Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

Diogenes got back some time after the car, and was met at the entrance by one of the few men employed at the Hall. This person, who had apparently been waiting for him, fastened a lead to his collar and took up a gun which he had rested against a tree, seeming as though he too were bent on posing as a sportsman, which he was not, save in the humble capacity of cleaning his master’s guns.

“You come along with me, old fellow,” he said, and tried to look grim, but softened on meeting Diogenes’ inquiring eye. “Shame, I calls it,” he ejaculated in a voice of disgust. “Anyone might ’a’ made the mistake of taking that there for a rabbit. Blest if I rekernised it for a dog when I seed it first.”

He led Diogenes out through the gate and down the road towards a field. The gate of the field was troublesome to open. While he fumbled with the padlock, his gun resting against the gatepost for the greater freedom of his hands, a joyous bark from Diogenes, who previously had worn a surprisingly docile and depressed mien, as though aware of what was going forward which these preparations portended, caused him to desist from the business of unfastening the gate to look up. When he saw who it was whose hurrying figure Diogenes thus joyfully hailed, he did not trouble to go on with his job, but waited for Peggy to approach. She came up at a run, and caught at Diogenes’ lead, and, holding it, stared at the man.

“What were you going to do with him?” she asked, her accusing eyes going from his face to the gun, and from the gun back again to his face.

“Shoot ’im, miss,” he answered. “It’s the master’s orders.”

“Absurd!” cried Peggy angrily. “I won’t have it done.”

“Sorry, miss,” the man replied, looking at her with a mingling of doubt and submission in his glance. “But I’m afraid it’ll ’ave to be. Shoot ’im, without delay. Them’s my orders.”

“Well, you can’t obey them,” replied Peggy, as calmly as her agitation allowed, “because, you see, I won’t let you. You can’t shoot him while I hold him, can you?”

“No, miss,” he replied. “But it’s as much as my place is worth – ”

Peggy cut him short.

“I am going to take him away,” she said. “I’ll hide him… send him away from the place. But I won’t have him sacrificed for – for a silly accident like that. Both Mr and Mrs Chadwick will regret it later. He’s a very valuable dog.”

“Yes, miss,” he said. “I allow it’s a shame. But the master was very short and emphatic. What am I to say when ’e asks me if it’s done?”

“He won’t ask,” Peggy answered, as confident that her uncle would be nearly as pained at Diogenes’ death as her aunt was over the pekinese. “He will take it for granted, of course, that it is done. Go into the field and fire off your gun, and then return to the house. I’ll see to Diogenes.”

“You are quite sure, miss,” the man said doubtfully, “that you won’t let no one see that there dog? If the master thought that I’d deceived him – ”

“No one shall see him,” Peggy answered, not considering at the moment the magnitude of this promise. “I take all responsibility. You leave him with me.”

“Very good, miss,” he said cheerfully, as much relieved to be free from the task appointed him as Peggy was to watch him vault the gate and disappear, gun in hand, into the field.

The next thing she and Diogenes heard was the report of the gun as this pseudo-murderer killed an imaginary dog in the field with bloodthirsty zest.

Chapter Twenty Three

The sound of the gun, although it was discharged harmlessly into the unoffending ground, brought home to Peggy the full significance of the sentence that had been passed upon Diogenes, and the narrow shave by which she had prevented its being carried into effect. Diogenes too seemed to realise instinctively the seriousness of the occasion and the vastness of the service rendered him through Peggy’s intervention. He pushed his ungainly body against her skirt, instead of straining from the leash as was his practice, and when the report of the gun startled him, as it startled the girl and made her shiver, he lifted his soft eyes to her face wistfully, and pushed a cold nose into her hand for comfort, and licked the hand in humble testimony of his gratitude. Peggy looked down on him and her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Diogenes!” she cried. “Why did you do it?.. Oh, Diogenes?”

