweet, lined face with the
younger face of the daughter, who came and went in the old home,
bringing the sunshine with her, and taking it with her again when she
left. He envied Charlie Sommers more than he envied any man on earth.
And yet John Musgrave would have been surprised had anyone told him that
he was lonely. He enjoyed, he believed, all the companionship that a
man requires. But no one, unless he be a misanthropist, is entirely
happy in the possession of a solitary hearth.
On the following morning Mrs Chadwick introduced the subject of her
departure. She did not expect Mr Musgrave to be overwhelmed with
distress at the announcement of her intention; nor was he; nevertheless,
with the memory of his overnight reflections flooding his brain, he did
not feel the relief he imagined he would feel at the prospect of having
his house to himself once more. He was, oddly enough, growing
accustomed to Mrs Chadwick. When she was not personal she was
decidedly interesting, and not infrequently amusing. And when she left
he knew Belle purposed leaving also. It was not convenient for her to
be away from home just then. She had come solely to oblige Mrs
Chadwick, whose recognition of this service influenced her more than her
pretended alarm of her host in hastening her arrangements.
"I am sorry you are thinking of returning already," Mr Musgrave said,
expressing only his sincere sentiments, and not obeying, as his visitor
believed, the prompting of his habitual courtesy. "It appears to me
that you have given yourself a very limited time, considering the
magnitude of your undertakings. I would not have believed it possible
that anyone could do so much in a week."
"I came with all my plans cut and dried, you see; and my appointments
with people were prearranged. The work at the Hall will be finished in
less than two months, and we shall be settled in well before Christmas.
I dislike delay."
"Yes," said Mr Musgrave, disliking haste equally. "Moresby inhabitants
will be glad to see the Hall occupied again. They have been accustomed
to look to the Hall for a lead."
"They will get it, that's certain," Belle put in, smiling. "I am coming
down on you at Christmas, John, to see the fun."
"Of course," he returned readily, though he looked a little doubtful at
the 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 much
merry-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 as
a sufficient restraint on future occasions. The _Parish Magazine_ is
the only thing that appals me in Moresby. I mistrust that organ. I am
informed that in every issue there appears a sonnet by an anonymous
poet. Where in Moresby do you conceal a poet?"
She addressed this question to Mr Musgrave; but though she looked
towards him expectantly, and waited a sufficient interval for his reply,
there was no response forthcoming. Mr Musgrave evaded her glance, and
appeared to regard the question as put generally, and the questioner as
not 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's
sonnets.