Coelebs. F. E. Mills Young
good-evening stepped forth into the night.
Robert looked after him thoughtfully before turning the key in the lock.
“Seems to ’ave somethin’ on ’is mind,” he mused. “Reckon ’is missis is as aggravating as most.”
With which he turned the key in the rusty lock viciously, and extinguished the lights and left.
The Rev. Walter Errol on entering the vicarage drawing-room found John Musgrave already there, talking with his wife. Mrs. Errol, a pretty, delicate looking woman, who, while she made an excellent wife and mother, was none the less a dead failure in the parish, according to the opinion of the local helpers, looked round brightly as her husband entered the room, and remarked:
“Mr. Musgrave has just been telling me that some friends of his—”
“Acquaintances,” John Musgrave interposed gravely.
“Some people he knows,” Mrs. Errol substituted, “have taken the Hall. I’m so glad. It is such a pity to have a place like that standing empty.”
The vicar looked pleased.
“Who are they, John?” he asked.
Mr. Musgrave gazed thoughtfully into the fire. From the concentration of his look it would seem as though he found there the record of the family under discussion.
“The man,” he said slowly, “is a connection of Charlie Sommers. Belle wrote to me that they had taken the Hall. She wants me to be civil to them. The expression is hers. His name is Chadwick. I met him at Charlie’s place last year. He made his money in Ceylon, I understand, in rubber, or cocoa, or something of that sort. His wife is—modern.” He pursed his lips, and looked up suddenly. “That expression also emanates from Belle. I don’t think I like it very much. There are no children.”
“The result of her modernity, possibly,” observed the vicar.
John Musgrave’s air was faintly disapproving. He did not appreciate the levity of some of Walter Errol’s remarks.
“I am not much of a judge of women,” he added seriously, “but from the little I saw of her I think she will be—a misfit in Moresby.”
Mrs. Errol laughed.
“I believe I am going to like her,” she said. “I’m a misfit in Moresby myself.”
John Musgrave turned to regard her with a protracted, contemplative look. She met his serious eyes, and smiled mockingly. Though she liked this old friend of her husband very well, his pedantry often worried her; it was, however, she realised, a part of the man’s nature, and not an affectation, which would have made it offensive.
“You are not a misfit in the sense in which she will be,” he replied quietly.
“You are rousing my curiosity to a tremendous pitch,” she returned. “How is it no one here has seen these people? They didn’t take the Hall without viewing it, I suppose?”
“They took it on Charlie’s recommendation, I believe,” he answered. “They will use it merely as a country house.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Errol’s tone was slightly disappointed. “That means, I suppose, that they will live mostly in town?”
“And abroad,” he answered. “They travel a lot.”
“Well,” observed Mrs. Errol brightly, “they will probably do something when they are here to liven the parish a little. We want a few modern ideas; our ideas in Moresby are covered with lichen. Lichen is picturesque, but it’s a form of decay, after all.”
John Musgrave appeared surprised. Here was another person who hungered for change; it was possibly, he decided, a feminine characteristic.
“Moresby compares, I believe, very favourably with other small places,” he said.
“I daresay it does.” She laughed abruptly. “If it didn’t it might be more gay.”
The vicar smiled at her indulgently.
“I’ve a rebel, you see, John, in my own household. Mary only requires a kindred spirit to break into open revolt. The coming of Mrs. Chadwick may create an upheaval.”
“I doubt whether the advent of Mrs. Chadwick will work any great change,” John Musgrave returned in his heavy, serious fashion. “We are too settled to have the current of our ideas disturbed by a fresh arrival. She will adapt herself, possibly, to our ways.”
Mrs. Errol rose with a little shrug of the shoulders, and left the room. Had John Musgrave, she wondered, ever treated any subject other than seriously? In anyone else this habit of bringing the weight of the mind to bear on every trivial matter would have seemed priggish; but it sat on John Musgrave so naturally that, beyond experiencing a passing irritation at times, she could not feel severe towards him. He would have made, in her opinion, an admirable bishop.
The vicar followed her exit with his glance, and then dropped leisurely into a chair and stretched his feet towards the fire.
“When is Mrs. Sommers coming this way again?” he asked, not so much conversationally as because he liked John Musgrave’s sister, and was always glad when she returned to her childhood’s home, which she did at fitful and infrequent intervals.
The man whom he addressed leaned back in his chair and stared thoughtfully into the flickering flames. The question recalled his own lonely fireside, the solitariness of which always struck him more forcibly while seated beside the cheery vicarage hearth. He missed Belle more as the years passed.
“She did not say,” he answered. “She has many claims upon her time since Charlie entered Parliament. I wish it were otherwise. I miss Belle.”
“That’s only natural,” the other answered. “She is so bright.”
“Yes.” John Musgrave looked directly at the speaker. “She is bright. She’s companionable. I expect that’s what Charlie thought.”
Walter Errol laughed.
“No doubt,” he agreed.
“Yes, she’s bright,” John Musgrave repeated, as though the realisation of this fact, striking him for the first time, accounted for what he had been at a loss to comprehend before. “I expect that’s why Charlie married her.”
“My dear fellow,” the other said, with a hardly repressed smile, “did it never occur to you that Charlie might have had a better reason?”
“A better reason?” John Musgrave echoed.
“Yes. Don’t you think it possible that he married her for love?”
John Musgrave flushed deeply.
“For love!” he said.
The vicar smiled openly now.
“People do marry for love occasionally,” he remarked.
“Do they? … Do they indeed?”
John Musgrave was gazing into the fire again, his expression doubtful, faintly discomfited—almost, it seemed to the man watching him in puzzled amusement, shocked.
“Dear me!” he ejaculated softly, and seemed disquieted at the presentment of this extraordinary idea. “Dear me!” he repeated slowly.
The vicar broke into a hearty laugh.
“Oh, Coelebs, my dear old Coelebs,” he said; “it was not without a sufficient reason you gained that nickname at Oxford. What have you been doing, to live in the world so long and never to have learned the biggest and simplest of life’s lessons? From the bottom of my heart I wish it may yet fall to your lot to get some practical experience. Find some one to fill Belle’s place in your home, dear old fellow, and then you will miss her no longer.”
“I wish, Walter,”