Chapter Twenty Six.
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.