The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eagle's Shadow, by James Branch Cabell
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Title: The Eagle's Shadow
Author: James Branch Cabell
Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10882]
Language: English
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[Illustration: "Margaret"]
THE
EAGLE'S SHADOW
By
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
Illustrated by Will Grafé
Decorated by Bianthe Ostortag
1904
Published, October, 1904
To
Martha Louise Branch
In trust that the enterprise may be judged
less by the merits of its
factor than
by those of its patron
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.
XXXIII.
THE CHARACTERS
Colonel Thomas Hugonin, formerly in the service of Her Majesty the
Empress of India, Margaret Hugonin's father.
Frederick R. Woods, the founder of Selwoode, Margaret's uncle by
marriage.
Billy Woods, his nephew, Margaret's quondam fiancé.
Hugh Van Orden, a rather young young man, Margaret's adorer.
Martin Jeal, M.D., of Fairhaven, Margaret's family physician.
Cock-Eye Flinks, a gentleman of leisure, Margaret's chance
acquaintance.
Petheridge Jukesbury, president of the Society for the Suppression of
Nicotine and the Nude, Margaret's almoner in furthering the cause of
education and temperance.
Felix Kennaston, a minor poet, Margaret's almoner in furthering the
cause of literature and art.
Sarah Ellen Haggage, Madame President of the Ladies' League for the
Edification of the Impecunious, Margaret's almoner in furthering the
cause of charity and philanthropy. Kathleen Eppes Saumarez, a lecturer
before women's clubs, Margaret's almoner in furthering the cause of
theosophy, nature study, and rational dress.
Adèle Haggage, Mrs. Haggage's daughter, Margaret's rival with Hugh Van
Orden.
And Margaret Hugonin.
The other participants in the story are Wilkins, Célestine, The Spring
Moon and The Eagle.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Margaret"
"'Altogether,' says Colonel Hugonin, 'they strike me as being the
most ungodly menagerie ever gotten together under one roof since Noah
landed on Ararat'"
"Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and Billy ... thought
it vastly becoming"
"Billy Woods"
"Billy unfolded it slowly, with a puzzled look growing in his
countenance"
"'My lady,' he asked, very softly, 'haven't you any good news for me
on this wonderful morning?'"
"Miss Hugonin pouted. 'You needn't, be such a grandfather,' she
suggested helpfully."
"Regarded them with alert eyes"
THE EAGLE'S SHADOW
I
This is the story of Margaret Hugonin and of the Eagle. And with your
permission, we will for the present defer all consideration of the
bird, and devote our unqualified attention to Margaret.
I have always esteemed Margaret the obvious, sensible, most
appropriate name that can be bestowed upon a girl-child, for it is a
name that fits a woman--any woman--as neatly as her proper size in
gloves.
Yes, the first point I wish to make is that a woman-child, once
baptised Margaret, is thereby insured of a suitable name. Be she grave
or gay in after-life, wanton or pious or sullen, comely or otherwise,
there will be no possible chance of incongruity; whether she develop a
taste for winter-gardens or the higher mathematics, whether she take
to golf or clinging organdies, the event is provided for. One has only
to consider for a moment, and if among a choice of Madge, Marjorie,
Meta, Maggie, Margherita, Peggy, and Gretchen, and countless
others--if among all these he cannot find a name that suits her to a
T--why, then, the case is indeed desperate and he may permissibly
fall back upon Madam or--if the cat jump propitiously, and at his own
peril--on Darling or Sweetheart.
The second proof that this name must be the best of all possible names
is that Margaret Hugonin bore it. And so the murder is out. You may
suspect what you choose. I warn you in advance that I have no part
whatever in her story; and if my admiration for her given name appear
somewhat excessive, I can only protest that in this dissentient world
every one has a right to his own taste. I knew Margaret. I admired
her. And if in some unguarded moment I may have carried my admiration
to the point of indiscretion, her husband most assuredly knows all
about it, by this, and he and I are still the best of friends. So you
perceive that if I ever did so far forget myself it could scarcely
have amounted to a hanging matter.
I am doubly sure that Margaret Hugonin was beautiful, for the reason
that I have never found a woman under forty-five who shared my
opinion. If you clap a Testament into my hand, I cannot affirm that
women are eager to recognise beauty in one another; at the utmost they
concede that this or that particular feature is well enough. But when
a woman is clean-eyed and straight-limbed, and has a cheery heart,
she really cannot help being beautiful; and when Nature accords her
a sufficiency of dimples and an infectious laugh, I protest she is
well-nigh irresistible. And all these Margaret Hugonin had.
And surely that is enough.
I shall not endeavour, then, to picture her features to you in any
nicely picked words. Her chief charm was that she was Margaret.
And besides that, mere carnal vanities are trivial things; a gray
eye or so is not in the least to the purpose. Yet since it is the
immemorial custom of writer-folk to inventory such possessions of
their heroines, here you have a catalogue of her personal attractions.
Launce's method will serve our turn.
Imprimis, there was not very much of her--five feet three, at the
most; and hers was the well-groomed modern type that implies a
grandfather or two and is in every respect the antithesis of that
hulking Venus of the Louvre whom people pretend to admire. Item, she
had blue eyes; and when she talked with you, her head drooped forward
a little. The frank, intent gaze of these eyes was very flattering
and, in its ultimate effect, perilous, since it led you fatuously to
believe that she had forgotten there were any other trousered beings
extant. Later on you found this a decided error. Item, she had a quite
incredible amount of yellow hair, that was not in the least like gold
or copper or bronze--I scorn the hackneyed similes of metallurgical
poets--but a straightforward yellow, darkening at the roots; and she
wore it low down on her neck in great coils that were held in place
by a multitude of little golden hair-pins and divers corpulent
tortoise-shell ones. Item, her nose was a tiny miracle of perfection;
and this was noteworthy, for you will observe that Nature, who is an
adept at eyes and hair and mouths, very rarely achieves a creditable
nose. Item, she had a mouth; and if you are a Gradgrindian with a
taste for hairsplitting, I cannot swear that it was a particularly
small mouth. The lips were rather full than otherwise; one saw in them
potentialities of heroic passion, and tenderness, and generosity, and,
if you will, temper. No, her mouth was not in the least like the pink
shoe-button of romance and sugared portraiture; it was manifestly
designed less for simpering out of a gilt frame or the dribbling of
stock phrases over three hundred pages than for gibes and laughter
and cheery gossip and honest, unromantic eating, as well as another
purpose, which, as a highly dangerous topic, I decline even to
mention.
There you have the best description of Margaret Hugonin that I am
capable of giving you. No one realises its glaring inadequacy more
acutely than I.
Furthermore, I stipulate that if in the progress of our comedy she
appear to act with an utter lack of reason or even common-sense--as
every woman worth the winning must do once or twice in a
lifetime--that I be permitted to record the fact, to set it down in
all its ugliness, nay, even to exaggerate it a little--all to the end
that I may eventually exasperate you and goad you into crying out,
"Come, come, you are not treating the girl with common justice!"
For, if such a thing were possible, I should desire you to rival even
me in a liking for Margaret Hugonin. And speaking for myself, I can
assure you that I have come long ago to regard her faults with the
same leniency that I accord my own.
II
We begin on a fine May morning in Colonel Hugonin's rooms at Selwoode,
which is, as you may or may not know, the Hugonins' country-place.
And there we discover the Colonel dawdling over his breakfast, in an
intermediate stage of that careful toilet which enables him later in
the day to pass casual inspection as turning forty-nine.
At present the old gentleman is discussing the members of his
daughter's house-party. We will omit, by your leave, a number of
picturesque descriptive passages--for the Colonel is, on occasion, a
man of unfettered speech--and come hastily to the conclusion, to the
summing-up of the whole matter.
"Altogether," says Colonel Hugonin, "they strike me as being the most
ungodly menagerie ever gotten together under one roof since Noah
landed on Ararat."
Now, I am sorry that veracity compels me to present the Colonel
in this particular state of mind, for ordinarily he was as
pleasant-spoken a gentleman as you will be apt to meet on the
longest summer day.
[Illustration: "'Altogether,' says Colonel Hugonin, 'they strike me as
being the most ungodly menagerie ever gotten together under one roof
since Noah landed on Ararat.'"]
You must make allowances for the fact that, on this especial morning,
he was still suffering from a recent twinge of the gout, and that his
toast was somewhat dryer than he liked it; and, most potent of all,
that the foreign mail, just in, had caused him to rebel anew against
the proprieties and his daughter's inclinations, which chained him to
Selwoode, in the height of the full London season, to preside over a
house-party every member of which he cordially disliked. Therefore,
the Colonel having glanced through the well-known names of those at
Lady Pevensey's last cotillion, groaned and glared at his daughter,
who sat opposite him, and reviled his daughter's friends with point
and fluency, and characterised them as above, for the reason that he
was hungered at heart for the shady side of Pall Mall, and that their
presence at Selwoode prevented his attaining this Elysium. For, I am
sorry to say that the Colonel loathed all things American, saving his
daughter, whom he worshipped.
And, I think, no one who could have seen her preparing his second cup
of tea would have disputed that in making this exception he acted with
a show of reason. For Margaret Hugonin--but, as you know, she is
our heroine, and, as I fear you have already learned, words are very
paltry makeshifts when it comes to describing her. Let us simply say,
then, that Margaret, his daughter, began to make him a cup of tea, and
add that she laughed.
Not unkindly; no, for at bottom she adored her father--a comely
Englishman of some sixty-odd, who had run through his wife's fortune
and his own, in the most gallant fashion--and she accorded his
opinions a conscientious, but at times, a sorely taxed, tolerance.
That very month she had reached twenty-three, the age of omniscience,
when the fallacies and general obtuseness of older people become
dishearteningly apparent.
"It's nonsense," pursued the old gentleman, "utter, bedlamite
nonsense, filling Selwoode up with writing people! Never heard of such
a thing. Gad, I do remember, as a young man, meeting Thackeray at a
garden-party at Orleans House--gentlemanly fellow with a broken nose--
and Browning went about a bit, too, now I think of it. People had 'em
one at a time to lend flavour to a dinner--like an olive; we didn't
dine on olives, though. You have 'em for breakfast, luncheon, dinner,
and everything! I'm sick of olives, I tell you, Margaret!" Margaret
pouted.
"They ain't even good olives. I looked into one of that fellow
Charteris's books the other day--that chap you had here last week.
It was bally rot--proverbs standing on their heads and grinning
like dwarfs in a condemned street-fair! Who wants to be told that
impropriety is the spice of life and that a roving eye gathers
remorse? You may call that sort of thing cleverness, if you like; I
call it damn' foolishness." And the emphasis with which he said this
left no doubt that the Colonel spoke his honest opinion.
"Attractive," said his daughter patiently, "Mr. Charteris is very,
very clever. Mr. Kennaston says literature suffered a considerable
loss when he began to write for the magazines."
And now that Margaret has spoken, permit me to call your attention to
her voice. Mellow and suave and of astonishing volume was Margaret's
voice; it came not from the back of her throat, as most of our women's
voices do, but from her chest; and I protest it had the timbre of a
violin. Men, hearing her voice for the first time, were wont to stare
at her a little and afterward to close their hands slowly, for always
its modulations had the tonic sadness of distant music, and it
thrilled you to much the same magnanimity and yearning, cloudily
conceived; and yet you could not but smile in spite of yourself at the
quaint emphasis fluttering through her speech and pouncing for the
most part on the unlikeliest word in the whole sentence.
But I fancy the Colonel must have been tone-deaf. "Don't you make
phrases for me!" he snorted; "you keep 'em for your menagerie Think!
By gad, the world never thinks. I believe the world deliberately
reads the six bestselling books in order to incapacitate itself for
thinking." Then, his wrath gathering emphasis as he went on: "The
longer I live the plainer I see Shakespeare was right--what
fools these mortals be, and all that. There's that Haggage
woman--speech-making through the country like a hiatused politician.
It may be philanthropic, but it ain't ladylike--no, begad! What has
she got to do with Juvenile Courts and child-labour in the South, I'd
like to know? Why ain't she at home attending to that crippled boy
of hers--poor little beggar!--instead of flaunting through America
meddling with other folk's children?"
Miss Hugonin put another lump of sugar into his cup and deigned no
reply.
"By gad," cried the Colonel fervently, "if you're so anxious to spend
that money of yours in charity, why don't you found a Day Nursery for
the Children of Philanthropists--a place where advanced men and women
can leave their offspring in capable hands when they're busied with
Mothers' Meetings and Educational Conferences? It would do a thousand
times more good, I can tell you, than that fresh kindergarten scheme
of yours for teaching the children of the labouring classes to make a
new sort of mud-pie."
