John Musgrave sat at his solitary breakfast-table and regarded the
covered dishes before him with, for the first time within his memory, so
little interest in their contents that he felt a strange disinclination
to uncover them. This lack of appetite, he decided, resulted either
from indisposition or from approaching age. Since he felt no
indisposition, he attributed it to the latter cause. Persons of
advancing middle-age were less hearty than youth at the beginning of the
day. That was only natural. Therefore he did not lift the covers, but
made an indifferent breakfast of toast and coffee.
Nevertheless, as the day advanced, he made the further discomfiting
discovery that this lack of interest was not confined solely to the
table, but spread itself like a blight over the ordinary affairs of
life. He was oddly disinclined to follow any of his usual pursuits.
Mr Musgrave was unaccountably bored with everything. He experienced a
restlessness foreign to his habitual placidity, which restlessness, by
reason of its strangeness, worried him considerably. It was
inconceivable that after forty years of tranquil contentment he should
develop the quality which of all others he had found so difficult to
comprehend or sympathise with. Yet restless he was, and dissatisfied--
dissatisfied, with Moresby and the even tenor of his days. He wanted
inexplicably to fling things into a portmanteau and start off for some
place--any place that was fairly distant.
He did not, of course, yield to this extraordinary impulse. Being moved
by such an impulse was sufficiently amazing; to have obeyed it would
have been more amazing, still. He went instead into the garden and
freed Diogenes from the chain, and allowed him to exercise unchecked
over the flower borders, to the indignant astonishment of Bond, who was
preparing the beds for the spring planting.
"Blest if he ain't gone dotty over that there dog," he complained.
And the cat, who was airing herself in the belief that her enemy was
confined to the restricted limits of the chain, sought refuge up a tree,
and gloomily watched Diogenes as he gambolled below. She had refused to
follow Eliza's example and evacuate in the enemy's favour, but her
resentment of Diogenes' presence was bitter and prolonged; it declined
to soften before Diogenes' persistent overtures towards a greater
friendliness. Her disapproval remained closely associated with that
first unfortunate meeting, which proved an unforgiving spirit. Diogenes
and Mr Musgrave had decided to forget that occasion and were, as a
result, firm friends.
When Diogenes was again on the chain, and Mr Musgrave was once more
facing the unwanted viands on his table, looking about him round the
large empty room--empty that is, in the matter of companionship--he made
the biggest and most startling discovery of the lay: he was lonely--
really lonely, as he had not been since the months immediately following
his sister's marriage. Why, in the name of mystery, should he, who had
not enjoyed companionship in his home since his sister had left it, who
had not, save in a vague fashion when she left him solitary after one of
her brief return visits, felt the need of companionship, be suddenly
gripped with this desolating sense of loneliness? He could not
understand it; and it was the more disconcerting on account of his
inability to comprehend this obsession which fretted him, and prevented
him from settling calmly to the ordinary routine of the lay.
Mr Musgrave lunched sparingly and later set out for the vicarage for a
chat with the vicar. He remained for tea, and in the genial society of
the Errols forgot his depression to the extent of believing himself
cured of the inconvenience. But the depression had lightened merely
temporarily under the influence of that cheery little home circle: out
again in the open, facing the keen east wind, John Musgrave felt the
heaviness of his mood descending upon him once more, and with an odd
distaste for his lonely fireside he fetched Diogenes and took him for a
long walk.
On returning from this walk Mr Musgrave did an unexampled thing.
Instead of taking Diogenes back to his kennel he led him into the house,
into the drawing-room, having removed the chain in the hall and left it
hanging there. Diogenes, with the _noblesse oblige_ of good breeding,
accepted all this as a matter of course, and, having first made a
snuffing tour of inspection round the room, walked to the big skin rug
before the fire and lay down. So uncertain was he of the enduring
nature of this concession that he did not permit himself to sleep, but
lay, winking complacently at the flames, and furtively every now and
again blinking at Mr Musgrave. Mr Musgrave seated himself wearily in
a chair and stared reflectively at Diogenes.
"I begin to believe," he said half aloud, "that there is considerable
companionableness in a dog. I wonder that I never kept a dog."
Diogenes, under the impression that he was being directly addressed, got
up and moved nearer to Mr Musgrave and sat on his haunches, looking
with his bulging, affectionate eyes into Mr Musgrave's face. The man
put out a hand and caressed the big head.
"I daresay you are lonely too," he said. "You miss your mistress, I
expect."
The bulging eyes were eloquent.
"I think, Diogenes," Mr Musgrave added, "that you are sufficiently well
behaved to be allowed indoors. I--like to see you here."
Diogenes thumped the carpet with his tail, which was tantamount to
replying that he liked being there and was very well satisfied to
remain.
Mr Musgrave continued caressing the big head and talking fragmentally
with his dumb friend, until the booming of the gong warned him of the
hour. He rose to go to his room to dress, and, when Diogenes would have
accompanied him, pointed to the rug and bade him lie there and wait.
Perplexed, but obedient, Diogenes returned to the fire, and Mr Musgrave
left him there, and stepping forth into the hall and closing the door
behind him, was surprised to find himself confronted with Martha, Martha
hot and red in the face from the exertions of preparing the evening
meal, and so manifestly worried that something more than Mr Musgrave's
dinner must have been bearing on her mind.
Mr Musgrave halted and regarded her inquiringly, and Martha, with the
fear of King's warning relative to the police and the criminal nature of
concealing dogs exciting her worst apprehensions, informed him dolefully
that some one must have taken Diogenes away.
"I went out to 'is blessed kennel to take him a few bones," she
explained, "an' the turn it give me to find the dear hanimal gone--chain
an' all, sir."
