John Musgrave

“ Of the three adults present John Musgrave was the most unpleasantly affected by his namesake’s tears; familiarity with John junior’s little tricks had hardened his parents’ sensibilities.
“Don’t you think,” said Mr Musgrave uneasily, “that you are—frightening the child?”
Charlie Sommers looked at his brother-in-law with amusement.
“He is less frightened than you are,” he answered. “He is only bent on getting his own way. Ring the bell, Uncle John, for Eliza. John is going to tell her he is sorry.” ”

“ Mary could not help “taking an interest” in John Musgrave still, but what did it matter? everybody took an interest in him now.
As for Geoff, he became, as he had a way of doing, the sun of the house at Penninghame; even the old Squire took notice of his kind, cheerful young face. He neglected Elfdale and his young cousins, and even Cousin Mary, whom he loved. But it was not to be supposed that John Musgrave would allow a series of love passages to go on indefinitely for years between his young neighbour and his daughter Lilias, as yet not quite thirteen years old. ”

“ Is he much hurt?” cried Geoff, kneeling down by his side. The man did not say anything, but shook his head. The vagrant himself smiled, with a kind of faint amusement in the mournful glimmer of his eyes.
“Not hurt, my young gentleman; just killed,” he said; “but you’re back—and they’re safe?”
“Safe, Bampfylde; and listen!—with their father. He has come to take care of his own.”
A warmer gleam lighted up the vagrant’s face. “John Musgrave here! Ah, but it’s well timed,” he cried feebly. “My young lord, I’m grieved but for one thing,—the old woman. Who will take care of old ’Lizabeth’? ”

“ John Musgrave pursued, “that it is inconsiderate of Belle. She must be aware that it will put me out. My establishment is not equal to the entertainment of guests. It incommodes the servants.”
“My dear John,” the vicar returned sensibly, “you don’t run a house for the convenience of your servants. A little extra work will not injure the health of the respectable Eliza, and Martha likes company. Whether you like it or not, it is good for you. When do the ladies arrive?”
“On Tuesday,” answered John Musgrave shortly. “Belle desires that I will send the motor into Rushleigh to meet the train.” ”

“ Oh, why should he have looked at me like that, Geoff? No, I never did any one harm, much less him. I have always stood up for him, you know, since you first spoke to me. I have always said, always—even before this was found out: living people mistake each other continually; but the dead—the dead ought to know—— ”
“Who is dead?” said Geoff; “are you speaking of John Musgrave, who is as much alive as I am?”
“If he were a living man,” said Mary, solemnly, “how could I have seen him? Geoff, it is no mistake. ”

“ I don’t credit it.”
“You are not speaking,” said Geoff, in a very low voice, overpowered at once with curiosity and interest, “of John Musgrave?”
“The young Squire? No, I don’t mean him; he’s bad, and bad enough, but not so bad. You’ve got a deal to learn, my young lord. And what’s your concern with all that old business? If another man’s miserable, that don’t take bit or sup from you—nor a night’s rest, unless you let it. You’ve got everything that heart could desire. Why can’t you be content, and let other folks be?”
“When we could help them, Bampfylde?” said Geoff. ”

“ The moment it was certain, the solemnity of it blew aside, as do the mists before the wind. “Then he will come home again; he will have his poor little children, and all will be well,” she said; and cried as if her heart would break. It was vain for Geoff to tell her that nothing was as yet proved, that he did not know how to approach the subject; no difficulties troubled Mary. Her heart was delivered as of a load; and why should not everything at once be told? But she wept all the same, and Geoff had no clue to the meaning of her tears. She was glad beyond measure for John Musgrave ”

“ Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it; but people cannot hide up children as they hide secrets. I have been living here for ten years, and I scarcely know the rights of the story about John Musgrave yet.”
“Children!” said Miss Price, with a start which shook the pins out of her fingers. “To be sure—that came in a coach from Pennington with a play-acting sort of a woman? But what has that to do with Mr. John?”
The dressmaker dropped Mary’s frock upon her knees in the excitement of her feelings. There was more than curiosity involved. “To be sure,” she said. “To be sure!” ”

“ Those fantastic symbolisms of accident or circumstance which so often would seem to be arranged like shadows of more important matters by some elfish secondary providence, need a spirit at rest to enter into them. He was glad to be alone, to realise all that he had heard, to compose the wonderful tangle of new information and new thoughts into something coherent, without troubling himself about the fact that he was now bending his steps direct, the representative of Walter Stanton who had been killed, towards the house from which John Musgrave had been wrongfully driven for having killed him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now that it was let to wealthy people, local interest was stirred to a pitch of tremendous curiosity, and still greater expectation. The poor of Moresby—and save for John Musgrave, and Miss Simpson, who lived alone as Mr Musgrave did in isolated comfort, Moresby inhabitants were mainly poor—looked forward to a Christmas of the good old order, when feasting at the Hall was a yearly institution and, in local phraseology, things had not been backward in the way of good cheer. ”

“ But it was best, he felt, to make the revelation at once. “The brother of Walter Stanton, whom——. As Lilias says, sir, I know more about you than others know. I have heard everything.”
John Musgrave shook his head. “Everything! till death steps in to one or another of the people concerned, that is what no one will ever know; but so long as you do not shrink from me, Lord Stanton—— You are Lord Stanton; is it not so?”
“I am not making any idle brag,” said Geoff. “I know everything. It was Bampfylde himself—Dick Bampfylde himself—who sent me after the children. ”

“ Young Walter Lord Stanton was a much greater man than John Musgrave, though not half so great a man in one sense of the word. Two or three generations, however, tell just as much upon the individual mind as twenty, and the young peer was conscious of all his advantages over the commoner, without any sense of inferiority in point of race. ”

