The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck: A Comedy of Limitations, James Branch Cabell [that summer book .TXT] 📗

Musgrave was, not unnaturally, late for supper. It is not to be supposed that at this meal the colonel faltered in his duties as a host, for, to the contrary, he narrated several anecdotes in his neatest style. It was with him a point of honor always to be in company the social triumph of his generation. He observed with idle interest that Charteris and Patricia avoided each other in a rather marked manner. Both seemed a trifle more serious than they were wont to be.

After supper, Tom Gelwix brought forth a mandolin, and most of the house-party sang songs, sentimental and otherwise, upon the front porch of Matocton. Anne had disappeared somewhere. Musgrave subsequently discovered her in one of the drawing-rooms, puzzling over a number of papers which her maid had evidently just brought to her.

Mrs. Charteris looked up with a puckered brow. "Rudolph," said she, "haven't you an account at the Occidental Bank?"

"Hardly an account, dear lady,—merely a deposit large enough to entitle me to receive monthly notices that I have overdrawn it."

"Why, then, of course, you have a cheque-book. Horrible things, aren't they?—such a nuisance remembering to fill out those little stubs. Of course, I forgot to bring mine with me—I always do; and equally, of course, a vexatious debt turns up and finds me without an Occidental Bank cheque to my name."

Musgrave was amused. "That," said he, "is easily remedied. I will get you one; though even if—Ah, well, what is the good of trying to teach you adorable women anything about business! You shall have your indispensable blank form in three minutes."

He returned in rather less than that time, with the cheque. Anne was alone now. She was gowned in some dull, soft, yellow stuff, and sat by a small, marble-topped table, twiddling a fountain-pen.

"You mustn't sneer at my business methods, Rudolph," she said, pouting a little as she filled out the cheque. "It isn't polite, sir, in the first place, and, in the second, I am really very methodical. Of course, I am always losing my cheque-book, and drawing cheques and forgetting to enter them, and I usually put down the same deposit two or three times—all women do that; but, otherwise, I am really very careful. I manage all the accounts; I can't expect Jack to do that, you know." Mrs. Charteris signed her name with a flourish, and nodded at the colonel wisely. "Dear infant, but he is quite too horribly unpractical. Do you know this bill has been due—oh, for months—and he forgot it entirely until this evening. Fortunately, he can settle it to-morrow; those disagreeable publishers of his have telegraphed for him to come to New York at once, you know. Otherwise—dear, dear! but marrying a genius is absolutely ruinous to one's credit, isn't it, Rudolph? The tradespeople will refuse to trust us soon."

Involuntarily, Musgrave had seen the cheque. It was for a considerable amount, and it was made out to John Charteris.

"Beyond doubt," said Musgrave, in his soul, "Jack is colossal! He is actually drawing on his wife for the necessary expenses for running away with another woman!"

The colonel sat down abruptly before the great, open fireplace, and stared hard at the pine-boughs which were heaped up in it.

"A penny," said she, at length.

He glanced up with a smile. "My dear madam, it would be robbery! For a penny, you may read of the subject of my thoughts in any of the yellow journals, only far more vividly set forth, and obtain a variety of more or less savory additions, to boot. I was thinking of the Lethbury case, and wondering how we could have been so long deceived by the man."

"Ah, poor Mrs. Lethbury!" Anne sighed, "I am very sorry for her, Rudolph; she was a good woman, and was always interested in charitable work."

"Do you know," said Colonel Musgrave, with deliberation, "it is she I cannot understand. To discover that he had been systematically hoodwinking her for some ten years; that, after making away with as much of her fortune as he was able to lay hands on, he has betrayed business trust after business trust in order to—to maintain another establishment; that he has never cared for her, and has made her his dupe time after time, in order to obtain money for his gambling debts and other even less reputable obligations—she must realize all these things now, you know, and one would have thought no woman's love could possibly survive such a test. Yet, she is standing by him through thick and thin. Yes, I confess, Amelia Lethbury puzzles me. I don't understand her mental attitude."

Musgrave was looking at Anne very intently as he ended.

"Why, but of course," said Anne, "she realizes that it was all the fault of that—that other woman; and, besides, the—the entanglement has been going on only a little over eight years—not ten, Rudolph."

She was entirely in earnest; Colonel Musgrave could see it plainly.

"I admit I hadn't looked on it in that light," said he, at length, and was silent for a moment Then, "Upon my soul, Anne," he cried, "I believe you think the woman is only doing the natural thing, only doing the thing one has a right to expect of her, in sticking to that blackguard after she has found him out!"