"You don't understand these things, attractive," Margaret gently
pointed out. "You aren't in harmony with the trend of modern thought."
"No, thank God!" said the Colonel, heartily.
Ensued a silence during which he chipped at his egg-shell in an
absent-minded fashion.
"That fellow Kennaston said anything to you yet?" he presently
queried.
"I--I don't understand," she protested--oh, perfectly unconvincingly.
The tea-making, too, engrossed her at this point to an utterly
improbable extent.
Thus it shortly befell that the Colonel, still regarding her under
intent brows, cleared his throat and made bold to question her
generosity in the matter of sugar; five lumps being, as he suggested,
a rather unusual allowance for one cup.
Then, "Mr. Kennaston and I are very good friends," said she, with
dignity. And having spoiled the first cup in the making, she began on
another.
"Glad to hear it," growled the old gentleman. "I hope you value his
friendship sufficiently not to marry him. The man's a fraud--a flimsy,
sickening fraud, like his poetry, begad, and that's made up of botany
and wide margins and indecency in about equal proportions. It ain't
fit for a woman to read--in fact, a woman ought not to read anything;
a comprehension of the Decalogue and the cookery-book is enough
learning for the best of 'em. Your mother never--never--"
Colonel Hugonin paused and stared at the open window for a little. He
seemed to be interested in something a great way off.
"We used to read Ouida's books together," he said, somewhat wistfully.
"Lord, Lord, how she revelled in Chandos and Bertie Cecil and those
dashing Life Guardsmen! And she used to toss that little head of hers
and say I was a finer figure of a man than any of 'em--thirty
years ago, good Lord! And I was then, but I ain't now. I'm only a
broken-down, cantankerous old fool," declared the Colonel, blowing
his nose violently, "and that's why I'm quarrelling with the dearest,
foolishest daughter man ever had. Ah, my dear, don't mind me--run your
menagerie as you like, and I'll stand it."
Margaret adopted her usual tactics; she perched herself on the arm
of his chair and began to stroke his cheek very gently. She
often wondered as to what dear sort of a woman that tender-eyed,
pink-cheeked mother of the old miniature had been--the mother who had
died when she was two years old. She loved the idea of her, vague as
it was. And, just now, somehow, the notion of two grown people reading
Ouida did not strike her as being especially ridiculous.
"Was she very beautiful?" she asked, softly.
"My dear," said her father, "you are the picture of her."
"You dangerous old man!" said she, laughing and rubbing her cheek
against his in a manner that must have been highly agreeable. "Dear,
do you know that is the nicest little compliment I've had for a long
time?"
Thereupon the Colonel chuckled. "Pay me for it, then," said he, "by
driving the dog-cart over to meet Billy's train to-day. Eh?"
"I--I can't," said Miss Hugonin, promptly.
"Why?" demanded her father.
"Because----" said Miss Hugonin; and after giving this really
excellent reason, reflected for a moment and strengthened it by
adding, "Because----"
"See here," her father questioned, "what did you two quarrel about,
anyway?"
"I--I really don't remember," said she, reflectively; then continued,
with hauteur and some inconsistency, "I am not aware that Mr. Woods
and I have ever quarrelled."
"By gad, then," said the Colonel, "you may as well prepare to, for
I intend to marry you to Billy some day. Dear, dear, child," he
interpolated, with malice aforethought, "have you a fever?--your
cheek's like a coal. Billy's a man, I tell you--worth a dozen of your
Kennastons and Charterises. I like Billy. And besides, it's only right
he should have Selwoode--wasn't he brought up to expect it? It
ain't right he should lose it simply because he had a quarrel with
Frederick, for, by gad--not to speak unkindly of the dead, my
dear--Frederick quarrelled with every one he ever knew, from the woman
who nursed him to the doctor who gave him his last pill. He may have
gotten his genius for money-making from Heaven, but he certainly
got his temper from the devil. I really believe," said the Colonel,
reflectively, "it was worse than mine. Yes, not a doubt of it--I'm a
lamb in comparison. But he had his way, after all; and even now poor
Billy can't get Selwoode without taking you with it," and he caught
his daughter's face between his hands and turned it toward his for a
moment. "I wonder now," said he, in meditative wise, "if Billy will
consider that a drawback?"
It seemed very improbable. Any number of marriageable males would have
sworn it was unthinkable.
However, "Of course," Margaret began, in a crisp voice, "if you advise
Mr. Woods to marry me as a good speculation--"
But her father caught her up, with a whistle. "Eh?" said he. "Love in
a cottage?--is it thus the poet turns his lay? That's damn' nonsense!
I tell you, even in a cottage the plumber's bill has to be paid, and
the grocer's little account settled every month. Yes, by gad, and
even if you elect to live on bread and cheese and kisses, you'll find
Camembert a bit more to your taste than Sweitzer."
"But I don't want to marry anybody, you ridiculous old dear," said
Margaret.
"Oh, very well," said the old gentleman; "don't. Be an old maid, and
lecture before the Mothers' Club, if you like. I don't care. Anyhow,
you meet Billy to-day at twelve-forty-five. You will?--that's a good
child. Now run along and tell the menagerie I'll be down-stairs as
soon as I've finished dressing."
And the Colonel rang for his man and proceeded to finish his toilet.
He seemed a thought absent-minded this morning.
"I say, Wilkins," he questioned, after a little. "Ever read any of
Ouida's books?"
"Ho, yes, sir," said Wilkins; "Miss 'Enderson--Mrs. 'Aggage's maid,
that his, sir--was reading haloud hout hof 'Hunder Two Flags' honly
last hevening, sir."
"H'm--Wilkins--if you can run across one of them in the servants'
quarters--you might leave it--by my bed--to-night."
"Yes, sir."
"And--h'm, Wilkins--you can put it under that book of Herbert
Spencer's my daughter gave me yesterday. Under it, Wilkins--and,
h'm, Wilkins--you needn't mention it to anybody. Ouida ain't cultured,
Wilkins, but she's damn' good reading. I suppose that's why she ain't
cultured, Wilkins."
III
And now let us go back a little. In a word, let us utilise the next
twenty minutes--during which Miss Hugonin drives to the neighbouring
railway station, in, if you press me, not the most pleasant state of
mind conceivable--by explaining a thought more fully the posture of
affairs at Selwoode on the May morning that starts our story.
And to do this I must commence with the nature of the man who founded
Selwoode.
It was when the nineteenth century was still a hearty octogenarian
that Frederick R. Woods caused Selwoode to be builded. I give you the
name by which he was known on "the Street." A mythology has grown
about the name since, and strange legends of its owner are still
narrated where brokers congregate. But with the lambs he sheared, and
the bulls he dragged to earth, and the bears he gored to financial
death, we have nothing to do; suffice it, that he performed these
operations with almost uniform success and in an unimpeachably
respectable manner.
And if, in his time, he added materially to the lists of inmates in
various asylums and almshouses, it must be acknowledged that he bore
his victims no malice, and that on every Sunday morning he confessed
himself to be a miserable sinner, in a voice that was perfectly
audible three pews off. At bottom, I think he considered his relations
with Heaven on a purely business basis; he kept a species of running
account with Providence; and if on occasions he overdrew it somewhat,
he saw no incongruity in evening matters with a cheque for the church
fund.
So that at his death it was said of him that he had, in his day, sent
more men into bankruptcy and more missionaries into Africa than any
other man in the country.
In his sixty-fifth year, he caught Alfred Van Orden short in Lard,
erected a memorial window to his wife and became a country gentleman.
He never set foot in Wall Street again. He builded Selwoode--a
handsome Tudor manor which stands some seven miles from the village of
Fairhaven--where he dwelt in state, by turns affable and domineering
to the neighbouring farmers, and evincing a grave interest in the
condition of their crops. He no longer turned to the financial reports
in the papers; and the pedigree of the Woodses hung in the living-hall
for all men to see, beginning gloriously with Woden, the Scandinavian
god, and attaining a respectable culmination in the names of Frederick
R. Woods and of William, his brother.
It is not to be supposed that he omitted to supply himself with a
coat-of-arms. Frederick R. Woods evinced an almost childlike pride in
his heraldic blazonings.
"The Woods arms," he would inform you, with a relishing gusto, "are
vert, an eagle displayed, barry argent and gules. And the crest is
out of a ducal coronet, or, a demi-eagle proper. We have no motto,
sir--none of your ancient coats have mottoes."
The Woods Eagle he gloried in. The bird was perched in every available
nook at Selwoode; it was carved in the woodwork, was set in the
mosaics, was chased in the tableware, was woven in the napery, was
glazed in the very china. Turn where you would, an eagle or two
confronted you; and Hunston Wyke, who is accounted something of a
wit, swore that Frederick R. Woods at Selwoode reminded him of "a
sore-headed bear who had taken up permanent quarters in an aviary."
There was one, however, who found the bear no very untractable
monster. This was the son of his brother, dead now, who dwelt at
Selwoode as heir presumptive. Frederick R. Woods's wife had died long
ago, leaving him childless. His brother's boy was an orphan; and so,
for a time, he and the grim old man lived together peaceably enough.
Indeed, Billy Woods was in those days as fine a lad as you would wish
to see, with the eyes of an inquisitive cherub and a big tow-head,
which Frederick R. Woods fell into the habit of cuffing heartily, in
order to conceal the fact that he would have burned Selwoode to the
ground rather than allow any one else to injure a hair of it.
In the consummation of time, Billy, having attained the ripe age of
eighteen, announced to his uncle that he intended to become a famous
painter. Frederick R. Woods exhorted him not to be a fool, and packed
him off to college.
Billy Woods returned on his first vacation with a fragmentary mustache
and any quantity of paint-tubes, canvases, palettes, mahl-sticks, and
such-like paraphernalia. Frederick R. Woods passed over the mustache,
and had the painters' trappings burned by the second footman. Billy
promptly purchased another lot. His uncle came upon them one morning,
rubbed his chin meditatively for a moment, and laughed for the first
time, so far as known, in his lifetime; then he tiptoed to his own
apartments, lest Billy--the lazy young rascal was still abed in the
next room--should awaken and discover his knowledge of this act of
flat rebellion.
I dare say the old gentleman was so completely accustomed to having
his own way that this unlooked-for opposition tickled him by its
novelty; or perhaps he recognised in Billy an obstinacy akin to his
own; or perhaps it was merely that he loved the boy. In any event, he
never again alluded to the subject; and it is a fact that when
Billy sent for carpenters to convert an upper room into an atelier,
Frederick R. Woods spent two long and dreary weeks in Boston in order
to remain in ignorance of the entire affair.
Billy scrambled through college, somehow, in the allotted four years.
At the end of that time, he returned to find new inmates installed at
Selwoode.
For the wife of Frederick R. Woods had been before her marriage one of
the beautiful Anstruther sisters, who, as certain New Yorkers still
remember--those grizzled, portly, rosy-gilled fellows who prattle
on provocation of Jenny Lind and Castle Garden, and remember
everything--created a pronounced furor at their début in the days of
crinoline and the Grecian bend; and Margaret Anstruther, as they
will tell you, was married to Thomas Hugonin, then a gallant cavalry
officer in the service of Her Majesty, the Empress of India.
And she must have been the nicer of the two, because everybody who
knew her says that Margaret Hugonin is exactly like her.
So it came about naturally enough, that Billy Woods, now an Artium
Baccalaureus_, if you please, and not a little proud of it, found the
Colonel and his daughter, then on a visit to this country, installed
at Selwoode as guests and quasi-relatives. And Billy was twenty-two,
and Margaret was nineteen.
* * * * *
Precisely what happened I am unable to tell you. Billy Woods claims
it is none of my business; and Margaret says that it was a long, long
time ago and she really can't remember.
But I fancy we can all form a very fair notion of what is most likely
to occur when two sensible, normal, healthy young people are thrown
together in this intimate fashion at a country-house where the
remaining company consists of two elderly gentlemen. Billy was forced
to be polite to his uncle's guest; and Margaret couldn't well be
discourteous to her host's nephew, could she? Of course not: so
it befell in the course of time that Frederick R. Woods and the
Colonel--who had quickly become a great favourite, by virtue of his
implicit faith in the Eagle and in Woden and Sir Percival de Wode of
Hastings, and such-like flights of heraldic fancy, and had augmented
his popularity by his really brilliant suggestion of Wynkyn de Worde,
the famous sixteenth-century printer, as a probable collateral
relation of the family--it came to pass, I say, that the two gentlemen
nodded over their port and chuckled, and winked at one another and
agreed that the thing would do.