Diogenes wagged his foolish tail and licked her hand again with yet more effusive demonstrations of affection. So much distressful weeping troubled him. Save when a child screamed at the sight of him, or a foolish person, like Eliza, his experience had not led him to expect tears. Yet to-day here were two people whom he had never seen cry before, lamenting tearfully in a manner which seemed somehow associated with himself. Diogenes could not understand it; and so he sidled consolingly against Peggy, to the incommoding of her progress as she hurried him away down the road.

Where she intended taking him, or what she purposed doing with him, were reflections which so far her mind had not burdened itself with; getting him away from the Hall and beyond the view of anyone connected with the place was sufficient concern for the moment.

When she had covered a distance of about half a mile the difficult question of the safe disposal of Diogenes arose, and, finding her unprepared with any solution of the problem, left her dismayed and perplexed, standing in the road with the subdued Diogenes beside her, at a complete loss what to do next. She looked at Diogenes, looked down the road, looked again at Diogenes, and frowned.

“Oh, you tiresome animal!” she exclaimed. “What am I to do now?”

One thing she dared not do, and that was take Diogenes back.

Peggy sat down in the hedge, risking chills and all the evils attendant on sitting upon damp ground, and drew Diogenes close to her, while she turned over in her busy brain the people she knew who would be most likely to assist her out of this difficulty. The obvious person, the one to whom she would have turned most readily to assist her with every assurance of his helpful sympathy but for that unfortunate interview in the conservatory, was Doctor Fairbridge. She felt incensed when she reflected upon that absurd scene and realised that the man had thereby made his friendship useless to her; that at this crisis when he could have served her she was debarred from seeking his aid, would have been unable to accept it had it been offered. Yet Doctor Fairbridge could have taken Diogenes, would have taken him, she, knew, and might have kept him successfully concealed at Rushleigh. Why, in the name of all that was annoying, had he been so inconsiderate as to propose to her?

“I don’t know what I am to do with you, Diogenes,” she said. “I don’t know where to hide you in a silly little place like this.”

Peggy was upset, and so worried with the whole affair, not only with the business of hiding Diogenes, but at the thought of having to part from this good companion who belonged to her in every sense save that of lawful ownership, that she here broke down and began to cry in earnest. Diogenes lifted a bandy paw and scratched her knee.

“I’m a snivelling idiot, Diogenes,” she sobbed. “But I c-can’t help it. You little know what you’ve done. I wonder whether you will be sorry when you never see me any more?”

Diogenes appeared sufficiently contrite as it was to have settled that doubt. Finding one paw ineffectual, he put both in her lap and licked her downcast face, whereupon Peggy flung her arms about his neck and wept in its thick creases.

It was at this juncture that Mr Musgrave, returning from a country walk, chanced inadvertently upon this affecting scene. So amazed was he on rounding the curve to come all unprepared upon Miss Annersley, seated in the hedge like any vagrant, and weeping more disconsolately than any vagrant he had ever seen, that he came abruptly to a standstill in front of her, and surveying the picture with a sympathy which was none the less real on account of his complete ignorance as to the cause of her grief, he exclaimed in his astonishment:

“Miss Annersley! You’ll catch a chill if you sit on the damp grass like that.”

Peggy, as much amazed at this interruption of her lamentation as the interruptor had been at sight of her lamenting, looked up with a little gasp, and then struggled to her feet, upsetting Diogenes, but not releasing her grasp on the lead, one idea alone unalterably fixed in her mind – the necessity to hold on to Diogenes in any circumstance.

“Oh, Mr Musgrave,” she cried a little wildly, “what does it matter what I catch, since I am so miserable?”

“But why,” asked John Musgrave, not unreasonably, “if you are in trouble should you add to your distress the physical incapacity to battle with it? It is very unwise to sit on the ground so early in the season.”

Peggy emitted a little strangled laugh.

“I don’t think I am very wise,” she admitted. “I am like Diogenes, all made up of impulses and tardy repentances.”