Mrs. Charteris raised her eyebrows; she was really surprised. "Naturally, she must stand by her husband when he is in trouble; why, if his own wife didn't, who would, Rudolph? It is just now that he needs her most. It would be abominable to desert him now."

Anne paused and thought. "Depend upon it, she knows a better side of his nature than we can see; she knows him, possibly, to have been misled, or to have acted thoughtlessly; because otherwise, she would not stand by him so firmly." Having reached this satisfactory conclusion, Anne began to laugh—at Musgrave's lack of penetration, probably. "So, you see, Rudolph, in either case, her conduct is perfectly natural."

"And this," he cried, "this is how women reason!"

"Am I very stupid? Jack says I am a bit illogical at times. But, Rudolph, you mustn't expect a woman to judge the man she loves; if you call on her to do that, she doesn't reason about it; she just goes on loving him, and thinking how horrid you are. Women love men as they do children; they punish them sometimes, but only in deference to public opinion. A woman will always find an excuse for the man she loves. If he deserts her, she is miserable until she succeeds in demonstrating to herself it was entirely her own fault; after that, she is properly repentant, but far less unhappy; and, anyhow, she goes on loving him just the same."

The colonel pondered over this. "Women are different," he said.

"I don't know. I think that, if all women could be thrown with good men, they would all be good. Women want to be good; but there comes a time to each one of them when she wants to make a certain man happy, and wants that more than anything else in the world; and then, of course, if he wants—very much—for her to be bad, she will be bad. A bad woman is always to be explained by a bad man."

Anne nodded, very wisely; then, she began to laugh, but this time at herself. "I am talking quite like a book," she said. "Really, I had no idea I was so clever. But I have thought of this before, Rudolph, and been sorry for those poor women who—who haven't found the right sort of man to care for."

"Yes." Musgrave's face was alert. "You have been luckier than most,
Anne," he said.

"Lucky!" she cried, and that queer little thrill of happiness woke again in her rich voice. "Ah, you don't know how lucky I have been, Rudolph! I have never cared for any one except—well, yes, you, a great while ago—and Jack. And you are both good men. Ah, Rudolph, it was very dear and sweet and foolish, the way we loved each other, but you don't mind—very, very much—do you, if I think Jack is the best man in the world, and by far the best man in the world for me? He is so good to me; he is so good and kind and considerate to me, and, even after all these years of matrimony, he is always the lover. A woman appreciates that, Rudolph; she wants her husband to be always her lover, just as Jack is, and never to give in when she coaxes—because she only coaxes when she knows she is in the wrong—and never, never, to let her see him shaving himself. If a husband observes these simple rules, Rudolph, his wife will be a happy woman; and Jack does. In consequence, every day I live I grow fonder of him, and appreciate him more and more; he grows upon me just as a taste for strong drink might. Without him—without him—" Anne's voice died away; then she faced Musgrave, indignantly. "Oh, Rudolph!" she cried, "how horrid of you, how mean of you, to come here and suggest the possibility of Jack's dying or running away from me, or doing anything dreadful like that!"

Colonel Musgrave was smiling, "I?" said he, equably. "My dear madam! if you will reconsider,—"

"No," she conceded, after deliberation, "it wasn't exactly your fault. I got started on the subject of Jack, and imagined all sorts of horrible and impossible things. But there is a sort of a something in the air to-night; probably a storm is coming down the river. So I feel very morbid and very foolish, Rudolph; but, then, I am in love, you see. Isn't it funny, after all these years?" Anne asked with a smile;—"and so you are not to be angry, Rudolph."

"My dear," he said, "I assure you, the emotion you raise in me is very far from resembling that of anger." Musgrave rose and laughed. "I fear, you know, we will create a scandal if we sit here any longer. Let's see what the others are doing."

That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith, was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it, and laughed.

"Isn't it—isn't it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne's query ruefully.

"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it comes, but, more often, not; life isn't always a pantomime, with a fairy god-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons. In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned to be my own god in the machine."

Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and
drugged his mind correcting proofsheets—for the Lichfield Historical
Association's Quarterly Magazine—and brought down to the year 1805 his
"List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County."

The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East Drawing-room.

Thus, above the great marble mantel,—carved with thyrsi, and supported by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,—you will find burly Sebastian Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina Musgrave—that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail—eternally weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay, before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered his profound unworthiness to be Patricia's husband. There is also the colonial governor of Albemarle—a Van Dyck this—two Knellers, and Lely's portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral.

So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his entrance