going tofind him a wife."
"Oh?" said Mrs Sommers. She looked thoughtful. "I think you will havein that a more difficult task than in bringing him up to date."
"We shall see," returned Mrs Chadwick, and her tone was confident. "Ithink myself that lack of opportunity has bred the disinclination. Noman is born a bachelor. The state, which is a misfit, results from hiscircumstances."
"It isn't due to lack of opportunity in John's case," Belle asserted."The women who have run after him!..."
"Yes," said Mrs Chadwick. She was thinking of Miss Simpson. "But thatsort of woman doesn't count, my dear."
The successful married woman has, as a rule, a very good idea of thekind of women men like. The successful married woman is never the vainwoman. The vain woman always imagines that the type she represents isthe type men admire; usually she is at fault. Mrs Chadwick was not avain woman. She knew very well that all men are not drawn towards thesame type of woman. Some men prefer looks; others mental qualities;and, by an odd inconsistency in human nature, the perfectlysimple-souled and self-disciplined man inclines naturally toward thewoman endowed with the captivating wickedness of her sex. There is abig distinction between captivating wickedness and vice. No man,whether he be good or bad in principle, admires vice in the mothers ofthe race.
Since Mr Musgrave reckoned in the category of the simple,self-disciplined soul, plainly the woman for him must have a spice ofwickedness in her. Mrs Chadwick may have been mistaken in herdeduction, but at least she believed in it firmly.
Had John Musgrave had any idea of what floated through her busy brainwhile she smilingly confided to him some of her plans for theimprovement of Moresby, he would have been horrified. Marriage was theone subject of all others he considered it indelicate to dwell upon. Ifpeople married they did it for some good reason; to contemplate the stepimpartially with, no adequate motive for so serious an undertaking wasto him unthinkable. Had he ever reflected upon it, and attempted aportrait of the lady he might have honoured with his preference, itcertainly would not have been a woman with any latent wickedness in her.John Musgrave's ideal, had he been called upon to embody an ideal,would have revealed the picture of a calm-faced woman of unemotionaltemperament, who would always have said and done the correct thing,would have adorned his home, and revered himself, and would have been inevery sense of the word womanly.
Mrs Chadwick could have told him that such a woman did not existoutside a man's imagination. She would not have done so, of course.She believed in encouraging masculine fallacies when they were harmless;to attempt discouragement was to invite defeat. Opposition is the leasteffective form of argument. A clever woman seldom makes the mistake offorcing her ideas; and Mrs Chadwick was undoubtedly clever.
"Anything can be accomplished through suggestion," she had been heard toassert. "Suggestion, plant it where you will, is a seed which neverfails to germinate."
CHAPTER SIX.
Miss Simpson contemplated her appearance by the aid of the long mirrorin her wardrobe with an eye sharply critical as that of the vainest ofher sisters, whose concern for outward things she held generally incontempt. But a visit to the house of a bachelor in regard to whom oneentertains matrimonial intentions excuses, as anyone will acknowledge, agreater attentiveness to detail than usual.
The result of her inspection was on the whole satisfactory. The effectof her severely tailored costume and small, unassertive hat was neat inthe extreme, so neat, indeed, that Mrs Chadwick, when she beheld it,felt a womanly compassion for the wearer; she preferred to see a womandaintily gowned. But Mrs Chadwick's taste was not Moresby's.
One lock of Miss Simpson's tightly braided hair betrayed a rebellioustendency to escape the hairpins and stray pleasingly over her brow.This could not be permitted. The aid of additional pins wasrequisitioned, and the unruly lock was brought into subjection, andtucked out of sight beneath the unrelenting brim of the eminentlydecorous hat.
Woman's hair never seems to achieve a definite recognition in the schemeof its wearer. Some women regard their hair as an adornment, which itis, and take trouble that other people shall recognise its claim as anasset in feminine decorativeness; with other women it would seem thatthe human head suffers this objectionable growth only because natureinsists upon it as an essential part of her design. They brush it backfrom the face in strained disapproval, and further abuse it by screwingit into as tight a ball as circumstances permit. No frivolous abandonis allowed; pins, and even pomade, are resorted to, until what isundoubtedly beautiful in itself is rendered sufficiently unbecoming tosoothe the most fastidiously decorous mind.