This was all very well; but they failed to make allowances for the
inevitable quarrel and the subsequent spectacle of the gentleman
contemplating suicide and the lady looking wistfully toward a nunnery.
In this case it arose, I believe, over Teddy Anstruther, who for a
cousin was undeniably very attentive to Margaret; and in the natural
course of events they would have made it up before the week was out
had not Frederick R. Woods selected this very moment to interfere in
the matter.
Ah, si vieillesse savait!
The blundering old man summoned Billy into his study and ordered him
to marry Margaret Hugonin, precisely as the Colonel might have ordered
a private to go on sentry-duty. Ten days earlier Billy would have
jumped at the chance; ten days later he would probably have suggested
it himself; but at that exact moment he would have as willingly
contemplated matrimony with Alecto or Medusa or any of the Furies.
Accordingly, he declined. Frederick R. Woods flew into a pyrotechnical
display of temper, and gave him his choice between obeying his
commands and leaving his house forever--the choice, in fact, which he
had been according Billy at very brief intervals ever since the boy
had had the measles, fifteen years before, and had refused to take the
proper medicines.
It was merely his usual manner of expressing a request or a
suggestion. But this time, to his utter horror and amaze, the boy took
him at his word and left Selwoode within the hour.
Billy's life, you see, was irrevocably blighted. It mattered very
little what became of him; personally, he didn't care in the least.
But as for that fair, false, fickle woman--perish the thought! Sooner
a thousand deaths! No, he would go to Paris and become a painter of
worldwide reputation; the money his father had left him would easily
suffice for his simple wants. And some day, the observed of all
observers in some bright hall of gaiety, he would pass her coldly by,
with a cynical smile upon his lips, and she would grow pale and totter
and fall into the arms of the bloated Silenus, for whose title she had
bartered her purely superficial charms.
Yes, upon mature deliberation, that was precisely what Billy decided
to do.
Followed dark days at Selwoode. Frederick R. Woods told Margaret of
what had occurred; and he added the information that, as his wife's
nearest relative, he intended to make her his heir.
Then Margaret did what I would scarcely have expected of Margaret.
She turned upon him like a virago and informed Frederick R. Woods
precisely what she thought of him; she acquainted him with the fact
that he was a sordid, low-minded, grasping beast, and a miser, and
a tyrant, and (I think) a parricide; she notified him that he was
thoroughly unworthy to wipe the dust off his nephew's shoes--an
office toward which, to do him justice, he had never shown any marked
aspirations--and that Billy had acted throughout in a most noble and
sensible manner; and that, personally, she wouldn't marry Billy Woods
if he were the last man on earth, for she had always despised him; and
she added the information that she expected to die shortly, and she
hoped they would both be sorry then; and subsequently she clapped
the climax by throwing her arms about his neck and bursting into tears
and telling him he was the dearest old man in the world and that she
was thoroughly ashamed of herself.
So they kissed and made it up. And after a little the Colonel and
Margaret went away from Selwoode, and Frederick R. Woods was left
alone to nourish his anger and indignation, if he could, and to hunger
for his boy, whether he would or not. He was too proud to seek him
out; indeed, he never thought of that; and so he waited alone in his
fine house, sick at heart, impotent, hoping against hope that the boy
would come back. The boy never came.
No, the boy never came, because he was what the old man had made
him--headstrong, and wilful, and obstinate. Billy had been thoroughly
spoiled. The old man had nurtured his pride, had applauded it as a
mark of proper spirit; and now it was this same pride that had robbed
him of the one thing he loved in all the world.
So, at last, the weak point in the armour of this sturdy old Pharisee
was found, and Fate had pierced it gaily. It was retribution, if you
will; and I think that none of his victims in "the Street," none of
the countless widows and orphans that he had made, suffered more
bitterly than he in those last days.
It was almost two years after Billy's departure from Selwoode that his
body-servant, coming to rouse Frederick R. Woods one June morning,
found him dead in his rooms. He had been ailing for some time. It
was his heart, the doctors said; and I think that it was, though not
precisely in the sense which they meant.
The man found him seated before his great carved desk, on which his
head and shoulders had fallen forward; they rested on a sheet of
legal-cap paper half-covered with a calculation in his crabbed old
hand as to the value of certain properties--the calculation which he
never finished; and underneath was a mass of miscellaneous papers,
among them his will, dated the day after Billy left Selwoode, in which
Frederick R. Woods bequeathed his millions unconditionally to Margaret
Hugonin when she should come of age.
Her twenty-first birthday had fallen in the preceding month. So
Margaret was one of the richest women in America; and you may depend
upon it, that if many men had loved her before, they worshipped her
now--or, at least, said they did, and, after all, their protestations
were the only means she had of judging. She might have been a
countess--and it must be owned that the old Colonel, who had an honest
Anglo-Saxon reverence for a title, saw this chance lost wistfully--and
she might have married any number of grammarless gentlemen, personally
unknown to her, whose fervent proposals almost every mail brought in;
and besides these, there were many others, more orthodox in their
wooing, some of whom were genuinely in love with Margaret Hugonin, and
some--I grieve to admit it--who were genuinely in love with her money;
and she would have none of them.
She refused them all with the utmost civility, as I happen to know.
How I learned it is no affair of yours.
For Miss Hugonin had remarkably keen eyes, which she used to
advantage. In the world about her they discovered very little that she
could admire. She was none the happier for her wealth; the piled-up
millions overshadowed her personality; and it was not long before she
knew that most people regarded her simply as the heiress of the Woods
fortune--an unavoidable encumbrance attached to the property, which
divers thrifty-minded gentlemen were willing to put up with. To put up
with!--at the thought, her pride rose in a hot blush, and, it must be
confessed, she sought consolation in the looking-glass.
She was an humble-minded young woman, as the sex goes, and she saw no
great reason there why a man should go mad over Margaret Hugonin. This
decision, I grant you, was preposterous, for there were any number of
reasons. Her final conclusion, however, was for the future to regard
all men as fortune-hunters and to do her hair differently.
She carried out both resolutions. When a gentleman grew pressing in
his attentions, she more than suspected his motives; and when she
eventually declined him it was done with perfect, courtesy, but the
glow of her eyes was at such times accentuated to a marked degree.
Meanwhile, the Eagle brooded undisturbed at Selwoode. Miss Hugonin
would allow nothing to be altered.
"The place doesn't belong to me, attractive," she would tell her
father. "I belong to the place. Yes, I do--I'm exactly like a little
cow thrown in with a little farm when they sell it, and all my
little suitors think so, and they are very willing to take me on those
terms, too. But they shan't, attractive. I hate every single solitary
man in the whole wide world but you, beautiful, and I particularly
hate that horrid old Eagle; but we'll keep him because he's a constant
reminder to me that Solomon or Moses, or whoever it was that said all
men were liars, was a person of very great intelligence."
So that I think we may fairly say the money did her no good.
If it benefited no one else, it was not Margaret's fault. She had a
high sense of her responsibilities, and therefore, at various times,
endeavoured to further the spread of philanthropy and literature and
theosophy and art and temperance and education and other laudable
causes. Mr. Kennaston, in his laughing manner, was wont to jest at
her varied enterprises and term her Lady Bountiful; but, then, Mr.
Kennaston had no real conception of the proper uses of money. In
fact, he never thought of money. He admitted this to Margaret with a
whimsical sigh.
Margaret grew very fond of Mr. Kennaston because he was not mercenary.
Mr. Kennaston was much at Selwoode. Many people came there
now--masculine women and muscleless men, for the most part. They had,
every one of them, some scheme for bettering the universe; and if
among them Margaret seemed somewhat out of place--a butterfly among
earnest-minded ants--her heart was in every plan they advocated, and
they found her purse-strings infinitely elastic. The girl was pitiably
anxious to be of some use in the world.
So at Selwoode they gossiped of great causes and furthered the
millenium. And above them the Eagle brooded in silence.
And Billy? All this time Billy was junketing abroad, where every
year he painted masterpieces for the Salon, which--on account of a
nefarious conspiracy among certain artists, jealous of his superior
merits--were invariably refused.
Now Billy is back again in America, and the Colonel has insisted that
he come to Selwoode, and Margaret is waiting for him in the dog-cart.
The glow of her eyes is very, very bright. Her father's careless words
this morning, coupled with certain speeches of Mr. Kennaston's last
night, have given her food for reflection.
"He wouldn't dare," says Margaret, to no one in particular. "Oh, no,
he wouldn't dare after what happened four years ago."
And, Margaret-like, she has quite forgotten that what happened four
years ago was all caused by her having flirted outrageously with Teddy
Anstruther, in order to see what Billy would do.
IV
The twelve forty-five, for a wonder, was on time; and there descended
from it a big, blond young man, who did not look in the least like a
fortune-hunter.
Miss Hugonin resented this. Manifestly, he looked clean and honest for
the deliberate purpose of deceiving her. Very well! She'd show him!
He was quite unembarrassed. He shook hands cordially; then he shook
hands with the groom, who, you may believe it, was grinning in a most
unprofessional manner because Master Billy was back again at Selwoode.
Subsequently, in his old decisive way, he announced they would walk to
the house, as his legs needed stretching.
The insolence of it!--quite as if he had something to say to Margaret
in private and couldn't wait a minute. Beyond doubt, this was a young
man who must be taken down a peg or two, and that at once. Of course,
she wasn't going to walk back with him!--a pretty figure they'd cut
strolling through the fields, like a house-girl and the milkman on a
Sunday afternoon! She would simply say she was too tired to walk, and
that would end the matter.
So she said she thought the exercise would do them both good.
They came presently with desultory chat to a meadow bravely decked in
all the gauds of Spring. About them the day was clear, the air bland.
Spring had revamped her ageless fripperies of tender leaves and
bird-cries and sweet, warm odours for the adornment of this meadow;
above it she had set a turkis sky splashed here and there with little
clouds that were like whipped cream; and upon it she had scattered
largesse, a Danaë's shower of buttercups. Altogether, she had made of
it a particularly dangerous meadow for a man and a maid to frequent.
Yet there Mr. Woods paused under a burgeoning maple--paused
resolutely, with the lures of Spring thick about him, compassed with
every snare of scent and sound and colour that the witch is mistress
of.
Margaret hoped he had a pleasant passage over. Her father, thank you,
was in the pink of condition. Oh, yes, she was quite well. She hoped
Mr. Woods would not find America--
"Well, Peggy," said Mr. Woods, "then, we'll have it out right here."
His insolence was so surprising that--in order to recover
herself--Margaret actually sat down under the maple-tree. Peggy,
indeed! Why, she hadn't been called Peggy for--no, not for four whole
years!
"Because I intend to be friends, you know," said Mr. Woods.
And about them the maple-leaves made a little island of sombre green,
around which more vivid grasses rippled and dimpled under the fitful
spring breezes. And everywhere leaves lisped to one another, and birds
shrilled insistently. It was a perilous locality.
I fancy Billy Woods was out of his head when he suggested being
friends in such a place. Friends, indeed!--you would have thought from
the airy confidence with which he spoke that Margaret had come safely
to forty year and wore steel-rimmed spectacles!
But Miss Hugonin merely cast down her eyes and was aware of no reason
why they shouldn't be. She was sure he must be hungry, and she thought
luncheon must be ready by now.
In his soul, Mr. Woods observed that her lashes were long--long beyond
all reason. Lacking the numbers that Petrarch flowed in, he did not
venture, even to himself, to characterise them further. But oh, how
queer it was they should be pure gold at the roots!--she must have
dipped them in the ink-pot. And oh, the strong, sudden, bewildering
curve of 'em! He could not recall at the present moment ever noticing
quite such lashes anywhere else. No, it was highly improbable that
there were such lashes anywhere else. Perhaps a few of the superior
angels might have such lashes. He resolved for the future to attend
church more regularly.
Aloud, Mr. Woods observed that in that case they had better shake
hands.
It would have been ridiculous to contest the point. The dignified
course was to shake hands, since he insisted on it, and then to return
at once to Selwoode.
Margaret Hugonin had a pretty hand, and Mr. Woods, as an artist, could
not well fail to admire it. Still, he needn't have looked at it as
though he had never before seen anything quite like it; he needn't
have neglected to return it; and when Miss Hugonin reclaimed it, after
a decent interval, he needn't have laughed in a manner that compelled
her to laugh, too. These things were unnecessary and annoying, as they
caused Margaret to forget that she despised him.
[Illustration: "Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and
Billy ... thought it vastly becoming"]
For the time being--will you believe it?--she actually thought he was
rather nice.
