The Eagle's Shadow · Chapter 3Eagle's Shadow (3)
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
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