Coelebs: The Love Story of a Bachelor

“Don’t cry, Ruby,” Mr Chadwick said. “It won’t bring the little beggar to life, you know; and you’ll make yourself sick. I’ll get you another pet, dear.”

This promise, though well meaning, was mistaken. In the first shock of her grief Mrs Chadwick recoiled from the suggestion.

“I couldn’t have another pet,” she wailed. “I loved him so. I couldn’t bear another dog in his place. I d-don’t want to see a dog again.”

“All right,” he said. “But buck up, Ruby. Come and get into the car, and I’ll drive you home.”

“I couldn’t endure to have that brute in with me,” she sobbed angrily.

“No, of course not. We’ll leave the beast behind. You shan’t be worried with the sight of him again. I’ll shoot him.”

He made the promise glibly, in the hope that this threat would rouse her. It roused her effectually, but not in the way in which he had intended. She looked up with a gleam of vindictive satisfaction in her eyes, showing through her tears.

“Oh, do!” she said. “Shoot him to-day. I couldn’t see him about after this.”

“All right,” he acquiesced, none too heartily. Diogenes was a valuable dog, and had, moreover, a winning way with him towards the people whom he liked, and Will Chadwick was certainly one of these. Mr Chadwick could no more have shot the dog with his own hand than he could have shot a child.

“I’ll see to it,” he said.

The first intimation Diogenes had that it was expected of him that he should walk home was when the car started and left him, mute and bewildered and bespattered with mud, in the road gazing after it. No word had been vouchsafed him, no look. From the silence and the absence of interest in himself he had been deluded into supposing that he was not held responsible for the evil that had been done; but with the disappearance of the car vague doubts disturbed him, and he started in a sour, halfhearted way to follow the car and face his destiny. Even had his intelligence been equal to grasping what that destiny was, so great is the force of habit that he would have returned inevitably to meet it.

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.

Arrived at the house, Mr Musgrave and Peggy and Diogenes behaved very much after the manner of three conspirators. In a sense they were conspirators, and the third was a criminal conspirator. Diogenes, with agreeable recollections of former sport connected with Mr Musgrave’s back entrance, plucked up his spirit on passing through the gate and looked expectantly round for Mr Musgrave’s cat; Peggy, with less pleasant memories of that former occasion, tightened her hold on the lead and kept an attentive eye on her charge; Mr Musgrave, conscious of nothing save the undesirability of being seen by the servants under existing circumstances, walked with a sheepish and cautious air past the back of his dwelling, and on reaching the stables threw open the door with guilty haste and drew it after him as he followed close upon Peggy’s heels. Once inside, safe from observation, with the door shut against intrusion, he assumed his normal manner, and ceased to look like a middle-aged Guy Fawkes, or a gentlemanly dog-stealer.

Chapter Twenty Four

“What jolly stables!” Peggy cried, breathing herself more freely since the imminent discovery of Diogenes was a danger past. They had met no one in the road, had been seen by no one from the house. “You will be quite happy here, Diogenes. You must be very good, and give no trouble, mind.”

Diogenes, who was engaged on an inspection of his temporary quarters, disregarded these injunctions; he was snuffling round for rats. Peggy looked at Mr Musgrave. By a strange coincidence Mr Musgrave was looking at Peggy, looking with a close and curious scrutiny.

“You are kind,” she said. “I can never thank you.”

Her gratitude had the effect of inclining Mr Musgrave towards a greater kindliness; but, since he had undertaken to perform the sole service that presented itself as practicable, he could bethink him of nothing kinder, and so modestly deprecated her thanks.

“If Diogenes had been shot,” she said, and shivered, “it would have made me very unhappy. I’m unhappy enough as it is. I hate the thought of losing him. I can’t bear to think of never seeing him in the future.”

To hide the sudden rush of tears which she realised would be as embarrassing for John Musgrave to witness as for her to shed before him, she dropped on her knees in the straw and drew Diogenes to her and put her arms about his neck.

“Oh, Diogenes, my poor dear?” she sobbed. “Why ever did you do it? I’ve got to let you go, Diogenes. I shan’t see you any more, ever. We’ll never go for walks together again. If I’d only been with him,” she said, lifting to John Musgrave her tear-dimmed eyes, “it wouldn’t have happened.”

John Musgrave, with the scene of his wrecked china, and Diogenes standing triumphant amid the wreckage, with Peggy, dismayed and helpless, beside him, had a passing doubt whether her presence would have availed in preventing the tragedy. But, with those upturned, tear-filled eyes appealing for his sympathy, to remind her that her authority was sometimes in default was a brutality of which he was incapable.

“I am exceedingly sorry,” he said gently, “for your distress. I wish I could help you.”

“But you are helping me,” she cried. “You have taken such a load off my mind. I daresay in time I’ll get used to being without him. But he was such a – chum.”