"I acted like an ass," said Mr. Woods, tragically. "Oh, yes, I did,
you know. But if you'll forgive me for having been an ass I'll forgive
you for throwing me over for Teddy Anstruther, and at the wedding I'll
dance through any number of pairs of patent-leathers you choose to
mention."
So that was the way he looked at it. Teddy Anstruther, indeed! Why,
Teddy was a dark little man with brown eyes--just the sort of man she
most objected to. How could any one ever possibly fancy a brown-eyed
man? Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and Billy, who
had stretched his great length of limb on the grass beside her, noted
it with a pair of the bluest eyes in the world and thought it vastly
becoming.
"Billy," said she, impulsively--and the name having slipped out once
by accident, it would have been absurd to call him anything else
afterward--"it was horrid of you to refuse to take any of that money."
"But I didn't want it," he protested. "Good Lord, I'd only have done
something foolish with it. It was awfully square of you, Peggy, to
offer to divide, but I didn't want it, you see. I don't want to be a
millionaire, and give up the rest of my life to founding libraries and
explaining to people that if they never spend any money on amusements
they'll have a great deal by the time they're too old to enjoy it. I'd
rather paint pictures."
So that I think Margaret must have endeavoured at some time to make
him accept part of Frederick R. Woods's money.
"You make me feel--and look--like a thief," she reproved him.
Then Billy laughed a little. "You don't look in the least like one,"
he reassured her. "You look like an uncommonly honest, straightforward
young woman," Mr. Woods added, handsomely, "and I don't believe you'd
purloin under the severest temptation."
She thanked him for his testimonial, with all three dimples in
evidence.
This was unsettling. He hedged.
"Except, perhaps--" said he.
"Yes?" queried Margaret, after a pause.
However, she questioned him with her head drooped forward, her brows
raised; and as this gave him the full effect of her eyes, Mr. Woods
became quite certain that there was, at least, one thing she might be
expected to rob him of, and wisely declined to mention it.
Margaret did not insist on knowing what it was. Perhaps she heard it
thumping under his waistcoat, where it was behaving very queerly.
So they sat in silence for a while. Then Margaret fell a-humming to
herself; and the air--will you believe it?--chanced by the purest
accident to be that foolish, senseless old song they used to sing
together four years ago.
Billy chuckled. "Let's!" he obscurely pleaded.
Spring prompted her.
"Oh, where have you been, Billy boy?"
queried Margaret's wonderful contralto,
"Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?"
She sang it in a low, hushed voice, just over her breath. Not looking
at him, however. And oh, what a voice! thought Billy Woods. A voice
that was honey and gold and velvet and all that is most sweet and rich
and soft in the world! Find me another voice like that, you prime
donne! Find me a simile for it, you uninventive poets! Indeed, I'd
like to see you do it.
But he chimed in, nevertheless, with his pleasant throaty baritone,
and lilted his own part quite creditably.
"I've been to seek a wife,
She's the joy of my life;
She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother"--
Only Billy sang it "father," just as they used to do.
And then they sang it through, did Margaret and Billy--sang of the
dimple in her chin and the ringlets in her hair, and of the cherry
pies she achieved with such celerity--sang as they sat in the
spring-decked meadow every word of that inane old song that is so
utterly senseless and so utterly unforgettable.
It was a quite idiotic performance. I set it down to the snares of
Spring--to her insidious, delightful snares of scent and sound and
colour that--for the moment, at least--had trapped these young people
into loving life infinitely.
But I wonder who is responsible for that tatter of rhyme and melody
that had come to them from nowhere in particular? Mr. Woods, as he sat
up at the conclusion of the singing vigorously to applaud, would have
shared his last possession, his ultimate crust, with that unknown
benefactor of mankind. Indeed, though, the heart of Mr. Woods just now
was full of loving kindness and capable of any freakish magnanimity.
For--will it be believed?--Mr. Woods, who four years ago had thrown
over a fortune and exiled himself from his native land, rather than
propose marriage to Margaret Hugonin, had no sooner come again into
her presence and looked once into her perfectly fathomless eyes than
he could no more have left her of his own accord than a moth can turn
his back to a lighted candle. He had fancied himself entirely cured
of that boy-and-girl nonsense; his broken heart, after the first few
months, had not interfered in the least with a naturally healthy
appetite; and, behold, here was the old malady raging again in his
veins and with renewed fervour.
And all because the girl had a pretty face! I think you will agree
with me that in the conversation I have recorded Margaret had not
displayed any great wisdom or learning or tenderness or wit, nor,
in fine, any of the qualities a man might naturally look for in a
helpmate. Yet at the precise moment he handed his baggage-check to the
groom, Mr. Woods had made up his mind to marry her. In an instant he
had fallen head over ears in love; or to whittle accuracy to a point,
he had discovered that he had never fallen out of love; and if you had
offered him an empress or fetched Helen of Troy from the grave for his
delectation he would have laughed you to scorn.
In his defense, I can only plead that Margaret was an unusually
beautiful woman. It is all very well to flourish a death's-head at the
feast, and bid my lady go paint herself an inch thick, for to this
favour she must come; and it is quite true that the reddest lips in
the universe may give vent to slander and lies, and the brightest eyes
be set in the dullest head, and the most roseate of complexions be
purchased at the corner drug-store; but, say what you will, a pretty
woman is a pretty woman, and while she continue so no amount of
common-sense or experience will prevent a man, on provocation, from
alluring, coaxing, even entreating her to make a fool of him. We like
it. And I think they like it, too.
So Mr. Woods lost his heart on a fine spring morning and was
unreasonably elated over the fact.
And Margaret? Margaret was content.
V
They talked for a matter of a half-hour in the fashion aforetime
recorded--not very wise nor witty talk, if you will, but very pleasant
to make. There were many pauses. There was much laughter over nothing
in particular. There were any number of sentences ambitiously begun
that ended nowhere. Altogether, it was just the sort of talk for a man
and a maid.
Yet some twenty minutes later, Mr. Woods, preparing for luncheon in
the privacy of his chamber, gave a sudden exclamation. Then he sat
down and rumpled his hair thoroughly.
"Good Lord!" he groaned; "I'd forgotten all about that damned money!
Oh, you ass!--you abject ass! Why, she's one of the richest women in
America, and you're only a fifth-rate painter with a paltry thousand
or so a year! You marry her!--why, I dare say she's refused a
hundred better men than you! She'd think you were mad! Why, she'd
think you were after her money! She--oh, she'd only think you a
precious cheeky ass, she would, and she'd be quite right. You are an
ass, Billy Woods! You ought to be locked up in some nice quiet stable,
where your heehawing wouldn't disturb people. You need a keeper, you
do!"
He sat for some ten minutes, aghast. Afterward he rose and threw back
his shoulders and drew a deep breath.
"No, we aren't an ass," he addressed his reflection in the mirror, as
he carefully knotted his tie. "We're only a poor chuckle-headed moth
who's been looking at a star too long. It's a bright star, Billy, but
it isn't for you. So we're going to be sensible now. We're going to
get a telegram to-morrow that will call us away from Selwoode. We
aren't coming back any more, either. We're simply going to continue
painting fifth-rate pictures, and hoping that some day she'll find the
right man and be very, very happy."
Nevertheless, he decided that a blue tie would look better, and was
very particular in arranging it.
At the same moment Margaret stood before her mirror and tidied her
hair for luncheon and assured her image in the glass that she was a
weak-minded fool. She pointed out to herself the undeniable fact that
Billy, having formerly refused to marry her--oh, ignominy!--seemed
pleasant-spoken enough, now that she had become an heiress. His
refusal to accept part of her fortune was a very flimsy device; it
simply meant he hoped to get all of it. Oh, he did, did he!
Margaret powdered her nose viciously.
She saw through him! His honest bearing she very plainly perceived
to be the result of consummate hypocrisy. In his laughter her keen ear
detected a hollow ring; and his courteous manner she found, at bottom,
mere servility. And finally she demonstrated--to her own satisfaction,
at least--that his charm of manner was of exactly the, same sort that
had been possessed by many other eminently distinguished criminals.
How did she do this? My dear sir, you had best inquire of your mother
or your sister or your wife, or any other lady that your fancy
dictates. They know. I am sure I don't.
And after it all--
"Oh, dear, dear!" said Margaret; "I do wish he didn't have such nice
eyes!"
VI
On the way to luncheon Mr. Woods came upon Adèle Haggage and Hugh Van
Orden, both of whom he knew, very much engrossed in one another, in a
nook under the stairway. To Billy it seemed just now quite proper that
every one should be in love; wasn't it--after all--the most pleasant
condition in the world? So he greeted them with a semi-paternal smile
that caused Adèle to flush a little.
For she was--let us say, interested--in Mr. Van Orden. That was
tolerably well known. In fact, Margaret--prompted by Mrs. Haggage,
it must be confessed--had invited him to Selwoode for the especial
purpose of entertaining Miss Adèle Haggage; for he was a good match,
and Mrs. Haggage, as an experienced chaperon, knew the value of
country houses. Very unexpectedly, however, the boy had developed a
disconcerting tendency to fall in love with Margaret, who snubbed him
promptly and unmercifully. He had accordingly fallen back on Adèle,
and Mrs. Haggage had regained both her trust in Providence and her
temper.
In the breakfast-room, where luncheon was laid out, the Colonel
greeted Mr. Woods with the enthusiasm a sailor shipwrecked on a desert
island might conceivably display toward the boat-crew come to rescue
him. The Colonel liked Billy; and furthermore, the poor Colonel's
position at Selwoode just now was not utterly unlike that of the
suppositious mariner; were I minded to venture into metaphor, I should
picture him as clinging desperately to the rock of an old fogeyism
and surrounded by weltering seas of advanced thought. Colonel Hugonin
himself was not advanced in his ideas. Also, he had forceful opinions
as to the ultimate destination of those who were.
Then Billy was presented to the men of the party--Mr. Felix Kennaston
and Mr. Petheridge Jukesbury. Mrs. Haggage he knew slightly; and
Kathleen Saumarez he had known very well indeed, some six years
previously, before she had ever heard of Miguel Saumarez, and when
Billy was still an undergraduate. She was a widow now, and not
well-to-do; and Mr. Woods's first thought on seeing her was that a man
was a fool to write verses, and that she looked like just the sort of
woman to preserve them.
His second was that he had verged on imbecility when he fancied he
admired that slender, dark-haired type. A woman's hair ought to be an
enormous coronal of sunlight; a woman ought to have very large, candid
eyes of a colour between that of sapphires and that of the spring
heavens, only infinitely more beautiful than either; and all
petticoated persons differing from this description were manifestly
quite unworthy of any serious consideration.
So his eyes turned to Margaret, who had no eyes for him. She had
forgotten his existence, with an utterness that verged on ostentation;
and if it had been any one else Billy would have surmised she was in a
temper. But that angel in a temper!--nonsense! And, oh, what eyes she
had! and what lashes! and what hair!--and altogether, how adorable she
was, and what a wonder the admiring gods hadn't snatched her up to
Olympus long ago!
Thus far Mr. Woods.
But if Miss Hugonin was somewhat taciturn, her counsellors in divers
schemes for benefiting the universe were in opulent vein. Billy heard
them silently.
"I have spent the entire morning by the lake," Mr. Kennaston informed
the party at large, "in company with a mocking-bird who was practising
a new aria. It was a wonderful place; the trees were lisping verses to
themselves, and the sky overhead was like a robin's egg in colour,
and a faint wind was making tucks and ruches and pleats all over
the water, quite as if the breezes had set up in business as
mantua-makers. I fancy they thought they were working on a great sheet
of blue silk, for it was very like that. And every once in a while a
fish would leap and leave a splurge of bubble and foam behind that you
would have sworn was an inserted lace medallion."
Mr. Kennaston, as you are doubtless aware, is the author of "The
King's Quest" and other volumes of verse. He is a full-bodied young
man, with hair of no particular shade; and if his green eyes are a
little aged, his manner is very youthful. His voice in speaking is
wonderfully pleasing, and he has a habit of cocking his head on one
side, in a bird-like fashion.
"Indeed," Mr. Petheridge Jukesbury observed, "it is very true that God
made the country and man made the town. A little more wine, please."
Mr. Jukesbury is a prominent worker in the cause of philanthropy
and temperance. He is ponderous and bland; and for the rest, he is
president of the Society for the Suppression of Nicotine and the
Nude, vice-president of the Anti-Inebriation League, secretary of the
Incorporated Brotherhood of Benevolence, and the bearer of divers
similar honours.
"I am never really happy in the country," Mrs. Saumarez dissented; "it
reminds me so constantly of our rural drama. I am always afraid the
quartette may come on and sing something."