Miss Simpson belonged to this latter category. By instinct Miss Simpsonwas modest to the verge of prudery. But as, in the inconsistency ofhuman nature, a good person is often streaked with evil, and an evilperson possesses a strain of goodness, so Miss Simpson, despite herprudery, had a touch of the softer sentiments which no woman should bewithout. This weakness led to the cherishing of a romantic passion forMr Musgrave, which so far overcame her natural decorum as to drive herto open pursuit of the object of her middle-aged affections. Fromanyone else a written proposal to a man would have appealed to her inthe light of an offence against every womanly tradition; but in her owncase circumstances allowed for the forsaking of her principles, evendemanded this sacrifice of her. Plainly John Musgrave would have likedto propose; but he was a shy man. His gentlemanly refusal of her offerwas, she recognised, prompted by this same shyness, and not at all fromdisinclination towards a life-partnership with herself. Eventually shetrusted this not unmanly shyness would be conquered so far as to givehim the courage to open the courtship which she felt he was always onthe verge of beginning.
Proof that he enjoyed her companionship was forthcoming in the fact thathe adhered to the practice of seeking it publicly. If he did not enjoyher companionship he would assuredly retire from the committee of schoolmanagement, and other local matters in which they were jointlyinterested. Every one knows that interests in common form a substantialbasis for mutual regard; and John Musgrave and Miss Simpson had a commonbond in their insatiable love for busying themselves in parish affairs.They considered themselves--it is not an uncommon conceit--indispensableto the efficient working of the social machinery of Moresby. If thevicar held opposite views he was too wise a man to air them; and beinggood-natured, and tactful beyond the ordinary run of persons inauthority, he allowed them their amiable conceit, and was grateful thatthey in return allowed him to occupy his own pulpit and generallyconduct the services. Interference in his particular department was theone thing he would have resented. On this amicable footing was theparish of Moresby run.
But with the advent of Mrs Chadwick the vicar, at least, foresawcomplications, and awaited their development with curiosity. MissSimpson alone harboured no thought of change in the conduct of Moresbyaffairs. That the coming of a stranger should foreshadow interferencein parish matters would never have occurred to her. The coming of thevicar's wife had not effected that.
But this afternoon, setting forth to call on Mrs Sommers, with apleasurable thrill of anticipation which the prospective society of theladies would scarcely seem to justify, it entered her mind for the firsttime that Mrs Chadwick's residence at the Hall must work some sort ofchange in the pleasant routine of their daily lives.
She was not sure that she approved of Mrs Chadwick. She was very sure,when she arrived and was shown into Mr Musgrave's drawing-room, thatshe, disapproved of her. Mrs Chadwick was seated at the open window,although the day was cold, and she was smoking a cigarette. She threwthe cigarette away on the visitor's entrance, and smilingly apologised.
"I hope you don't object to smoke," she said. "It is an incurable badhabit with me."
Miss Simpson did not object to smoke from the proper quarter--the properquarter being as it issued from between the lips of the sterner sex, whowere privileged in the matter of bad habits, which is a feminine fallacythat is slipping out of date; she very strongly
objected to smoking whenher own sex indulged in it--indeed, save for Mrs Chadwick, she hadnever seen a woman smoke. It was, she considered, a disgusting andunfeminine practice.
She murmured "Really!" And shaking hands somewhat frigidly, addressedherself pointedly to Mrs Sommers for the first few minutes aftersitting down.
Mrs Chadwick caressed the pekinese, and watched the visitor withcurious interest the while. It was not, however, in Mrs Chadwick'snature to remain outside any conversation for long; and she gracefullyinsinuated herself into the talk, to Miss Simpson's further surprise.She expected, when she took the trouble to show her displeasure, to seethe object thereof properly quelled. That, too, is a characteristic ofparish omnipotence. And, amazingly, Mrs Chadwick was already betrayinga desire to interfere in Moresby arrangements.
"I visited