Mr Musgrave eyed Diogenes with marked disfavour. Whether it was due to a suggestion conveyed unconsciously in Peggy’s speech or to the unnaturally subdued air which Diogenes wore, he gathered the impression that the source of Peggy’s tears might be traced to the evil doings of this ferocious-looking animal.

“What,” he asked, “has Diogenes been doing now?”

The “now” was an ungenerous slip which Mr Musgrave’s good feeling would not have permitted had he reflected before speaking; it proved that Diogenes’ past misdeeds were present in his thoughts. But Peggy was too unhappy to take notice of this, as assuredly she would have done in a calmer moment.

“Diogenes,” she said, and leaned down to pat the big flat head, “has committed murder. It is only the pekinese,” she added hastily, on observing Mr Musgrave’s horrified expression. “He pretended it was a rabbit, and hunted it. I have just saved him from capital punishment and he’s in hiding. But it’s so difficult to hide him in Moresby. My uncle and aunt believe that he is shot. If they knew he wasn’t they’d be – well, they’d be glad later, I know, but just at present they would be very angry. I have got to find a home for him right away, and I don’t know where to find it. I don’t know what to do with him.”

She looked up at John Musgrave dolefully, with an appeal in the darkly grey eyes which Mr Musgrave found difficult to resist. They almost seemed to suggest that he, as a tower of strength, might aid her in this matter. Mr Musgrave began to revolve in his mind whether he could not aid her. He did not like Diogenes, and he recalled the damage Diogenes had effected in his own kitchen. That crime weighed with him more than the slaughter of the pekinese; the death of the pekinese did not concern Mr Musgrave. Had it been a case simply of the rescue of Diogenes from a perfectly just punishment it is doubtful whether Mr Musgrave’s kindness of heart would have proved equal to the sacrifice; but the assisting of Peggy Annersley was an altogether different matter. It was a matter which commended itself to Mr Musgrave as worthy of his endeavour.

“Can I not help you,” he suggested, with the faintest show of hesitation, which hesitation vanished before her radiant look, “by removing Diogenes to – to Rushleigh, or some more distant place, and getting some one to dispose of him for you? I could take him in to-day in the car.”

“Oh, will you?” Peggy cried eagerly. “Oh, Mr Musgrave, I shall be eternally grateful to you if you will.”

Mr Musgrave, although slightly embarrassed, was not indisposed to become an object for Miss Annersley’s lasting gratitude; he liked the eager impulsiveness of her speech; it made him feel that he was rendering her an inestimable service; and to render valuable service with so slight personal inconvenience was agreeable; it conveyed a comfortable sense of being useful.

“Certainly I will do that,” he said. “It is a small service. I wish I could help you more effectively.”

Mr Musgrave was quite sincere in the expression of this wish. He was well aware of Peggy’s affection for the ugly brute which was her constant companion, and he knew what a wrench it would be for her to part with Diogenes; but Diogenes’ banishment was inevitable. That point was very clear.

“If you think he will come with me I will take him now,” he said.

Diogenes appeared so very reluctant to accompany Mr Musgrave and so very determined to follow Peggy that Peggy finally suggested taking him herself, and leaving him secure under lock and key in Mr Musgrave’s garage. If this arrangement occurred to Mr Musgrave as somewhat unconventional he lost sight of its inadvisability on that account in view of the greater inadvisability of attempting to drag an unwilling bull-dog, whose unfailing gentleness he had reason to question, away from the only person who appeared to have any sort of control over him. Mr Musgrave therefore relinquished the lead and prepared to accompany Peggy and the bull-dog back to his orderly home.

A good deed may carry its own reward; but in the days that were to follow, in the weeks and months that followed, Mr Musgrave was moved to doubt the infallibility of providential recognition of unselfish deeds. It is fortunate for the persistence in the instinct for obeying a generous impulse that the future is mercifully shrouded in the obscurity of unseen things.