Kathleen Eppes Saumarez, as I hope you do not need to be told, is
the well-known lecturer before women's clubs, and the author of many
sympathetic stories of Nature and animal life of the kind that have
had such a vogue of late. There was always an indefinable air of
pathos about her; as Hunston Wyke put it, one felt, somehow, that her
mother had been of a domineering disposition, and that she took after
her father.
"Ah, dear lady," Mr. Kennaston cried, playfully, "you, like many of
us, have become an alien to Nature in your quest of a mere Earthly
Paradox. Epigrams are all very well, but I fancy there is more
happiness to be derived from a single impulse from a vernal wood than
from a whole problem-play of smart sayings. So few of us are
natural," Mr. Kennaston complained, with a dulcet sigh; "we are too
sophisticated. Our very speech lacks the tang of outdoor life.
Why should we not love Nature--the great mother, who is, I grant you,
the necessity of various useful inventions, in her angry moods, but
who, in her kindly moments--" He paused, with a wry face. "I beg your
pardon," said he, "but I believe I've caught rheumatism lying by that
confounded pond."
Mrs. Saumarez rallied the poet, with a pale smile. "That comes of
communing with Nature," she reminded him; "and it serves you rightly,
for natural communications corrupt good epigrams. I prefer Nature
with wide margins and uncut leaves," she spoke, in her best platform
manner. "Art should be an expurgated edition of Nature, with all
the unpleasant parts left out. And I am sure," Mrs. Saumarez added,
handsomely, and clinching her argument, "that Mr. Kennaston gives us
much better sunsets in his poems than I have ever seen in the west."
He acknowledged this with a bow.
"Not sherry--claret, if you please," said Mr. Jukesbury. "Art should
be an expurgated edition of Nature," he repeated, with a suave
chuckle. "Do you know, I consider that admirably put, Mrs.
Saumarez--admirably, upon my word. Ah, if our latter-day writers would
only take that saying to heart! We do not need to be told of the vice
and corruption prevalent, I am sorry to say, among the very best
people; what we really need is continually to be reminded of the fact
that pure hearts and homes and happy faces are to be found to-day
alike in the palatial residences of the wealthy and in the humbler
homes of those less abundantly favoured by Fortune, and yet dwelling
together in harmony and Christian resignation and--er--comparatively
moderate circumstances."
"Surely," Mrs. Saumarez protested, "art has nothing to do with
morality. Art is a process. You see a thing in a certain way; you make
your reader see it in the same way--or try to. If you succeed, the
result is art. If you fail, it may be the book of the year."
"Enduring immortality and--ah--the patronage of the reading public,"
Mr. Jukesbury placidly insisted, "will be awarded, in the end, only
to those who dwell upon the true, the beautiful, and the--er
--respectable. Art must cheer; it must be optimistic and
edifying and--ah--suitable for young persons; it must have an uplift,
a leaven of righteousness, a--er--a sort of moral baking-powder. It
must utterly eschew the--ah--unpleasant and repugnant details of life.
It is, if I may so express myself, not at home in the ménage à trois
or--er--the representation of the nude. Yes, another glass of claret,
if you please."
"I quite agree with you," said Mrs. Haggage, in her deep voice. Sarah
Ellen Haggage is, of course, the well-known author of "Child-Labour in
the South," and "The Down-Trodden Afro-American," and other notable
contributions to literature. She is, also, the "Madame President" both
of the Society for the Betterment of Civic Government and Sewerage,
and of the Ladies' League for the Edification of the Impecunious.
"And I am glad to see," Mrs. Haggage presently went on, "that the
literature of the day is so largely beginning to chronicle the sayings
and doings of the labouring classes. The virtues of the humble must be
admitted in spite of their dissolute and unhygienic tendencies. Yes,"
Mrs. Haggage added, meditatively, "our literature is undoubtedly
acquiring a more elevated tone; at last we are shaking off the
scintillant and unwholesome influence of the French."
"Ah, the French!" sighed Mr. Kennaston; "a people who think depravity
the soul of wit! Their art is mere artfulness. They care nothing for
Nature."
"No," Mrs. Haggage assented; "they prefer nastiness. All French
books are immoral. I ran across one the other day that was simply
hideously indecent--unfit for a modest woman to read. And I can assure
you that none of its author's other books are any better. I purchased
the entire set at once and read them carefully, in order to make sure
that I was perfectly justified in warning my working-girls' classes
against them. I wish to misjudge no man--not even a member of a nation
notoriously devoted to absinthe and illicit relations."
She breathed heavily, and looked at Mr. Woods as if, somehow, he
was responsible. Then she gave the name of the book to Petheridge
Jukesbury. He wished to have it placed on the Index Expurgatorius of
the Brotherhood of Benevolence, he said.
"Dear, dear," Felix Kennaston sighed, as Mr. Jukesbury made a note of
it; "you are all so practical. You perceive an evil and proceed at
once, in your common-sense way, to crush it, to stamp it out. Now,
I can merely lament certain unfortunate tendencies of the age; I am
quite unable to contend against them. Do you know," Mr. Kenneston
continued gaily, as he trifled with a bunch of grapes, "I feel
horribly out-of-place among you? Here is Mrs. Saumarez creating an
epidemic of useful and improving knowledge throughout the country, by
means of her charming lectures. Here is Mrs. Haggage, the mainspring,
if I may say so, of any number of educational and philanthropic
alarm clocks which will some day rouse the sleeping public from its
lethargy. And here is my friend Jukesbury, whose eloquent pleas for a
higher life have turned so many workmen from gin and improvidence, and
which in a printed form are disseminated even in such remote regions
as Africa, where I am told they have produced the most satisfactory
results upon the unsophisticated but polygamous monarchs of that
continent. And here, above all, is Miss Hugonin, utilising the vast
power of money--which I am credibly informed is a very good thing to
have, though I cannot pretend to speak from experience--and casting
whole bakeryfuls of bread upon the waters of charity. And here am
I, the idle singer of an empty day--a mere drone in this hive of
philanthropic bees! Dear, dear," said Mr. Kennaston, enviously, "what
a thing it is to be practical!" And he laughed toward Margaret, in his
whimsical way.
Miss Hugonin had been strangely silent; but she returned Mr.
Kennaston's smile, and began to take part in the conversation.
"You're only an ignorant child," she rebuked him, "and a very naughty
child, too, to make fun of us in this fashion."
"Yes," Mr. Kennaston assented, "I am wilfully ignorant. The world
adores ignorance; and where ignorance is kissed it is folly to be
wise. To-morrow I shall read you a chapter from my 'Defense of
Ignorance,' which my confiding publisher is going to bring out in the
autumn."
So the table-talk went on, and now Margaret bore a part therein.
* * * * *
However, I do not think we need record it further.
Mr. Woods listened in a sort of a daze. Adèle Haggage and Hugh Van
Orden were conversing in low tones at one end of the table; the
Colonel was eating his luncheon, silently and with a certain air of
resignation; and so Billy Woods was left alone to attend and marvel.
The ideas they advanced seemed to him, for the most part, sensible.
What puzzled him was the uniform gravity which they accorded
equally--as it appeared to him--to the discussion of the most pompous
platitudes and of the most arrant nonsense. They were always serious;
and the general tone of infallibility, Billy thought, could be
warranted only by a vast fund of inexperience.
But, in the main, they advocated theories he had always
held--excellent theories, he considered. And he was seized with an
unreasonable desire to repudiate every one of them.
For it seemed to him that every one of them was aimed at Margaret's
approval. It did not matter to whom a remark was ostensibly
addressed--always at its conclusion the speaker glanced more or
less openly toward Miss Hugonin. She was the audience to which they
zealously played, thought Billy; and he wondered.
I think I have said that, owing to the smallness of the house-party,
luncheon was served in the breakfast-room. The dining-room at Selwoode
is very rarely used, because Margaret declares its size makes a meal
there equivalent to eating out-of-doors.
And I must confess that the breakfast-room is far cosier. The room, in
the first place, is of reasonable dimensions; it is hung with Flemish
tapestries from designs by Van Eyck representing the Four Seasons, but
the walls and ceiling are panelled in oak, and over the mantel carved
in bas-relief the inevitable Eagle is displayed.
The mantel stood behind Margaret's chair; and over her golden head,
half-protectingly, half-threateningly, with his wings outstretched to
the uttermost, the Eagle brooded as he had once brooded over Frederick
R. Woods. The old man sat contentedly beneath that symbol of what
he had achieved in life. He had started (as the phrase runs) from
nothing; he had made himself a power. To him, the Eagle meant that
crude, incalculable power of wealth he gloried in. And to Billy Woods,
the Eagle meant identically the same thing, and--I am sorry to say--he
began to suspect that the Eagle was really the audience to whom Miss
Hugonin's friends so zealously played.
Perhaps the misanthropy of Mr. Woods was not wholly unconnected with
the fact that Margaret never looked at him. She'd show him!--the
fortune-hunter!
So her eyes never strayed toward him; and her attention never left
him. At the end of luncheon she could have enumerated for you every
morsel he had eaten, every glare he had directed toward Kennaston,
every beseeching look he had turned to her. Of course, he had taken
sherry--dry sherry. Hadn't he told her four years ago--it was the
first day she had ever worn the white organdie dotted with purple
sprigs, and they sat by the lake so late that afternoon that Frederick
R. Woods finally sent for them to come to dinner--hadn't he told her
then that only women and children cared for sweet wines? Of course he
had--the villain!
[Illustration: "Billy Woods"]
Billy, too, had his emotions. To hear that paragon, that queen among
women, descant of work done in the slums and of the mysteries of
sweat-shops; to hear her state off-hand that there were seventeen
hundred and fifty thousand children between the ages of ten and
fifteen years employed in the mines and factories of the United
States; to hear her discourse of foreign missions as glibly as though
she had been born and nurtured in Zambesi Land: all these things
filled him with an odd sense of alienation. He wasn't worthy of her,
and that was a fact. He was only a dumb idiot, and half the words that
were falling thick and fast from philanthropic lips about him might as
well have been hailstones, for all the benefit he was deriving from
them. He couldn't understand half she said.
In consequence, he very cordially detested the people who
could--especially that grimacing ass, Kennaston.
Altogether, neither Mr. Woods nor Miss Hugonin got much comfort from
their luncheon.
VII
After luncheon Billy had a quiet half-hour with the Colonel in the
smoking-room.
Said Billy, between puffs of a cigar:
"Peggy's changed a bit."
The Colonel grunted. Perhaps he dared not trust to words.
"Seems to have made some new friends."
A more vigorous grunt.
"Cultured lot, they seem?" said Mr. Woods. "Anxious to do good in the
world, too--philanthropic set, eh?"
A snort this time.
"Eh?" said Mr. Woods. There was dawning suspicion in his tone.
The Colonel looked about him. "My boy," said he, "you thank your stars
you didn't get that money; and, depend upon it, there never was a
gold-ship yet that wasn't followed."
"Pirates?" Billy Woods suggested, helpfully.
"Pirates are human beings," said Colonel Hugonin, with dignity.
"Sharks, my boy; sharks!"
VIII
That evening, after proper deliberation, "Célestine," Miss Hugonin
commanded, "get out that little yellow dress with the little red
bandanna handkerchiefs on it; and for heaven's sake, stop pulling
my hair out by the roots, unless you want a raving maniac on your
hands, Célestine!"
Whereby she had landed me in a quandary. For how, pray, is it possible
for me, a simple-minded male, fittingly to depict for you the clothes
of Margaret?--the innumerable vanities, the quaint devices, the
pleasing conceits with which she delighted to enhance her comeliness?
The thing is beyond me. Let us keep discreetly out of her wardrobe,
you and I.
Otherwise, I should have to prattle of an infinity of mysteries--of
her scarfs, feathers, laces, gloves, girdles, knots, hats, shoes,
fans, and slippers--of her embroideries, rings, pins, pendants,
ribbons, spangles, bracelets, and chains--in fine, there would be no
end to the list of gewgaws that went to make Margaret Hugonin even
more adorable than Nature had fashioned her. For when you come to
think of it, it takes the craft and skill and life-work of a thousand
men to dress one girl properly; and in Margaret's case, I protest that
every one of them, could he have beheld the result of their united
labours, would have so gloried in his own part therein that there
would have been no putting up with any of the lot.
Yet when I think of the tiny shoes she affected--patent-leather ones
mostly, with a seam running straight up the middle (and you may guess
the exact date of our comedy by knowing in what year these shoes were
modish); the string of fat pearls she so often wore about her round,
full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over
it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or
that other white-and-blue one--décolleté, that was--which I swear
seraphic mantua-makers had woven out of mists and the skies of June:
when I remember these things, I repeat, almost am I tempted to become
a boot-maker and a lapidary and a milliner and, in fine, an adept
in all the other arts and trades and sciences that go to make a
well-groomed American girl what she is--the incredible fruit
of grafted centuries, the period after the list of Time's
achievements--just that I might describe Margaret to you properly.
