F. E. Mills Young

“ Eliza’s deportment in its aloof detachment was admirable; the merriest sally of wit was lost upon her, and Mrs Chadwick’s surprising knack of telling daring stories elicited no more than a disapproving sniff. Eliza was as wonderful in her way as the guests, in Ellen’s opinion.
The enjoyment ended for Ellen with the placing of the dessert on the table, and the closing of the dining-room door but she carried the wonder of all she had heard and seen to the kitchen, and there related it for the benefit of Martha and Mr King, who had looked in with a view to dining late himself. ”

“ Walter Errol, removing, his surplice in the little vestry at the finish of one of the simplest and most pleasing ceremonies at which he had ever been required to officiate, looked forth through the mullioned window to watch his oldest and best-loved friend passing along the gravelled path in the sunlight with his bride upon his arm.
The sight of John Musgrave married gave him greater satisfaction than anything that had befallen since his own happy marriage-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The grouping of the man and the dog in the warm, firelit room made a pleasing, homelike picture, so different in effect from the ordinary picture of John Musgrave reading in scholarly solitude by his shaded lamp, without the solace of tobacco even, that it scarcely seemed the same room or the same man seated in the big chair wreathed in ascending clouds of blue smoke spirals. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The vicar, to Robert’s amazement, had kept on friendly terms with the squire to the day of the old man’s death, which to those who knew Walter Errol did not appear so surprising a matter as it did to Robert, familiar with the squire’s irascible temper, and accustomed to hearing himself spoken of as a very ignorant man. The vicar never called Robert ignorant; he showed, indeed, a very proper appreciation of his value; and, because to be appreciated is agreeable to every one, Robert returned in kind with loyal service and devotion. No man, whatever his status, can give more. ”

“ If any girl imagines there is a better lot in life she is mistaken. No occupation unfits a woman for the rôle of wife and mother; it gives her rather a greater right to bring children into the world, when she is able to support them if necessary. Mr Musgrave would not have shared this opinion; but Musgravian ideas fill almshouses and orphanages and are responsible for a great deal of genteel and quite needless poverty. That one half—and that the larger half—of the race should depend for its existence on the other half is absurd.
Peggy Annersley was a young woman of very independent spirit. ”

“ There was nothing left for Mr Musgrave to do save order his car for a certain hour to take the ladies into Rushleigh.
Most people would have been relieved to be spared further trouble; but John Musgrave was old-fashioned. He felt that in these matters it was fitting that the woman should depend on the man; just as he would prefer that a woman confronted with a burglar should scream for assistance rather than attempt an encounter with the intruder, physical courage being no more a womanly attribute than independence. But Mrs Chadwick belonged to a type of womanhood he had not met with before. ”

“ Youth and beauty in a woman handicap her in the matter of masculine friendship; yet eliminate the disqualifying attributes, and the difficulty of friendship with the opposite sex is even greater. The position therefore becomes well-nigh impossible.
Peggy looked back at the young man with such disconcerting candour in the grey eyes that he began to feel somewhat foolish and found himself reddening awkwardly. A girl when she receives a proposal of marriage has no right to appear so composed. ”

“ She was, he observed, a very handsome woman, and her smile was radiant.
“I never look for gratitude,” she answered; “it is a waste of time. And why should people be grateful? Whatever we do, even though it be ostensibly for the benefit of others, we do in a measure for ourselves. Therefore there is no sufficient ground for gratitude. I shall simply love modernising Moresby. Modernising is one of my cranks. The improvement of women’s economic position is another. I don’t employ any men servants, except for the rough and hard work. ”

“ He had married, John Musgrave had remained a bachelor. Each held the state of the other a matter for commiseration.
This evening the vicar was thinking of John Musgrave’s lonely condition, and was feeling quite unnecessarily sorry for the man.
“He would have made a good father,” he thought.
The one thing he never said of him was, he would make a good husband. But a good father is, after all, the best that can be said of a man.
While he remained at the vestry door, his sexton and right-hand man appeared at his side, and stood watching with him the departure of the flock. ”

