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.