Читать книгу Coelebs - F. E. Mills Young - Страница 6

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John Musgrave stood before the fire in his dining-room, a copy of the Daily Telegraph in his hands. He was not reading the paper; he was looking over the top of it at his new housemaid, as she brought in his breakfast, and, with many depreciatory sniffs which proclaimed a soul above such lowly service, set it carefully down upon the snowy damask.

He approved of her. It was natural that he should approve of her, considering he had himself engaged her for three very good reasons; the first and all-sufficient reason being that he invariably engaged his own servants; the second, that she was by no means young; the third, that she was plain and respectable.

It is an interesting psychological fact that plain people are more generally respectable than handsome people. From this it is not fair to infer that virtue is necessarily hard-featured; but temptation more frequently assails the beautiful. As temptation is a thing to be avoided, this doubtless is one of Nature’s niggardly attempts at compensation. Which of us, given the choice, would not unhesitatingly pronounce for the endowment of physical attractions, and risk the possibility of an encounter with evil in the universal arena?

Virtue is a term which is frequently misapplied. To remain virtuous in circumstances which offer no temptation to be otherwise is a condition which does not justify the individual in the complacency usually indulged in where a knowledge of perfect uprightness which has never been assailed conveys a sense of superiority over one’s fellows. There can be no cause for self-esteem when there has been no battle fought and won. It was quite safe to predict that Eliza—the eminently respectable Christian name of the middle-aged Abigail—had fought no battle; it was not such a level certainty to conclude that, if she had, she of necessity would have proved victorious; for appearances, no matter how respectable and forbidding, are no guarantee of inviolable virtue. Pretty faces have not a monopoly of sentiment. Indeed, the softer qualities of the feminine heart are often hidden behind an outward austerity.

Nevertheless, Eliza was respectable. She was proud of the fact. She flaunted it in one’s face, and hurled it at one’s head—metaphorically, of course; she had not sufficient energy to hurl anything except in metaphor. She had dwelt upon it to John Musgrave, when he had first interviewed her, so particularly that she had led him to suppose it was a more rare virtue than he had hitherto imagined, and that he was indeed securing a treasure, so that he was even prepared to pay a higher wage for such an anomaly. He agreed to pay the higher wage; and, with a nine-months’ character from her last place, felt that he was to be congratulated on this respectable addition to his ménage.

Martha, his cook, who was stout, and not as active as, according to her own statement, she might have been, would have preferred some one younger and more energetic to help her in the conduct of Mr. Musgrave’s bachelor establishment; and when Mr. Musgrave informed her kindly that it would be pleasant for her to have so highly respectable a companion in the kitchen, Martha agreed in the dubious manner of one to whom other qualities appealed equally, if not more strongly, than extreme respectability. But Martha, though an old family servant, and a steady, reliable woman, was, as Mr. Musgrave had before observed, lacking in the finer sensibilities. She conferred with Bond, the gardener, and with Mr. Musgrave’s chauffeur, and the verdict that was duly pronounced was that “Lizer” was neither useful nor ornamental.

John Musgrave himself did not consider Eliza ornamental. But he was not desirous of adorning his establishment. A housemaid is not an ornament, but a useful domestic addition to the household of a gentleman; to suggest that she should be anything else would have appealed to John Musgrave as indecorous. He liked plain faces and matured years. In his way he was quite as respectable as Eliza.

“You have forgotten,” he said, lowering his paper, and moving a little to one side in order that she might obtain a view of the fireplace which his broad figure had blocked, “to put the fire-irons back in their place.”

Eliza sniffed. It was a natural infirmity, and one of which she was less conscious than those about her. It was the only drawback that her employer had observed in her so far. He disliked mannerisms. She glanced at the gleaming tiles on the hearth, at the empty dogs standing upon it, and at the fire-irons referred to, which instead of reposing on the dogs stood assertively upright on either side of the grate. Eliza had not forgotten them. She had purposely stood them erect in order to save them from getting soiled. This thoughtfulness was not due to any regard for the fire-irons, but was conceived with the object of saving herself labour. If the brass became blackened it would be necessary to polish it daily.