As she knelt almost at his feet, with her arms about the ugly brute from which she was so loth to separate, she presented a picture at once so appealing and pathetic that Mr Musgrave found himself struggling with all manner of absurd impulses in his very earnest and not unnatural desire to see her grief change to gladness, and the tears melt away in smiles. He had the same feeling of uncomfortable distress in witnessing her trouble as he experienced over the lesser but more assertive troubles of John Sommers. Her tears hurt him.

“I suppose,” he said, with a certain halting indecision of manner, “we couldn’t, perhaps, find a home for him somewhere not too far away – somewhere, in fact, near enough for you to see him occasionally? I wonder… Perhaps that might be managed.”

Peggy brightened visibly and looked up at him with such a light of hope in her eyes that Mr Musgrave, from thinking that this might be managed, finally decided that it must be managed; that he, in short, must manage it. This resolve once firmly established in his mind, his thoughts busied themselves with ways and means for the safe and convenient disposal of Diogenes. But the only way which presented itself was so disturbing to Mr Musgrave that, after first considering it, he paused to reflect, and looking upon Diogenes, and having very clearly in mind the great personal inconvenience that would result from such a course, he promptly rejected it. Having rejected it, finally, as he believed, he paused again for reflection; and looking this time not upon Diogenes but straight into those clear, hopeful eyes, which seemed to look to him with such a perfect confidence in his ability to solve this difficulty that to disappoint her expectation seemed cruel after having raised her hopes, Mr Musgrave felt it imperative on him to reconsider the matter. After a somewhat protracted silence, he said: “Do you think it would be possible for me to keep him?”

Peggy was so amazed at this proposal, which in her wildest moments she had not conceived, that she released Diogenes and stood up slowly, fixing upon John Musgrave a look so charged with gratitude and admiration and an emotion which partook of neither of these qualities, but which was so expressive of itself as to move Mr Musgrave to a desire to house Diogenes, or any other beast, in order to oblige her. She approached and put her two hands into his, and, oddly, John Musgrave did not feel embarrassed. He held the small hands firmly, and looked gravely into the earnest face.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “I never thought of anything half so good as that. I don’t know what to say… It doesn’t seem fair to let you do it. I expect he’ll be an awful nuisance for a time.”

Mr Musgrave was very certain that he would be a nuisance; but he was warming to the business, and felt equal to any undertaking with that soft look in the grey eyes melting his reluctance and the small hands gripping his with such eager warmth.

“I don’t suppose we should get through without a little trouble,” he answered, smiling. “It will certainly be necessary to keep him for some weeks on the chain. I could take him for a run every day – in the early morning, and after dusk. The greatest difficulty I foresee is in the matter of his identity. I should not like to annoy Mr Chadwick. It seems acting not quite properly towards him.”

“Uncle would be as grateful as I am,” Peggy assured him, “if he knew. He hated the thought of having Diogenes destroyed. Couldn’t we disguise him somehow – paint him? I believe he could be dyed.”

“I’ll take him into Rushleigh and see what can be contrived,” he replied. “And, anyway, if necessary he can be sent away later. For the present I will adopt him. And – and any time you wish to see him you can come in and take him off the chain.”

Peggy grasped his hands more tightly.

“You are so kind, so very kind,” she said. “I will never forget. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

She looked so earnest in expressing this wish so really anxious to prove her gratitude, that Mr Musgrave felt himself sufficiently rewarded for the service he was rendering. The charge of a dog, even of a dog with such a record as Diogenes, was after, all no superhuman undertaking.

“You overestimate the service,” he said. “There is really no need for you to feel under any obligation.”

But Peggy would not allow this.

“Once,” she said slowly, taking her hands from his and moving a pace or two away, “you asked me to do something to oblige you – and I refused; refused because I saw no reason, I told you, for complying with the request.” She suddenly smiled as she met his quiet scrutiny, and made a slight gesture with her hand in the direction of the dog. “You might quite as aptly apply that argument in this case; there really isn’t any reason why you should oblige me now.”

“Not so,” he interrupted. “The reason lies in my wish to oblige you.” Peggy nodded.

“That is a reason I also have discovered,” she said. “I can give the promise now which you asked me for on Christmas Eve – do you remember?.. about the smoking… because the argument I used then doesn’t hold any longer. I wish,” she added, “that I had given the promise at the time.”

“Thank you,” John Musgrave returned quietly.

It was a curious fact, in consideration of how objectionable the practice of smoking in women had once appeared to Mr Musgrave, that he should experience so little triumph in this victory. He had seen Peggy smoke on two separate occasions, and, although the sight had pleased him ill, he had reluctantly admitted that with some women the habit, if deplorable, was not unbecoming. The reason Peggy allowed for making the promise, rather than the promise itself, gave John Musgrave pleasure.