But the thing is beyond me. I leave such considerations, then, to
Célestine, and resolve for the future rigorously to eschew all such
gauds. Meanwhile, if an untutored masculine description will content
you--
Margaret, I have on reliable feminine authority, was one of the very
few blondes whose complexions can carry off reds and yellows.
This particular gown--I remember it perfectly--was of a dim, dull
yellow--flounciful (if I may coin a word), diaphanous, expansive. I
have not the least notion what fabric composed it; but scattered about
it, in unexpected places, were diamond-shaped red things that I am
credibly informed are called medallions. The general effect of it may
be briefly characterised as grateful to the eye and dangerous to the
heart, and to a rational train of thought quite fatal.
For it was cut low in the neck; and Margaret's neck and shoulders
would have drawn madrigals from a bench of bishops.
And in consequence, Billy Woods ate absolutely no dinner that evening.
IX
It was an hour or two later when the moon, drifting tardily up from
the south, found Miss Hugonin and Mr. Kennaston chatting amicably
together in the court at Selwoode. They were discussing the deplorable
tendencies of the modern drama.
The court at Selwoode lies in the angle of the building, the ground
plan of which is L-shaped. Its two outer sides are formed by covered
cloisters leading to the palm-garden, and by moonlight--the night
bland and sweet with the odour of growing things, vocal with plashing
fountains, spangled with fire-flies that flicker indolently among a
glimmering concourse of nymphs and fauns eternally postured in flight
or in pursuit--by moonlight, I say, the court at Selwoode is perhaps
as satisfactory a spot for a tête-à-tête as this transitory world
affords.
Mr. Kennaston was in vein to-night; he scintillated; he was also a
little nervous. This was probably owing to the fact that Margaret,
leaning against the back of the stone bench on which they both sat,
her chin propped by her hand, was gazing at him in that peculiar,
intent fashion of hers which--as I think I have mentioned--caused you
fatuously to believe she had forgotten there were any other trousered
beings extant.
Mr. Kennaston, however, stuck to apt phrases and nice distinctions.
The moon found it edifying, but rather dull.
After a little Mr. Kennaston paused in his boyish, ebullient speech,
and they sat in silence. The lisping of the fountains was very
audible. In the heavens, the moon climbed a little further and
registered a manifestly impossible hour on the sun-dial. It also
brightened.
It was a companionable sort of a moon. It invited talk of a
confidential nature.
"Bless my soul," it was signalling to any number of gentlemen at that
moment, "there's only you and I and the girl here. Speak out, man!
She'll have you now, if she ever will. You'll never have a chance like
this again, I can tell you. Come, now, my dear boy, I'm shining full
in your face, and you've no idea how becoming it is. I'm not like that
garish, blundering sun, who doesn't know any better than to let her
see how red and fidgetty you get when you're excited; I'm an old hand
at such matters. I've presided over these little affairs since Babylon
was a paltry village. I'll never tell. And--and if anything should
happen, I'm always ready to go behind a cloud, you know. So, speak
out!--speak out, man, if you've the heart of a mouse!"
Thus far the conscienceless spring moon.
Mr. Kennaston sighed. The moon took this as a promising sign and
brightened over it perceptibly, and thereby afforded him an excellent
gambit.
"Yes?" said Margaret. "What is it, beautiful?"
That, in privacy, was her fantastic name for him.
The poet laughed a little. "Beautiful child," said he--and that, under
similar circumstances, was his perfectly reasonable name for
her--"I have been discourteous. To be frank, I have been sulking as
irrationally as a baby who clamours for the moon yonder."
"You aren't really anything but a baby, you know." Indeed, Margaret
almost thought of him as such. He was so delightfully naïf.
He bent toward her. A faint tremor woke in his speech. "And so," said
he, softly, "I cry for the moon--the unattainable, exquisite moon. It
is very ridiculous, is it not?"
But he did not look at the moon. He looked toward Margaret--past
Margaret, toward the gleaming windows of Selwoode, where the Eagle
brooded:
"Oh, I really can't say," Margaret cried, in haste. "She was kind to
Endymion, you know. We will hope for the best. I think we'd better go
into the house now."
"You bid me hope?" said he.
"Beautiful, if you really want the moon, I don't see the least
objection to your continuing to hope. They make so many little
airships and things nowadays, you know, and you'll probably find it
only green cheese, after all. What is green cheese, I wonder?--it
sounds horribly indigestible and unattractive, doesn't it?" Miss
Hugonin babbled, in a tumult of fear and disappointment. He was about
to spoil their friendship now; men were so utterly inconsiderate. "I'm
a little cold," said she, mendaciously, "I really must go in."
He detained her. "Surely," he breathed, "you must know what I have so
long wanted to tell you--"
"I haven't the least idea," she protested, promptly. "You can tell
me all about it in the morning. I have some accounts to cast up
to-night. Besides, I'm not a good person to tell secrets to.
You--you'd much better not tell me. Oh, really, Mr. Kennaston," she
cried, earnestly, "you'd much better not tell me!"
"Ah, Margaret, Margaret," he pleaded, "I am not adamant. I am only a
man, with a man's heart that hungers for you, cries for you, clamours
for you day by day! I love you, beautiful child--love you with a
poet's love that is alien to these sordid days, with a love that is
half worship. I love you as Leander loved his Hero, as Pyramus loved
Thisbe. Ah, child, child, how beautiful you are! You are fairest of
created women, child--fair as those long-dead queens for whose smiles
old cities burned and kingdoms were lightly lost. I am mad for love of
you! Ah, have pity upon me, Margaret, for I love you very tenderly!"
He delivered these observations with appropriate fervour.
"Mr. Kennaston," said she, "I am sorry. We got along so nicely before,
and I was so proud of your friendship. We've had such good times
together, you and I, and I've liked your verses so, and I've liked
you--Oh, please, please, let's keep on being just friends!" Margaret
wailed, piteously.
"Friends!" he cried, and gave a bitter laugh. "I was never friends
with you, Margaret. Why, even as I read my verses to you--those
pallid, ineffectual verses that praised you timorously under varied
names--even then there pulsed in my veins the riotous pæan of love,
the great mad song of love that shamed my paltry rhymes. I cannot be
friends with you, child! I must have all or nothing. Bid me hope or
go!"
Miss Hugonin meditated for a moment and did neither.
"Beautiful," she presently queried, "would you be very, very much
shocked if I descended to slang?"
"I think," said he, with an uncertain smile, "that I could endure it."
"Why, then--cut it out, beautiful! Cut it out! I don't believe a word
you've said, in the first place; and, anyhow, it annoys me to have you
talk to me like that. I don't like it, and it simply makes me awfully,
awfully tired."
With which characteristic speech, Miss Hugonin leaned back and sat up
very rigidly and smiled at him like a cherub.
Kennaston groaned.
"It shall be as you will," he assured her, with a little quaver in his
speech that was decidedly effective. "And in any event, I am not sorry
that I have loved you, beautiful child. You have always been a power
for good in my life. You have gladdened me with the vision of a beauty
that is more than human, you have heartened me for this petty business
of living, you have praised my verses, you have even accorded me
certain pecuniary assistance as to their publication--though I must
admit that to accept it of you was very distasteful to me. Ah!" Felix
Kennaston cried, with a quick lift of speech, "impractical child that
I am, I had not thought of that! My love had caused me to forget the
great barrier that stands between us."
He gasped and took a short turn about the court.
"Pardon me, Miss Hugonin," he entreated, when his emotions were under
a little better control, "for having spoken as I did. I had forgotten.
Think of me, if you will, as no better than the others--think of me as
a mere fortune-hunter. My presumption will be justly punished."
"Oh, no, no, it isn't that," she cried; "it isn't that, is it?
You--you would care just as much about me if I were poor, wouldn't
you, beautiful? I don't want you to care for me, of course," Margaret
added, with haste. "I want to go on being friends. Oh, that money,
that nasty money!" she cried, in a sudden gust of petulance. "It
makes me so distrustful, and I can't help it!"
He smiled at her wistfully. "My dear," said he, "are there no mirrors
at Selwoode to remove your doubts?"
"I--yes, I do believe in you," she said, at length. "But I don't want
to marry you. You see, I'm not a bit in love with you," Margaret
explained, candidly.
Ensued a silence. Mr. Kennaston bowed his head.
"You bid me go?" said he.
"No--not exactly," said she.
He indicated a movement toward her.
"Now, you needn't attempt to take any liberties with me," Miss Hugonin
announced, decisively, "because if you do I'll never speak to you
again. You must let me go now. You--you must let me think."
Then Felix Kennaston acted very wisely. He rose and stood aside, with
a little bow.
"I can wait, child," he said, sadly. "I have already waited a long
time."
Miss Hugonin escaped into the house without further delay. It was very
flattering, of course; he had spoken beautifully, she thought, and
nobly and poetically and considerately, and altogether there was
absolutely no excuse for her being in a temper. Still, she was.
The moon, however, considered the affair as arranged.
For she had been no whit more resolute in her refusal, you see, than
becomes any self-respecting maid. In fact, she had not refused him;
and the experienced moon had seen the hopes of many a wooer thrive,
chameleon-like, on answers far less encouraging than that which
Margaret had given Felix Kennaston.
Margaret was very fond of him. All women like a man who can do a
picturesque thing without bothering to consider whether or not he be
making himself ridiculous; and more than once in thinking of him she
had wondered if--perhaps--possibly--some day--? And always these vague
flights of fancy had ended at this precise point--incinerated, if you
will grant me the simile, by the sudden flaming of her cheeks.
The thing is common enough. You may remember that Romeo was not the
only gentleman that Juliet noticed at her début: there was the young
Petruchio; and the son and heir of old Tiberio; and I do not question
that she had a kind glance or so for County Paris. Beyond doubt, there
were many with whom my lady had danced; with whom she had laughed a
little; with whom she had exchanged a few perfectly affable words and
looks--when of a sudden her heart speaks: "Who's he that would not
dance? If he be married, my grave is like to prove my marriage-bed."
In any event, Paris and Petruchio and Tiberio's young hopeful can go
hang; Romeo has come.
Romeo is seldom the first. Pray you, what was there to prevent Juliet
from admiring So-and-so's dancing? or from observing that Signor
Such-an-one had remarkably expressive eyes? or from thinking of Tybalt
as a dear, reckless fellow whom it was the duty of some good woman to
rescue from perdition? If no one blames the young Montague for sending
Rosaline to the right-about--Rosaline for whom he was weeping and
rhyming an hour before--why, pray, should not Signorina Capulet have
had a few previous affaires du coeur? Depend upon it, she had; for
was she not already past thirteen?
In like manner, I dare say that a deal passed between Desdemona and
Cassio that the honest Moor never knew of; and that Lucrece was
probably very pleasant and agreeable to Tarquin, as a well-bred
hostess should be; and that Helen had that little affair with Theseus
before she ever thought of Paris; and that if Cleopatra died for love
of Antony it was not until she had previously lived a great while with
Cæsar.
So Felix Kennaston had his hour. Now Margaret has gone into Selwoode,
flame-faced and quite unconscious that she is humming under her breath
the words of a certain inane old song:
"Oh, she sat for me a chair;
She has ringlets in her hair;
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother"--
Only she sang it "father." And afterward, she suddenly frowned and
stamped her foot, did Margaret.
"I hate him!" said she; but she looked very guilty.
X
In the living-hall of Selwoode Miss Hugonin paused. Undeniably there
were the accounts of the Ladies' League for the Edification of the
Impecunious to be put in order; her monthly report as treasurer
was due in a few days, and Margaret was in such matters a careful,
painstaking body, and not wholly dependent upon her secretary; but she
was entirely too much out of temper to attend to that now.
It was really all Mr. Kennaston's fault, she assured a pricking
conscience, as she went out on the terrace before Selwoode. He had
bothered her dreadfully.
There she found Petheridge Jukesbury smoking placidly in the
effulgence of the moonlight; and the rotund, pasty countenance he
turned toward her was ludicrously like the moon's counterfeit in muddy
water. I am sorry to admit it, but Mr. Jukesbury had dined somewhat
injudiciously. You are not to stretch the phrase; he was merely
prepared to accord the universe his approval, to pat Destiny upon
the head, and his thoughts ran clear enough, but with Aprilian
counter-changes of the jovial and the lachrymose.