“ But as, in the inconsistency of human nature, a good person is often streaked with evil, and an evil person possesses a strain of goodness, so Miss Simpson, despite her prudery, had a touch of the softer sentiments which no woman should be without. This weakness led to the cherishing of a romantic passion for Mr Musgrave, which so far overcame her natural decorum as to drive her to open pursuit of the object of her middle-aged affections. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Mrs Chadwick’s taste was not Moresby’s.
One lock of Miss Simpson’s tightly braided hair betrayed a rebellious tendency to escape the hairpins and stray pleasingly over her brow. This could not be permitted. The aid of additional pins was requisitioned, and the unruly lock was brought into subjection, and tucked out of sight beneath the unrelenting brim of the eminently decorous hat.
Woman’s hair never seems to achieve a definite recognition in the scheme of its wearer. ”

“ In a few years she would be thirty, and after thirty a woman loses her youth.
“I like Doctor Fairbridge,” Sophy remarked, with an abruptness that caused the smile to fade, though the challenge did not, she observed, produce any other effect.
“So do I,” agreed Peggy.
“He is in love with you,” said Sophy.
“He thinks he is,” Peggy corrected. “I expect he often finds himself in that condition.”
“That’s hedging, Peggy. He isn’t half bad. You might do worse.”
“I might. I daresay I shall,” returned Peggy unmoved.
“You’ll die an old maid, my Pegtop; men are none too plentiful.” ”

“ Mrs Chadwick was on the whole very satisfied with the result of her effort on their behalf. Next to having girls of her own, four nieces with an average share of brains provided admirable material for the development of her feminist schemes. It afforded her immense gratification to watch their progress, and behold, instead of four helpless girls keeping house in bored inactivity on other people’s money, four—or rather three—very capable young persons equal to fighting their own way through life, and privileged to enjoy the bread of independence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Diogenes introduced us informally, if you recall the afternoon you called here. He is a dreadfully pushing person, Diogenes; but he’s a dear when you know him.”
“I daresay,” Mr Musgrave answered, correctly surmising that Diogenes was the bull-dog. “But I dislike dogs.”
“I should never have thought that,” replied the girl, looking faintly surprised; “because Diogenes likes you. He never speaks to people he doesn’t like; and dogs as a rule know at once when people are not sympathetic. ”

“ The narrow-minded man is, if more rare, considerably more contracted in his outlook than even the narrow-minded woman.
John Musgrave’s view was certainly contracted; but Mrs Chadwick, in her sanguine moments, entertained the belief that the restricted line of his horizon was due to the accident of circumstances, rather than to a natural deficiency in breadth, and held hopes of a possible development of his view. She did not tell him this; but she confided her belief to Mrs Sommers, who was as sceptical of John’s development as she was of the profitable results of Mrs Chadwick’s enterprises. ”

“ Peggy received this remark in scornful silence. It is not always the case that a woman enjoys the last word.
But later in the afternoon, when John Musgrave was departing and she was wishing him good-bye, standing beneath the identical branch of mistletoe in the big dim hall, she saw his eyes travel to the bough and then to her lips, and she stood looking at him, smiling and ironical. John Musgrave might be an eminently discreet and comfortable person, but he was not without certain human weaknesses. ”

“ The vicar, lighting a cigar also, looked across at him, and smiled.
“She will certainly,” he said, “wake Moresby up.”
John Musgrave took the cigar from his mouth, and examined the lighted end thoughtfully, a frown contracting his brow as though the sight of a cigar annoyed him. Since he was in reality addicted to cigar smoking, the frown was probably induced by his reflections.
“I am not in sympathy with advanced women,” he remarked, after a pause. “A woman should be womanly.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ She looked at him with interest, while the scepticism of the rest strove courteously to efface itself.
“I heard of the ghost from Robert,” she announced. “Hannah has seen it. But Robert didn’t seem to know very much about it. It is respectable to have a ghost. I hope it is a pleasant one.”
“There are two,” he said.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Peggy. “Two misty apparitions! Hannah doesn’t own to seeing two. I might be able to stand one, but two would be the death of me. Who are they?”
“One is a hound,” he explained; “the other is a lady. They have been seen walking on the terrace in the dusk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr Musgrave therefore relinquished the lead and prepared to accompany Peggy and the bull-dog back to his orderly home.
A good deed may carry its own reward; but in the days that were to follow, in the weeks and months that followed, Mr Musgrave was moved to doubt the infallibility of providential recognition of unselfish deeds. It is fortunate for the persistence in the instinct for obeying a generous impulse that the future is mercifully shrouded in the obscurity of unseen things. ”