Читать книгу Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor - Young Florence Ethel Mills - Страница 7

“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.