"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?"