She went to considerable trouble to explain this to John Musgrave, who listened with grave amazement to her voluble reasoning powers. Instead of commending her prudence he replaced the irons in their rightful position in the fender.

“For the future,” he said, as he straightened himself after the performance of this feat, “we will have them in their place.”

“They get dirty in the fender,” Eliza objected, “and it makes a lot of cleaning. Every one knows brass fire-irons didn’t ought to be used.”

“What purpose do they serve, then?” Mr. Musgrave inquired.

“They are meant for show, sir,” answered Eliza, with a sniff that betokened contempt for his masculine ignorance.

Mr. Musgrave looked at her with growing disapproval.

“To keep things for show is essentially vulgar,” he said. “Everything has a proper use, and should be applied to it.”

Having delivered himself of this rebuke he returned to the perusal of his newspaper. Eliza took up her tray, but, hearing the front door bell, put it down again and, with a protesting sniff, prepared to answer the ring.

John Musgrave seated himself at the table with its covers for one, its air of solid comfort and plenty, which, assertive though it might be, could not disguise a certain blank chilliness of aspect which the expanse of damask covering the long table insensibly conveyed; as did also the large, handsomely furnished room with its orderly row of unoccupied chairs which seemed mutely to protest against this disregard for their vocation. The apartment was essentially a family room, yet one man took his solitary meals there daily, had taken them there for many years: first as a small boy, with his parents and smaller sister, later as a man, who had seen these dear companions drop out from their accustomed places one by one, until now at forty he alone occupied the seat at the head of the table, and dwelt occasionally on those happier days when his meals had not been solitary.

Death had claimed his parents gently in the natural ordering of things. He had accustomed himself to their loss. But the loss of his sister was a more recent event, and less in accordance with nature, in John Musgrave’s opinion. She had left him six years ago, had married a college friend of his, and taken her bright companionship, and with it, it seemed to the brother who felt himself deserted, the principal part of the comfort and pleasure of his own life, and settled it in the home of this inconsiderate friend two counties away.

It took John Musgrave a long time to reconcile himself to this marriage; but he had come to regard it now in the light of one of life’s constant vexations. He hated change himself. For the life of him he could not understand why Belle had wished to marry anyone. People did marry, of course, but in his sister’s case there had been absolutely no need for taking so serious a step; she had everything that a reasonable woman could desire. But, unlike himself, Belle enjoyed change. He supposed that this odd taste of hers had led her into matrimony. It was the only explanation that presented itself to his mind.

The married state was not in John Musgrave’s opinion at all a desirable condition. He had never considered it for himself. He did not dislike women, but in all the forty years of his life he had never been in love, never met a woman the glance of whose eye had quickened his pulses or moved him to any deeper sentiment than a momentary interest. He was afraid of women. For the past ten years he had spent much of his time avoiding them. Women with marriageable daughters sought him continually, and made their pursuit so obvious as to fill him with grave embarrassment. He realised so well that he was not a marrying man that he could not understand why they failed to see this also.

It was a little indelicate, he considered, that any mother should try to secure a husband for her daughter. That a woman should seek to secure a husband for herself occurred to him a greater indelicacy still. John Musgrave had had the appalling experience of a written offer of marriage. He had replied to the writer courteously, and had promptly burnt the letter. He would have liked to have burnt the recollection of it, had that been possible; but unfortunately the foolish sentiment of that ill-considered letter remained in his memory, a constant and distressful humiliation, which was rendered the more disconcerting because he was continually and unavoidably brought into contact with the writer. She lived within a quarter of a mile of his own gates, and busied herself actively in the parish. John Musgrave also busied himself in the parish. To have thrown up this work, which he regarded as a duty of the head of his house, would have been impossible to him. Therefore he braced himself to meet this woman on school-boards and committees and other local interests, and tried to appear unconscious, when he encountered her, of a matter that always jumped into his mind whenever he saw her thin, eager face, or listened to the insistent tones of her reed-like voice, which made itself constantly heard at any public gathering.