"Ah, Miss Hugonin," he greeted her, with a genial smile, "I am indeed
fortunate. You find me deep in meditation, and also, I am sorry to
say, in the practise of a most pernicious habit. You do not object?
Ah, that is so like you. You are always kind, Miss Hugonin. Your
kindness, which falls, if I may so express myself, as the gentle rain
from Heaven upon all deserving charitable institutions, and daily
comforts the destitute with good advice and consoles the sorrowing
with blankets, would now induce you to tolerate an odour which I am
sure is personally distasteful to you."
"But really I don't mind," was Margaret's protest.
"I cannot permit it," Mr. Jukesbury insisted, and waved a pudgy hand
in the moonlight. "No, really, I cannot permit it. We will throw
it away, if you please, and say no more about it," and his glance
followed the glowing flight of his cigar-end somewhat wistfully. "Your
father's cigars are such as it is seldom my privilege to encounter;
but, then, my personal habits are not luxurious, nor my private
income precisely what my childish imaginings had pictured it at this
comparatively advanced period of life. Ah, youth, youth!--as the poet
admirably says, Miss Hugonin, the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts, but its visions of existence are rose-tinged and free from
care, and its conception of the responsibilities of manhood--such
as taxes and the water-rate--I may safely characterise as extremely
sketchy. But pray be seated, Miss Hugonin," Petheridge Jukesbury
blandly urged.
Common courtesy forced her to comply. So Margaret seated herself on
a little red rustic bench. In the moonlight--but I think I have
mentioned how Margaret looked in the moonlight; and above her golden
head the Eagle, sculptured over the door-way, stretched his wings to
the uttermost, half-protectingly, half-threateningly, and seemed to
view Mr. Jukesbury with a certain air of expectation.
"A beautiful evening," Petheridge Jukesbury suggested, after a little
cogitation.
She conceded that this was undeniable.
"Where Nature smiles, and only the conduct of man is vile and
altogether what it ought not to be," he continued, with unction--"ah,
how true that is and how consoling! It is a good thing to meditate
upon our own vileness, Miss Hugonin--to reflect that we are but worms
with naturally the most vicious inclinations. It is most salutary.
Even I am but a worm, Miss Hugonin, though the press has been pleased
to speak most kindly of me. Even you--ah, no!" cried Mr. Jukesbury,
kissing his finger-tips, with gallantry; "let us say a worm who has
burst its cocoon and become a butterfly--a butterfly with a charming
face and a most charitable disposition and considerable property!"
Margaret thanked him with a smile, and began to think wistfully of the
Ladies' League accounts. Still, he was a good man; and she endeavoured
to persuade herself that she considered his goodness to atone for his
flabbiness and his fleshiness and his interminable verbosity--which
she didn't.
Mr. Jukesbury sighed.
"A naughty world," said he, with pathos--"a very naughty world, which
really does not deserve the honour of including you in its census
reports. Yet I dare say it has the effrontery to put you down in the
tax-lists; it even puts me down--me, an humble worker in the vineyard,
with both hands set to the plough. And if I don't pay up it sells
me out. A very naughty world, indeed! I dare say," Mr. Jukesbury
observed, raising his eyes--not toward heaven, but toward the Eagle,
"that its conduct, as the poet says, creates considerable distress
among the angels. I don't know. I am not acquainted with many angels.
My wife was an angel, but she is now a lifeless form. She has been for
five years. I erected a tomb to her at considerable personal expense,
but I don't begrudge it--no, I don't begrudge it, Miss Hugonin. She
was very hard to live with. But she was an angel, and angels are rare.
Miss Hugonin," said Petheridge Jukesbury, with emphasis, "you are an
angel."
"Oh, dear, dear!" said Margaret, to herself; "I do wish I'd gone to
bed directly after dinner!"
Above them the Eagle brooded.
"Surely," he breathed, "you must know what I have so long wanted to
tell you--"
"No," said Margaret, "and I don't want to know, please. You make me
awfully tired, and I don't care for you in the least. Now, you let
go my hand--let go at once!"
He detained her. "You are an angel," he insisted--"an angel with a
large property. I love you, Margaret! Be mine!--be my blushing bride,
I entreat you! Your property is far too large for an angel to look
after. You need a man of affairs. I am a man of affairs. I am
forty-five, and have no bad habits. My press-notices are, as a rule,
favourable, my eloquence is accounted considerable, and my dearest
aspiration is that you will comfort my declining years. I might add
that I adore you, but I think I mentioned that before. Margaret, will
you be my blushing bride?"
"No!" said Miss Hugonin emphatically. "No, you tipsy old beast--no!"
There was a rustle of skirts. The door slammed, and the philanthropist
was left alone on the terrace.
XI
In the living-hall Margaret came upon Hugh Van Orden, who was
searching in one of the alcoves for a piece of music that Adèle
Haggage wanted and had misplaced.
The boy greeted her miserably.
"Miss Hugonin," he lamented, "you're awfully hard on me."
"I am sorry," said Margaret, "that you consider me discourteous to a
guest in my own house." Oh, I grant you Margaret was in a temper now.
"It isn't that," he protested; "but I never see you alone. And I've
had something to tell you."
"Yes?" said she, coldly.
He drew near to her. "Surely," he breathed, "you must know what I have
long wanted to tell you--"
"Yes, I should think I did!" said Margaret, "and if you dare tell
me a word of it I'll never speak to you again. It's getting a little
monotonous. Good-night, Mr. Van Orden."
Half way up the stairs she paused and ran lightly back.
"Oh, Hugh, Hugh!" she said, contritely, "I was unpardonably rude. I'm
sorry, dear, but it's quite impossible. You are a dear, cute little
boy, and I love you--but not that way. So let's shake hands, Hugh, and
be friends! And then you can go and play with Adèle." He raised her
hand to his lips. He really was a nice boy.
"But, oh, dear!" said Margaret, when he had gone; "what horrid
creatures men are, and what a temper I'm in, and what a vexatious
place the world is! I wish I were a pauper! I wish I had never been
born! And I wish--and I wish I had those League papers fixed! I'll
do it to-night! I'm sure I need something tranquillising, like
assessments and decimal places and unpaid dues, to keep me from
screaming. I hate them all--all three of them--as badly as I do
him!"
Thereupon she blushed, for no apparent reason, and went to her own
rooms in a frame of mind that was inexcusable, but very becoming. Her
cheeks burned, her eyes flashed with a brighter glow that was gem-like
and a little cruel, and her chin tilted up defiantly. Margaret had a
resolute chin, a masculine chin. I fancy that it was only at the last
moment that Nature found it a thought too boyish and modified it with
a dimple--a very creditable dimple, by the way, that she must have
been really proud of. That ridiculous little dint saved it, feminised
it.
Altogether, then, she swept down upon the papers of the Ladies' League
for the Edification of the Impecunious with very much the look of a
diminutive Valkyrie--a Valkyrie of unusual personal attractions, you
understand--en route for the battle-field and a little, a very
little eager and expectant of the strife.
Subsequently, "Oh, dear, dear!" said she, amid a feverish rustling
of papers; "the whole world is out of sorts to-night! I never did
know how much seven times eight is, and I hate everybody, and I've
left that list of unpaid dues in Uncle Fred's room, and I've got to go
after it, and I don't want to! Bother those little suitors of mine!"
Miss Hugonin rose, and went out from her own rooms, carrying a bunch
of keys, across the hallway to the room in which Frederick R. Woods
had died. It was his study, you may remember. It had been little
used since his death, but Margaret kept her less important papers
there--the overflow, the flotsam of her vast philanthropic and
educational correspondence.
And there she found Billy Woods.
XII
His back was turned to the door as she entered. He was staring at a
picture beside the mantel--a portrait of Frederick R. Woods--and his
eyes when he wheeled about were wistful.
Then, on a sudden, they lighted up as if they had caught fire from
hers, and his adoration flaunted crimson banners in his cheeks, and
his heart, I dare say, was a great blaze of happiness. He loved her,
you see; when she entered a room it really made a difference to this
absurd young man. He saw a great many lights, for instance, and heard
music. And accordingly, he laughed now in a very contented fashion.
"I wasn't burglarising," said he--"that is, not exactly. I ought to
have asked your permission, I suppose, before coming here, but I
couldn't find you, and--and it was rather important. You see," Mr.
Woods continued, pointing to the great carved desk. "I happened to
speak of this desk to the Colonel to-night. We--we were talking of
Uncle Fred's death, and I found out, quite by accident, that it hadn't
been searched since then--that is, not thoroughly. There are secret
drawers, you see; one here," and he touched the spring that threw
it open, "and the other on this side. There is--there is nothing of
importance in them; only receipted bills and such. The other drawer is
inside that centre compartment, which is locked. The Colonel wouldn't
come. He said it was all foolishness, and that he had a book he wanted
to read. So he sent me after what he called my mare's nest. It isn't,
you see--no, not quite, not quite," Mr. Woods murmured, with an odd
smile, and then laughed and added, lamely: "I--I suppose I'm the only
person who knew about it."
Mr. Woods's manner was a thought strange. He stammered a little in
speaking; he laughed unnecessarily; and Margaret could see that his
hands trembled. Taking him all in all, you would have sworn he was
repressing some vital emotion. But he did not seem unhappy--no, not
exactly unhappy. He was with Margaret, you see.
"Oh, you beauty!" his meditations ran.
He had some excuse. In the soft, rosy twilight of the room--the study
at Selwoode is panelled in very dark oak, and the doors and windows
are screened with crimson hangings--her parti-coloured red-and-yellow
gown might have been a scrap of afterglow left over from an unusually
fine sunset. In a word, Miss Hugonin was a very quaint and colourful
and delectable figure as she came a little further into the room. Her
eyes shone like blue stars, and her hair shone--there must be pounds
of it, Billy thought--and her very shoulders, plump, flawless,
ineffable, shone with the glow of an errant cloud-tatter that is just
past the track of dawn, and is therefore neither pink nor white, but
manages somehow to combine the best points of both colours.
"Ah, indeed?" said Miss Hugonin. Her tone imparted a surprising degree
of chilliness to this simple remark.
"No," she went on, very formally, "this is not a private room; you owe
me no apology for being here. Indeed, I am rather obliged to you, Mr.
Woods, for none of us knew of these secret drawers. Here is the key to
the central compartment, if you will be kind enough to point out the
other one. Dear, dear!" Margaret concluded, languidly, "all this is
quite like a third-rate melodrama. I haven't the least doubt you will
discover a will in there in your favour, and be reinstated as the
long-lost heir and all that sort of thing. How tiresome that will be
for me, though."
She was in a mood to be cruel to-night. She held out the keys to
him, in a disinterested fashion, and dropped them daintily into his
outstretched palm, just as she might have given a coin to an unusually
grimy mendicant. But the tips of her fingers grazed his hand.
That did the mischief. Her least touch was enough to set every nerve
in his body a-tingle. "Peggy!" he said hoarsely, as the keys jangled
to the floor. Then Mr. Woods drew a little nearer to her and said
"Peggy, Peggy!" in a voice that trembled curiously, and appeared to
have no intention of saying anything further.
Indeed, words would have seemed mere tautology to any one who could
have seen his eyes. Margaret looked into them for a minute, and her
own eyes fell before their blaze, and her heart--very foolishly--stood
still for a breathing-space. Subsequently she recalled the fact
that he was a fortune-hunter, and that she despised him, and also
observed--to her surprise and indignation--that he was holding her
hand and had apparently been doing so for some time. You may believe
it, that she withdrew that pink-and-white trifle angrily enough.
"Pray don't be absurd, Mr. Woods," said she.
Billy caught up the word. "Absurd!" he echoed--"yes, that describes
what I've been pretty well, doesn't it, Peggy? I was absurd when I
let you send me to the right-about four years ago. I realised that
to-day the moment I saw you. I should have held on like the very
grimmest death; I should have bullied you into marrying me, if
necessary, and in spite of fifty Anstruthers. Oh, yes, I know that
now. But I was only a boy then, Peggy, and so I let a boy's pride come
between us. I know now there isn't any question of pride where you
are concerned--not any question of pride nor of any silly
misunderstandings, nor of any uncle's wishes, nor of anything but just
you, Peggy. It's just you that I care for now--just you."
"Ah!" Margaret cried, with a swift intake of the breath that was
almost a sob. He had dared, after all; oh, it was shameless, sordid!
And yet (she thought dimly), how dear that little quiver in his voice
had been were it unplanned!--and how she could have loved this big,
eager boy were he not the hypocrite she knew him!
She'd show him! But somehow--though it was manifestly what he
deserved--she found she couldn't look him in the face while she did
it.