“ His wife is dead—that was God’s doing; and his children have come home—that is his own choice. I say, let well alone, Lord Stanton; when he wishes it he will—come—back; but not to those he loves,” Mary said in a low tone.
Geoff could not fathom her meaning, it was beyond him. The accusation under which John Musgrave lay was bad enough. ”

“ The elders would like to push us from the scene; but the little ones,” said the Squire, with a curious sudden break of laughter, which sounded full of tears, “the little ones—are fond of old people; that is all I am good for nowadays—to play with the little boy—— ”
“Oh, sir!” said Geoff in his eagerness, “it is something very different that is expected of you. To save the little boy’s father—your son—to bring him back with honour. It is honour, not shame, that he deserves. I who am a stranger, who am the brother of the man who was killed, I have come to entreat you to do John Musgrave justice. ”

“ When they resumed their way again, Mary lay back in her corner too much worn out with excitement and emotion to be able even to speak. Geoff could not tell whether she was glad or sorry to be brought to acknowledge that it was more likely to be John Musgrave whom she had seen than his ghost. She was{281} convinced by his reasoning. Oh, yes; no doubt, she said, it must be so. Because you saw a man unexpectedly, that was no reason for supposing him to be dead. Oh, no—Geoff was quite right; she saw the reason of all he said. But Mary’s head and her heart and all her being thrilled with the shock. ”

“ When young people are so much attached to each other,” said the anxious mother, faltering, half afraid even to speak of such mysteries to her son, “they are tempted to think that being together is everything. But it is not everything, Geoff. Many others, as well as John Musgrave, have lost themselves for such a delusion as that.”
“Is it a delusion?” Geoff asked, making his mother tremble. Of whom could the boy be thinking? He was thinking of nobody—till it suddenly occurred to him how the eyes of that little girl at Penninghame might look if they were older ”

“ Let no one who gives blind himself to the fact that he is receiving as well as distributing favours.
John Musgrave gave regularly at Christmas, and handsomely, to his poorer neighbours; Miss Simpson also gave; but, since she demanded gratitude, and Mr Musgrave demanded nothing, regarding his charity in the light of a duty which his more fortunate circumstances imposed, he received a more generous meed of thanks, and a less grudging acceptance of his gifts. ”

“ The cry with which she hailed him, the illumination of her face, and, Geoff felt, her utter forgetfulness of his own claims, half-vexed the young man after his uncomfortable night; and it was with a certain pang that he gave the children up to their natural guardian. “Papa, this is Mr. Geoff,” Lilias said; “no one has ever been so kind; and he knows about you something that nobody else knows.”
John Musgrave looked up with a gleam of surprise and a faint suffusion of colour on his serious face. “Every one here knows about me,” he said, with a sigh ”

“ And this, at the end, came to be what Randolph himself thought.
Mrs. Pen, after coming home hysterical from Elfdale, made a clean breast to her husband, and showed him the telegram, and confessed all her apprehensions for him. What could a man do but forgive the folly or even wickedness done for his sweet sake? And Mrs. Pen went through a few dreadful hours, when in the morning John Musgrave came back from his night journey and the warrant was put in force. If they should hang him what would become of her? ”

“ Ye—es: it was not—nice; but it must be a temptation, Geoff, when a man has been brought up so differently. Some relation had given him his education, and he was very clever. I have never felt sure whether it was a happy thing for a boy to be brought so far out of his class. He met John Musgrave somewhere, but John did not know who he was. ”

“ There was no doubt now as to who was heir. When Randolph came to Penninghame, after spending a day and a half in vain researches for Nello, life having become too exciting at that moment at the Castle to leave any one free to send word of the children’s safety—he found all doubt and notion of danger over for John—- and he himself established in his natural place. Whether the Squire had forgotten everything in his illness, or whether he had understood the story which Mary took care to repeat two or three times very distinctly by his bedside, no one knew. ”

“ More serious, far more serious than when he was a young gentleman always about the house, but the same man—still the same man.
“Then send her to me at once. It is you, Martha, the same as ever,” he said, with a momentary smile in the midst of his anxiety. Just as Mr. John used to do—always a kind word for everybody and a smile. She made him another curtsey, crying and smiling together.
“And glad, glad, sir, to see you come home,” she said. There was this excuse for Miss Brown’s lingering, that Mary had rushed off at once to find Martuccia. John bowed his head gravely. ”

“ Rudolph Musgrave declared. "He is the single solitary man I ever knew whose widow was contented to be simply his relict for ever and ever, amen. For you will always be just the woman John Charteris loved, won't you? Yes, if you lived to be thirty-seven years older than Methuselah, and every genius and potentate in the world should come a-wooing in the meantime, it never would occur to you that you could possibly be anything, even to an insane person, except his relict. ”

“ Pen, did not even know John, so that if she betrayed him it would be nothing unkind, nobody could blame her, not Mary Musgrave herself. When the gardener came, instead of sending him to the Castle for her husband, she sent him to the village to order the fly in which she occasionally paid visits; and she put on her best clothes with a quiver of anxiety and terror in her heart. She put the telegram in her pocket, and drove away—with a half-satisfaction in her own appearance and half-pride in bidding the man drive to Elfdale, to Sir Henry Stanton’s, mingling with the real anxiety in her heart. ”

“ He had done all he could to evade the idea that he himself would one day be compelled to die. Many men do this who have no painful consciousness of the heir behind who is waiting to dispossess them; and Mr. Musgrave had, to a great degree, attained tranquillity on this point. The habit of living seems to grow stronger with men as they draw near the end of their lives. It has lasted so long; it has been so steady and uninterrupted, why should it ever cease? But here was the death’s-head rising at the feast; the executioner giving note of his presence behind backs. John! ”