John Musgrave was not thinking of this lady as he sat at breakfast and poured himself out a cup of coffee from the old-fashioned urn that had graced the table every morning within his memory; but the return of Eliza, like an austere Flora, whose sour visage showed above a basket of hot-house fruits hiding shyly beneath a profusion of wax-like blossoms, brought her promptly and most unpleasantly to his mind. Only one person in Moresby could send him such a gift. He turned purple in the face when he beheld this dainty offering of fruit and flowers, and spluttered with rage as he waved their approach aside.

“Take away that—that rubbish,” he commanded fiercely. “How dare you bring it in here!”

Eliza stared at him resentfully. She did not show surprise, because that was an emotion she seldom displayed, but she disapproved highly of his tone.

“I did not know what else to do with it, sir,” she answered.

“No, no; of course not.” John Musgrave seized an egg, and decapitated it with a shaking hand. “Take it with you, please,” he said, in a mollified voice.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” Eliza murmured, with a twist of her thin lips which was the only trick of smiling they knew.

He turned in his seat and stared at her fixedly.

“Tell Martha from me,” he said curtly, “to throw that litter on the fire. I don’t like cut flowers, and I do not eat fruit. If—if anything else of the kind arrives, do not take it in.”

Eliza carried the rejected offering with her to the kitchen, where Martha and the chauffeur lingered over a late breakfast, and simperingly displayed the gift which she bore in the angular crook of her arm.

“The master gave them to me,” she announced, with the conscious intonation of one marked out for especial favour.

The chauffeur was in the act of drinking coffee, but something went wrong with his throat at this moment, and Eliza, who was fastidious, turned aside from the unpleasant spectacle he presented, and buried her nose in the flowers. Martha good-naturedly thumped him on the back.

“Oh Lord?” he gasped. “Oh Lord?”

“I don’t wonder,” Martha ejaculated, with a contemptuous glance at the respectable Eliza, who was engaged in examining the contents of her basket. “That gipsy fortune-teller has turned her ’ead, poor thing!”

“There go all my ’opes,” said the mendacious chauffeur, pointing to the dark stains of spilled coffee as though they symbolised his aspirations. “Strike me blue mouldy! if I don’t go out and cut my bloomin’ throat. If you don’t want me to commit sooicide, Lizer, share round those plums.”

Generosity was not catalogued among Eliza’s undoubted qualities. She took from the depths of the basket two of the smallest peaches, and placing these on the table, retired promptly from the kitchen, bearing her treasure with her.

“Mean, I call it,” cried the indignant chauffeur after her retreating back. “One measly peach in return for a broken ’eart. If you’d given me ’alf a dozen I’d ’ave kissed you.”

Martha laughed comfortably.

“If you aren’t careful, she’ll ’ave you up for breach of promise,” she said.

“She’d lose the day,” the chauffeur answered confidently. “A jury would only ’ave to look at ’er to know no man would ’ave ’ad the pluck to ’ave done it.”

Martha laughed again.

“That gipsy woman got a shilling out of ’er,” she remarked, “for telling ’er she was going to marry a gentleman. She believes it, silly thing!”

“She’s as likely to marry a gentleman as anyone,” the chauffeur answered. “Marriages are made in heaven, I’ve heard; and that’s where Lizer’ll ’ave to go to find ’er man. But the governor didn’t ought to play with ’er young and untried affections. Givin’ ’er presents like that.”

Martha rose deliberately, pushing back her chair. She had been in John Musgrave’s service for over twenty years, and therefore spoke as one having authority.

“ ’E give ’em to ’er most likely to throw in the ashbin,” she said. “A silly like Lizer would believe anything.”

Nevertheless Martha was not happy in her mind in regard to that basket of hot-house produce. She experienced a strong curiosity to learn where it had come from, and why it had been sent, and rejected by the recipient. Only a rooted objection to question Eliza on intimate family matters restrained her curiosity sufficiently to prevent her from discussing the subject with her fellow-servant. Martha, as the back-stairs custodian of the family honour, could not permit herself to gossip with the housemaid about John Musgrave’s affairs.