So she dropped her eyes to the floor and waited for a moment of tense
silence. Then, "Am I to consider this a proposal, Mr. Woods?" she
asked, in muffled tones.
Billy stared. "Yes," said he, very gravely, after an interval.
"You see," she explained, still in the same dull voice, "you phrased
it so vaguely I couldn't well be certain. You don't propose very well,
Mr. Woods. I--I've had opportunities to become an authority on such
matters, you see, since I've been rich. That makes a difference,
doesn't it? A great many men are willing to marry me now who wouldn't
have thought of such a thing, say--say, four years ago. So I've had
some experience. Oh, yes, three--three persons have offered to marry
me for my money earlier in this very evening--before you did, Mr.
Woods. And, really, I can't compliment you on your methods, Mr. Woods;
they are a little vague, a little abrupt, a little transparent, don't
you think?"
"Peggy!" he cried, in a frightened whisper. He could not believe, you
see, that it was the woman he loved who was speaking.
And for my part, I admit frankly that at this very point, if ever in
her life, Margaret deserved a thorough shaking.
"Dear me," she airily observed, "I'm sure I've said nothing out of the
way. I think it speaks very well for you that you're so fond of your
old home--so anxious to regain it at any cost. It's quite touching,
Mr. Woods."
She raised her eyes toward his. I dare say she was suffering as much
as he. But women consider it a point of honour to smile when they
stab; Margaret smiled with an innocence that would have seemed
overdone in an angel.
Then, in an instant, she had the grace to be abjectly ashamed of
herself. Billy's face had gone white. His mouth was set, mask-like,
and his breathing was a little perfunctory. It stung her, though, that
he was not angry. He was sorry.
"I--I see," he said, very carefully. "You think I--want the money.
Yes--I see."
"And why not?" she queried, pleasantly. "Dear me, money's a very
sensible thing to want, I'm sure. It makes a great difference, you
know."
He looked down into her face for a moment. One might have sworn this
detected fortune-hunter pitied her.
"Yes," he assented, slowly, "it makes a difference--not a difference
for the better, I'm afraid, Peggy."
Ensued a silence.
Then Margaret tossed her head. She was fast losing her composure.
She would have given the world to retract what she had said, and
accordingly she resolved to brazen it out.
"You needn't look at me as if I were a convicted criminal," she said,
sharply. "I won't marry you, and there's an end of it."
"It isn't that I'm thinking of," said Mr. Woods, with a grave smile.
"You see, it takes me a little time to realise your honest opinion
of me. I believe I understand now. You think me a very hopeless
cad--that's about your real opinion, isn't it, Peggy? I didn't know
that, you see. I thought you knew me better than that. You did once,
Peggy--once, a long time ago, and--and I hoped you hadn't quite
forgotten that time."
The allusion was ill chosen.
"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried, gasping. "You to remind me of that
time!--you of all men. Haven't you a vestige of shame? Haven't you
a rag of honour left? Oh, I didn't know there were such men in the
world! And to think--to think--" Margaret's glorious voice broke, and
she wrung her hands helplessly.
Then, after a little, she raised her eyes to his, and spoke without
a trace of emotion. "To think," she said, and her voice was toneless
now, "to think that I loved you! It's that that hurts, you know. For I
loved you very dearly, Billy Woods--yes, I think I loved you quite as
much as any woman can ever love a man. You were the first, you see,
and girls--girls are very foolish about such things. I thought you
were brave, and strong, and clean, and honest, and beautiful, and
dear--oh, quite the best and dearest man in the world, I thought you,
Billy Woods! That--that was queer, wasn't it?" she asked, with a
listless little shiver. "Yes, it was very queer. You didn't think of
me in quite that way, did you? No, you--you thought I was well enough
to amuse you for a while. I was well enough for a summer flirtation,
wasn't I, Billy? But marriage--ah, no, you never thought of marriage
then. You ran away when Uncle Fred suggested that. You refused
point-blank--refused in this very room--didn't you, Billy? Ah,
that--that hurt," Margaret ended, with a faint smile. "Yes, it--hurt."
Billy Woods raised a protesting hand, as though to speak, but
afterward he drew a deep, tremulous breath and bit his lip and was
silent.
She had spoken very quietly, very simply, very like a tired child;
now her voice lifted. "But you've hurt me more to-night," she said,
equably--"to-night, when you've come cringing back to me--to me, whom
you'd have none of when I was poor. I'm rich now, though. That makes
a difference, doesn't it, Billy? You're willing to whistle back the
girl's love you flung away once--yes, quite willing. But can't you
understand how much it must hurt me to think I ever loved you?"
Margaret asked, very gently.
She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to be ashamed. She prayed
God that he might be just a little, little bit ashamed, so that she
might be able to forgive him.
But he stood silent, bending puzzled brows toward her.
"Can't you understand, Billy?" she pleaded, softly. "I can't help
seeing what a cur you are. I must hate you, Billy--of course, I must,"
she insisted, very gently, as though arguing the matter with herself;
then suddenly she sobbed and wrung her hands in anguish. "Oh, I can't,
I can't!" she wailed. "God help me, I can't hate you, even though I
know you for what you are!"
His arms lifted a little; and in a flash Margaret knew that what she
most wanted in all the world was to have them close about her, and
then to lay her head upon his shoulder and cry contentedly.
Oh, she did want to forgive him! If he had lost all sense of shame,
why could he not lie to her? Surely, he could at least lie? And,
oh, how gladly she would believe!--only the tiniest, the flimsiest
fiction, her eyes craved of him.
But he merely said "I see--I see," very slowly, and then smiled.
"We'll put the money aside just now," he said. "Perhaps, after a
little, we--we'll came back to that. I think you've forgotten, though,
that when--when Uncle Fred and I had our difference you had just
thrown me over--had just ordered me never to speak to you again?
I couldn't very well ask you to marry me, could I, under those
circumstances?"
"I spoke in a moment of irritation," a very dignified Margaret pointed
out; "you would have paid no attention whatever to it if you had
really--cared."
Billy laughed, rather sadly. "Oh, I cared right enough," he said. "I
still care. The question is--do you?"
"No," said Margaret, with decision, "I don't--not in the least."
"Peggy," Mr. Woods commanded, "look at me!"
"You have had your answer, I think," Miss Hugonin indifferently
observed.
Billy caught her chin in his hand and turned her face to his. "Peggy,
do you--care?" he asked, softly.
And Margaret looked into his honest-seeming eyes and, in a panic, knew
that her traitor lips were forming "yes."
"That would be rather unfortunate, wouldn't it?" she asked, with a
smile. "You see, it was only an hour ago I promised to marry Mr.
Kennaston."
"Kennaston!" Billy gasped. "You--you don't mean that you care for
him, Peggy?"
"I really can't see why it should concern you," said Margaret,
sweetly, "but since you ask--I do. You couldn't expect me to remain
inconsolable forever, you know."
Then the room blurred before her eyes. She stood rigid, defiant.
She was dimly aware that Billy was speaking, speaking from a great
distance, it seemed, and then after a century or two his face came
back to her out of the whirl of things. And, though she did not know
it, they were smiling bravely at one another.
"--and so," Mr. Woods was stating, "I've been an even greater ass than
usual, and I hope you'll be very, very happy."
[Illustration: "Billy unfolded it slowly, with a puzzled look growing
in his countenance."]
"Thank you," she returned, mechanically, "I--I hope so."
After an interval, "Good-night, Peggy," said Mr. Woods.
"Oh--? Good-night," said she, with a start.
He turned to go. Then, "By Jove!" said he, grimly, "I've been so busy
making an ass of myself I'd forgotten all about more--more important
things."
Mr. Woods picked up the keys and, going to the desk, unlocked the
centre compartment with a jerk. Afterward he gave a sharp exclamation.
He had found a paper in the secret drawer at the back which appeared
to startle him.
Billy unfolded it slowly, with a puzzled look growing in his
countenance. Then for a moment Margaret's golden head drew close to
his yellow curls and they read it through together. And in the most
melodramatic and improbable fashion in the world they found it to be
the last will and testament of Frederick R. Woods.
"But--but I don't understand," was Miss Hugonin's awed comment. "It's
exactly like the other will, only--why, it's dated the seventeenth
of June, the day before he died! And it's witnessed by Hodges and
Burton--the butler and the first footman, you know--and they've never
said anything about such a paper. And, then, why should he have made
another will just like the first?"
Billy pondered.
By and bye, "I think I can explain that," he said, in a rather
peculiar voice. "You see, Hodges and Burton witnessed all his papers,
half the time without knowing what they were about. They would hardly
have thought of this particular one after his death. And it isn't
quite the same will as the other; it leaves you practically
everything, but it doesn't appoint any trustees, as the other did,
because this will was drawn up after you were of age. Moreover, it
contains these four bequests to colleges, to establish a Woods chair
of ethnology, which the other will didn't provide for. Of course, it
would have been simpler merely to add a codicil to the first will,
but Uncle Fred was always very methodical. I--I think he was probably
going through the desk the night he died, destroying various papers.
He must have taken the other will out to destroy it just--just before
he died. Perhaps--perhaps--" Billy paused for a little and then
laughed, unmirthfully. "It scarcely matters," said he. "Here is the
will. It is undoubtedly genuine and undoubtedly the last he made.
You'll have to have it probated, Peggy, and settle with the colleges.
It--it won't make much of a hole in the Woods millions."
There was a half-humorous bitterness in his voice that Margaret noted
silently. So (she thought) he had hoped for a moment that at the last
Frederick R. Woods had relented toward him. It grieved her, in a dull
fashion, to see him so mercenary. It grieved her--though she would
have denied it emphatically--to see him so disappointed. Since he
wanted the money so much, she would have liked for him to have had it,
worthless as he was, for the sake of the boy he had been.
"Thank you," she said, coldly, as she took the paper; "I will give it
to my father. He will do what is necessary. Good-night, Mr. Woods."
Then she locked up the desk in a businesslike fashion and turned to
him, and held out her hand.
"Good-night, Billy," said this perfectly inconsistent young woman.
"For a moment I thought Uncle Fred had altered his will in your
favour. I almost wish he had."
Billy smiled a little.
"That would never have done," he said, gravely, as he shook
hands; "you forget what a sordid, and heartless, and generally
good-for-nothing chap I am, Peggy. It's much better as it is."
Only the tiniest, the flimsiest fiction, her eyes craved of him. Even
now, at the eleventh hour, lie to me, Billy Woods, and, oh, how gladly
I will believe!
But he merely said "Good-night, Peggy," and went out of the room. His
broad shoulders had a pathetic droop, a listlessness.
Margaret was glad. Of course, she was glad. At last, she had told him
exactly what she thought of him. Why shouldn't she be glad? She was
delighted.
So, by way of expressing this delight, she sat down at the desk and
began to cry very softly.
XIII
Having duly considered the emptiness of existence, the unworthiness of
men, the dreary future that awaited her--though this did not trouble
her greatly, as she confidently expected to die soon--and many other
such dolorous topics, Miss Hugonin decided to retire for the night.
She rose, filled with speculations as to the paltriness of life and
the probability of her eyes being red in the morning.
"It will be all his fault if they are," she consoled herself.
"Doubtless he'll be very much pleased. After robbing me of all faith
in humanity, I dare say the one thing needed to complete his happiness
is to make me look like a fright. I hate him! After making me
miserable, now, I suppose he'll go off and make some other woman
miserable. Oh, of course, he'll make love to the first woman he meets
who has any money. I'm sure she's welcome to him. I only pity any
woman who has to put up with him. No, I don't," Margaret decided,
after reflection; "I hate her, too!"
Miss Hugonin went to the door leading to the hallway and paused.
Then--I grieve to relate it--she shook a little pink-tipped fist in
the air.
"I detest you!" she commented, between her teeth; "oh, how dare you
make me feel so ashamed of the way I've treated you!"
The query--as possibly you may have divined--was addressed to Mr.
Woods. He was standing by the fireplace in the hallway, and his tall
figure was outlined sharply against the flame of the gas-logs that
burned there. His shoulders had a pathetic droop, a listlessness.
Billy was reading a paper of some kind by the firelight, and the black
outline of his face smiled grimly over it. Then he laughed and threw
it into the fire.
"Billy!" a voice observed--a voice that was honey and gold and velvet
and all that is most sweet and rich and soft in the world.
Mr. Woods was aware of a light step, a swishing, sibilant, delightful
rustling--the caress of sound is the rustling of a well-groomed
woman's skirts--and of an afterthought of violets, of a mere
reminiscence of orris, all of which came toward him through the
dimness of the hall. He started, noticeably.
"Billy," Miss Hugonin stated, "I'm sorry for