Mr Musgrave with the utmost gravity pointed to the door at his back.
"Diogenes is in there," he announced. "I forgot his feeding time."
Martha gasped.
"In the _drawing-room_, sir?" she ejaculated.
"I was lonely," Mr Musgrave explained. From force of long habit he
treated Martha as a tried and trusted friend. "I find him
companionable."
"Lor'!" remarked Martha. She scrutinised her master attentively, the
idea that he must be sickening for something suggesting itself to her
mind. "Dogs are company, that's certain," she said. "When he's 'ad 'is
supper you'd like 'im back in the drawing-room, I suppose, sir?"
"Yes," he answered. "I think he is sufficiently at home now to be
allowed to run about as he likes."
Martha took Diogenes to the kitchen and fed him, contemplating him with
renewed interest while he gnawed his bones under the table.
"There's something about that hanimal as I don't understand," she mused.
"If that ain't the same dog, though different, as burst in after the
cat with the young lady from the 'All, I'll eat my apron. It's the same
young lady comes to see 'im, anyway. If it isn't 'er dog what does she
come for? And if it is 'er dog what's the master doing with it? It's
my belief," she further reflected, wiping the perspiration from her face
with the apron she had dedicated to gastronomic purposes, "that the
master is courtin' the young lady, or the young lady is courtin' the
master, through that blessed dog. Now I wonder," and Martha turned to
the stove and went through mysterious manoeuvres with the vessels upon
it, "how that will work? Come to my time o' life and his, change--that
kind of change--makes for trouble as a rule."
Small wonder that in the disturbed preoccupation of his cook's mind Mr
Musgrave's dinner that night suffered in the cooking. But Mr Musgrave
was himself too preoccupied to notice this; the business of eating had
no interest for him.
He was relieved on returning to the drawing-room to find Diogenes in
occupation of the rug once more; and Diogenes, who had the gregarious
instinct even more deeply implanted than Mr Musgrave, in whom it was a
recent development, welcomed him effusively and finally stretched
himself at Mr Musgrave's feet and snorted contentedly, while the
master, of the house sat back in his chair and read, and--which did not
astonish Diogenes, though it would have amazed anyone intimate with John
Musgrave's lifetime habits--violated another rule by smoking a cigar
while he read.
The grouping of the man and the dog in the warm, firelit room made a
pleasing, homelike picture, so different in effect from the ordinary
picture of John Musgrave reading in scholarly solitude by his shaded
lamp, without the solace of tobacco even, that it scarcely seemed the
same room or the same man seated in the big chair wreathed in ascending
clouds of blue smoke spirals.
This picture, as it impressed the vicar, when a few evenings later he
was shown in and beheld a similar grouping, so similar that it appeared
as if the man and dog had remained in the same positions without
interruption, was so surprising, despite its cosy, natural air, that he
entirely forgot the object of his visit, nor remembered it until he was
on his homeward way.
"Hallo!" he exclaimed, as John Musgrave rose to greet him, and, removing
the cigar from his mouth, wrung his hand warmly. "You look jolly
comfortable. The wind is bitter to-night. It is good to shelter in a
room like this."
"Sit down," said Mr Musgrave. He pushed the cigars towards his friend.
"Will you smoke?" he asked.
Walter Errol's eyes twinkled as he accepted a cigar and snipped the end
with a contemplative stare at Diogenes. He did not, however, betray the
amazement he felt, but appeared to regard these innovations as very
ordinary events.
The big dog sprawling before the hearth and the smoke-laden atmosphere
of the room which, until Mrs Chadwick had first profaned it, had been
preserved from the fumes of tobacco, were surprisingly agreeable
novelties. The vicar had seldom enjoyed an evening in John Musgrave's
drawing-room so much as he enjoyed that evening, sitting chatting with
his friend over old college days and acquaintances. It was late when he
rose to go, and still he had not mentioned the matter about which he had
come, did not mention it at all; it had slipped from his mind entirely.
"It's so comfortable here," he said, with his jolly laugh, "that I'm
loth to go, John. There is only one substitution I could suggest, and
one addition, to improve the picture."
"What are they?" asked Mr Musgrave, his glance travelling round the
homelike room.
The vicar paused and seemed to reflect.
"Well," he said at last, "I would substitute a child in place of the
dog, and... But you don't need to inquire what form the addition would
take. We've discussed all that before. I'm not sure I wouldn't make
them both additions," he added, "and let the dog remain."
Mr Musgrave reddened.
"Don't you think," he suggested, with a diffidence altogether at
variance with his usual manner of receiving this advice, "that I am
rather old for such changes?"
"You are just over forty," the other answered, "and forty is the prime
of life... Any age is the prime of life when a man is disposed to
regard it so. You grow younger every day, John."
When the vicar left him John Musgrave returned to the fire and stood
beside Diogenes on the rug, staring thoughtfully down into the flames.
In the heart of the flames he saw a picture of an upturned face, of a
pair of darkly grey eyes gazing earnestly into his.
"You are so kind, so very kind." The words repeated themselves in his
memory. "I wish there was something I could do for you..."
John Musgrave stirred restlessly. Were the words sincere, he wondered?
They had been sincere at the time, he knew; but possibly they had been
prompted by the gratitude of the moment; and gratitude is no more
enduring than any other quality. He glanced at Diogenes, who, with a
much-wrinkled brow, was also contemplating the flames.
"I think it would be extortionate to demand payment for the service,
Diogenes," he said.
Diogenes looked up and snorted approval.
"It is, after all, a privilege to feel that one has rendered some
service and has received her thanks. I don't think it would be fair--to
her--to expect more."