The troubles of Mr Musgrave as the owner of a bull-dog began forthwith
and multiplied exceedingly. Diogenes was driven into Rushleigh that
afternoon in the car, and subsequently, to his secret disgust, returned
disguised as a brindle, which disguise he diligently sought to remove
with so much success that the journeys to Rushleigh became periodic, and
Diogenes underwent chameleon-like changes in the intervals.
A large dog-kennel and brand-new chain were purchased, and, save when
Mr Musgrave took Diogenes for the daily run, and Peggy, availing
herself of his permission, slipped in through the tradesmen's entrance
and released her excited pet, Diogenes spent his days in complaining
inactivity, with ample time in which to reflect upon his misdeeds.
The arrival of Diogenes affected some change in Mr Musgrave's
household. Eliza promptly gave notice. She would, she informed the
surprised master of the establishment, as soon remain in a place with an
elephant. Martha, who would have suffered elephants and other
undesirable pets rather than quit Mr Musgrave's service, sought to
propitiate Diogenes, and, being a disciple of the famous explorer who
phrased the axiom that the stomach governs the world, she carried bones
and other delicacies to Diogenes' kennel, to the detriment of his
figure, and so won his affections that after Peggy, whom he adored, and
Mr Musgrave, to whom he became speedily attached, Martha ranked as his
very good friend.
The chauffeur had his doubts about Diogenes, and he nursed darker doubts
in regard to his employer. To take a white bull-dog into Rushleigh and
fetch home a brindle that was constantly changing its coat occurred to
King is a highly suspicious circumstance.
"There'll be a police case over that dog," he remarked to Martha. "You
mark my words. I've known similar cases and they've always been found
out. The governor's asking for trouble."
The weight upon Mr Musgrave's conscience attendant on the duplicity
which he of necessity was called upon to practise daily was so
burdensome that he was imperatively moved to confide in some one, and
thereby share, if not shift, the responsibility. Some idea of confiding
in Walter Errol had been with him from the first; and, meeting the vicar
one morning when he was returning from an early walk with Diogenes, the
desire to unburden his mind hardened to a determination upon perceiving
the amazement in the vicar's eyes as they rested upon the dog he led an
unwilling captive on the chain.
The vicar halted in the road and laughed.
"I heard you were starting kennels," he said; "but, upon my word! I
didn't believe it. Wherever did you buy that dog?"
Mr Musgrave had not bought Diogenes and he had no intention of
pretending that he had.
"It was given to me," he said.
"Oh, that explains it," the vicar answered.
But even while he spoke it occurred to Mr Musgrave that the dog had not
been given to him; he had offered to take it.
"I am taking care of it for some one," he corrected himself.
The vicar looked mystified and faintly amused.
"That's doing a lot for friendship, isn't it, John?" he asked.
John Musgrave reddened.
"Is obliging a friend an excessive courtesy?" he inquired.
"Well, no. I stand rebuked."
The vicar stooped and patted Diogenes and looked him over critically.
"It's a funny thing," he said, "but he's extraordinarily like the bull
they had up at the Hall--except, of course, for his colour."
"He is," Mr Musgrave said, firing off his bomb as calmly as though he
were making a very ordinary statement, "the same dog."
"Oh!" said the vicar, and straightened himself and looked John Musgrave
squarely in the eyes. "I understood," he said, "that Diogenes was
shot."
"Diogenes ought to have been shot," replied Mr Musgrave, and it ran
through his mind at the moment to wish that Diogenes had been shot, but
he checked the ungenerous thought, and added: "Miss Annersley rescued
him and smuggled him away. He is, as a matter of fact, in hiding from
the authorities."
"Which accounts," remarked the vicar, "for his colour." He stooped to
pat Diogenes again in order to conceal from his friend's eyes the smile
in his own. "And Miss Annersley brought him to you?" he said, with the
mental addition, "Little baggage?"
"No," said Mr Musgrave, and proceeded with great care to outline the
facts of the case, omitting details as far as possible. "She was so
very upset," he finished. "And really it seemed regrettable to
sacrifice a valuable dog after the mischief was done. The only
uneasiness I feel in the matter is in regard to the Chadwicks. I should
not like to annoy them."
"I think you may put that fear out of your thoughts at least," Mr Errol
replied. "Only yesterday Mr Chadwick was telling me how vexed he was
to have been obliged to destroy the dog. He expressed the wish that he
had sent him away instead."
Reassured on this head, Mr Musgrave looked relieved.
"I'm glad to know that," he said. "Quite possibly Diogenes will be
received back into the family later on, when time has softened Mrs
Chadwick's chagrin."
"In the meanwhile," Walter Errol said, laughing, "I foresee your
attachment for the--dog having grown to the extent of refusing to part
with him."
John Musgrave was by nature literal, nor did he on this occasion depart
from his habit of interpreting his friend's speech to the letter rather
than the spirit.
"My affection for Diogenes," he returned, "will be tempered always with
anxiety. And in any case the motive which led to my adoption of him
will qualify any distress I may feel in parting with him. It will give
me immense pleasure to restore her pet to Miss Annersley."
"Yes," agreed the vicar decidedly, "Miss Annersley, of course, must have
Diogenes back."
