The Rivet in Grandfathers Neck | Page 2

Chicago) would or would not declare in favor of bi-metallism; when
golf was a novel form of recreation in America, and people disputed
how to pronounce its name, and pedestrians still turned to stare after an
automobile; when, according to the fashion notes, "the godet skirts and
huge sleeves of the present modes" were already doomed to extinction;
when the baseball season had just begun, and some of our people were
discussing the national game, and others the spectacular burning of the

old Pennsylvania Railway depot at Thirty-third and Market Street in
Philadelphia, and yet others the significance of General Fitzhugh Lee's
recent appointment as consul-general to Habana:--at this remote time,
Lichfield talked of nothing except the Pendomer divorce case.
And Colonel Rudolph Musgrave had very narrowly escaped being
named as the co-respondent. This much, at least, all Lichfield knew
when George Pendomer--evincing unsuspected funds of
generosity--permitted his wife to secure a divorce on the euphemistic
grounds of "desertion." John Charteris, acting as Rudolph Musgrave's
friend, had patched up this arrangement; and the colonel and Mrs.
Pendomer, so rumor ran, were to be married very quietly after a decent
interval.
Remained only to deliberate whether this sop to the conventions should
be accepted as sufficient.
"At least," as Mrs. Ashmeade sagely observed, "we can combine
vituperation with common-sense, and remember it is not the first time a
Musgrave has figured in an entanglement of the sort. A lecherous race!
proverbial flutterers of petticoats! His surname convicts the man
unheard and almost excuses him. All of us feel that. And, moreover, it
is not as if the idiots had committed any unpardonable sin, for they
have kept out of the newspapers."
Her friend seemed dubious, and hazarded something concerning "the
merest sense of decency."
"In the name of the Prophet, figs! People--I mean the people who count
in Lichfield--are charitable enough to ignore almost any crime which is
just a matter of common knowledge. In fact, they are mildly grateful. It
gives them something to talk about. But when detraction is printed in
the morning paper you can't overlook it without incurring the suspicion
of being illiterate and virtueless. That's Lichfield."
"But, Polly--"
"Sophist, don't I know my Lichfield? I know it almost as well as I know

Rudolph Musgrave. And so I prophesy that he will not marry Clarice
Pendomer, because he is inevitably tired of her by this. He will marry
money, just as all the Musgraves do. Moreover, I prophesy that we will
gabble about this mess until we find a newer target for our stone
throwing, and be just as friendly with the participants to their faces as
we ever were. So don't let me hear any idiotic talk about whether or no
I am going to receive her--"
"Well, after all, she was born a Bellingham. We must remember that."
"Wasn't I saying I knew my Lichfield?" Mrs. Ashmeade placidly
observed.
* * * * *
And time, indeed, attested her to be right in every particular.
Yet it must be recorded that at this critical juncture chance rather
remarkably favored Colonel Musgrave and Mrs. Pendomer, by giving
Lichfield something of greater interest to talk about; since now, just in
the nick of occasion, occurred the notorious Scott Musgrave murder.
Scott Musgrave--a fourth cousin once removed of the colonel's, to be
quite accurate--had in the preceding year seduced the daughter of a
village doctor, a negligible "half-strainer" up country at Warren; and
her two brothers, being irritated, picked this particular season to waylay
him in the street, as he reeled homeward one night from the
Commodores' Club, and forthwith to abolish Scott Musgrave after the
primitive methods of their lower station in society.
These details, indeed, were never officially made public, since a
discreet police force "found no clues"; for Fred Musgrave (of King's
Garden), as befitted the dead man's well-to-do brother, had been at no
little pains to insure constabulary shortsightedness, in preference to
having the nature of Scott Musgrave's recreations unsympathetically
aired. Fred Musgrave thereby afforded Lichfield a delectable
opportunity (conversationally and abetted by innumerable "they do
say's") to accredit the murder, turn by turn, to every able-bodied person
residing within stone's throw of its commission. So that few had time,

now, to talk of Rudolph Musgrave and Clarice Pendomer; for it was not
in Lichfieldian human nature to discuss a mere domestic imbroglio
when here, also in the Musgrave family, was a picturesque and gory
assassination to lay tongue to.
So Colonel Musgrave was duly reëlected that spring to the librarianship
of the Lichfield Historical Association, and the name of Mrs. George
Pendomer was not stricken from the list of patronesses of the Lichfield
German Club, but was merely altered to "Mrs. Clarice Pendomer."
* * * * *
At the bottom of his heart Colonel