He returned to the vicarage for breakfast in a highly amused frame of
mind, but, having been sworn by John Musgrave to secrecy, was denied the
pleasure of relating this amazing tale of Mr Musgrave's benevolence for
the benefit of his wife. The story of Diogenes must for the present
remain a secret.
But as a secret shared by an increasing number of persons it stood in
considerable danger of ultimate disclosure. The risk of discovery in
the quarter in which discovery was most to be avoided was minimised by
the departure, of the Chadwicks for the Continent a month earlier than
had been intended. The responsibility for hastening the departure
rested with Mr Chadwick, who, worried with his wife's constant
bewailing her pet's untimely end, and equally harassed by his niece's
uncomplaining but very obvious regret for her faithful four-footed
companion, decided that change of scene might help them to forget these
small troubles which depressed the atmosphere of his hitherto genial
home.
Peggy, from motives quite apart from the distress she successfully
feigned, encouraged him in this belief, and once away from Moresby
brightened so suddenly and became so surprisingly cheerful that her
uncle was puzzled to understand why his wife did not show a
corresponding gaiety, but continued to bemoan her loss as she had done
at home.
Because the murder of Diogenes had lain heavily on his conscience in
consideration of the girl's affection for the dog, the reaction of
Peggy's spirits occasioned Mr Chadwick immense relief. She could not,
he decided, have been so devoted to the brute as he had supposed. But
in any case he felt grateful to her for her generosity in sparing him
reproach. The only reproach he received in respect of Diogenes' end
came from a quarter whence he least expected it, and from whence it was
least deserved. So little prepared was he to hear his wife denounce the
execution of Diogenes as mistaken and absurd, and to complain of this
ill-advised act as vexatious to herself, that he found no words in which
to answer her. It was significant of the unreasonableness of human
nature, he reflected, that she could hurl such a charge at him, and feel
herself ill-used by a prompt obedience to her expressed wish. Also it
pointed to the unwisdom of carrying out a death sentence within
twenty-four hours of its delivery. The road was already in the making
along which Diogenes would eventually return.
Peggy decided that when they got home she would bring Diogenes to life
by degrees. She was not specially desirous of bringing him to life in a
hurry, her reasons for a gradual resuscitation being governed by
considerations of so complex and feminine a character that Mr Musgrave
would have failed to follow them. The vicar, on the other hand, would
have apprehended her motives very readily; he had a surer grasp than
John Musgrave on the complexities of the human mind.
To one person in Moresby the addition of Diogenes to Mr Musgrave's
establishment afforded entire satisfaction; that person was Miss
Simpson. For the bull-dog at the Hall she had confessed to absolute
terror; but Mr Musgrave's brindle was a dear, so much handsomer and
more gentle.
She noted the hour for Mr Musgrave's walk in Diogenes' company and,
though he changed the direction of his walk daily, almost invariably the
pertinacious spinster ran him to earth, and, to his intense annoyance,
joined him and entreated permission to hold Diogenes' chain.
That was the greatest of the many embarrassments Diogenes occasioned Mr
Musgrave. He began unconsciously to look for Miss Simpson's spare
figure furtively behind trees and hedges as he proceeded on his way;
when it flashed abruptly upon him, appearing unexpectedly round a bend
of the road, or starting up, as it seemed to his surprised eyes, out of
the very ground, he experienced a desire to loosen Diogenes' chain and
set him at her. He was growing to hate the sight of her thin, eager
face. And her comparisons of the two dogs, which were one dog,
disconcerted him. He came near to taking her into the secret at times.
It puzzled him to think what she would make of it if she learned the
truth.
Miss Simpson was so anxious to establish the fact of the marked
similarity in their tastes that she blundered into the declaration that
she doted on dogs, particularly bull-dogs. Mr Musgrave received this
statement coldly.
"I am afraid I cannot sympathise with your enthusiasm," he replied. "I
dislike dogs--particularly bull-dogs."
"Then why," asked Miss Simpson very naturally, "do you keep a bull-dog?"
"I am only taking care of it for a friend," he explained.
"How very kind of you," she gushed. "Such a responsibility, other
people's pets."
She embarked upon a windy dissertation about a cat she had once taken
charge of for some one, and the trouble and expense this ungrateful
animal had caused her.
"But you can't chain up a cat," she explained. "People are so selfish.
They never consider how they trespass on one's kindness."
"If service called for no sacrifice it would not be kindness," Mr
Musgrave replied sententiously.
"Ah, how true that is!" exclaimed Miss Simpson. "You have such a
comprehensive way of putting things. One _ought_ to be kind, of
course."
"I think," he replied with emphasis, "if the desire to be kind is
lacking, it is just as well to leave it alone."
"Yes," she acquiesced flatly. "That's true, too. But we most of us
desire to be kind, don't we?"
"No," he returned in his bluntest manner; he was feeling too annoyed to
wish to be civil. "I fancy in the majority of us that desire is a
negligible quantity."
"But not in you," she said insinuatingly.
"In me most pronouncedly," he asserted with conviction.
If this quality were not lacking in himself in a general sense he knew
at that moment it was most assuredly lacking in relation to her. Mr
Musgrave, having been guilty of ungraciousness, was immediately ashamed
of his irritation, and during the remainder of the walk he sought to
atone for his former discourtesy by a greater amiability than Miss
Simpson was accustomed to from him--a mistaken form of kindness which
led to the encouragement of all manner of false hopes in Miss Simpson's
maiden mind.