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The Eagle's Shadow · Chapter 7Eagle's Shadow (7)

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end by strangling me, which would be horribly disagreeable for me, and

then they'd hang you for it, you know, and that would be equally

disagreeable for you. Fancy, though, what a good advertisement it would

be for your poems!"

[Illustration: "'My lady,' he asked, very softly, 'haven't you any

good news for me on this wonderful morning?'"]

She was not looking at him now--oh, no, Margaret was far too busily

employed getting the will (which she had carried all this time) into

an absurd little silver chain-bag hanging at her waist. She had no

time to look at Felix Kennaston. There was such scant room in the bag;

her purse took up so much space there was scarcely any left for the

folded paper; the affair really required her closest, undivided

attention. Besides, she had not the least desire to look at Kennaston

just now.

"Beautiful child," he pleaded, "look at me!"

But she didn't.

She felt that at that moment she could have looked at a gorgon, say,

or a cockatrice, or any other trifle of that nature with infinitely

greater composure. The pause that followed Margaret accordingly

devoted to a scrutiny of his shoes and sincere regret that their owner

was not a mercenary man who would be glad to be rid of her.

"Beautiful child," spoke the poet's voice, sadly, "you aren't--surely,

you aren't saying this in mistaken kindness to me? Surely, you aren't

saying this because of what has happened in regard to your money

affairs? Believe me, my dear, that makes no difference to me. It

is you I love--you, the woman of my heart--and not a certain, and

doubtless desirable, amount of metal disks and dirty paper."

"Now I suppose you're going to be very noble and very nasty about it,"

observed Miss Hugonin, resentfully. "That's my main objection to

you, you know, that you haven't any faults I can recognise and feel

familiar and friendly with."

"My dear," he protested, "I assure you I am not intentionally

disagreeable."

At that, she raised velvet eyes to his--with a visible effort,

though--and smiled.

"I know you far too well to think that," she said, wistfully. "I

know I'm not worthy of you. I'm tremendously fond of you, beautiful,

but--but, you see, I love somebody else," Margaret concluded, with

admirable candour.

"Ah!" said he, in a rather curious voice. "The painter chap, eh?"

Then Margaret's face flamed in a wonderful glow of shame and happiness

and pride that must have made the surrounding roses very hopelessly

jealous. A quaint mothering look, sacred, divine, Madonna-like,

woke in her great eyes as she thought--remorsefully--of

how unhappy Billy must be at that very moment and of how big he was

and of his general niceness; and she desired, very heartily, that this

fleshy young man would make his scene and have done with it. Who was

he, forsooth, to keep her from Billy? She wished she had never heard

of Felix Kennaston.

Souvent femme varie

, my brothers.

However, "Yes," said Margaret..

"You are a dear," said Mr. Kennaston, with conviction in his voice.

I dare say Margaret was surprised.

But the poet had taken her hand and had kissed it reverently, and then

sat down beside her, twisting one foot under him in a fashion he had.

He was frankly grateful to her for refusing him; and, the mask of

affectation slipped, she saw in him another man.

"I am an out-and-out fraud," he confessed, with the gayest of smiles.

"I am not in love with you, and I am inexpressibly glad that you are

not in love with me. Oh, Margaret, Margaret--you don't mind if I call

you that, do you? I shall have to, in any event, because I like you so

tremendously now that we are not going to be married--you have no idea

what a night I spent."

"I consider it most peculiar and unsympathetic of my hair not to have

turned gray. I thought you were going to have me, you see."

Margaret was far to much astonished to be angry.

"But last night!" she presently echoed, in candid surprise. "Why, last

night you didn't know I was poor!"

He wagged a protesting forefinger. "That made no earthly difference,"

he assured her. "Of course, it was the money--and in some degree the

moon--that induced me to make love to you. I acted on the impulse of

the moment; just for an instant, the novelty of doing a perfectly

sensible thing--and marrying money is universally conceded to come

under that head--appealed to me. So I did it. But all the time I was

in love with Kathleen Saumarez. Why, the moment I left you, I began to

realise that not even you--and you are quite the most fascinating and

generally adorable woman I ever knew, Margaret--I began to realise, I

say, that not even you could ever make me forget that fact. And I

was very properly miserable. It is extremely queer," Mr. Kennaston

continued, after an interval of meditation, "but falling in love

appears to be the one utterly inexplicable, utterly reasonless thing

one ever does in one's life. You can usually think of some more or

less plausible palliation for embezzlement, say, or for robbing a

cathedral or even for committing suicide--but no man can ever explain

how he happened to fall in love. He simply did it."

Margaret nodded sagely. She knew.

"Now you," Mr. Kennaston was pleased to say, "are infinitely more

beautiful, younger, more clever, and in every way more attractive than

Kathleen. I recognise these things clearly, but it does not appear,

somehow, to alter the fact that I am in love with her. I think I have

been in love with her all my life. We were boy and girl together,

Margaret, and--and I give you my word," Kennaston cried, with his

boyish flush, "I worship her! I simply cannot explain the perfectly

unreasonable way in which I worship her!"

He was sincere. He loved Kathleen Saumarez as much as he was capable

of loving any one--almost as much as he loved to dilate on his own

peculiarities and emotions.

Margaret's gaze was intent upon him. "Yet," she marvelled, "you made

love to me very tropically."

With unconcealed pride, Mr. Kennaston assented. "Didn't I?" he said.

"I was in rather good form last night, I thought."

"And you were actually prepared to marry me?" she asked--"even after

you knew I was poor?"

"I couldn't very well back out," he submitted, and then cocked

his head on one side. "You see," he added, whimsically, "I was

sufficiently a conceited ass to fancy you cared a little for me. So,

of course, I was going to marry you and try to make you happy. But how

dear--oh, how unutterably dear it was of you, Margaret, to decline

to be made happy in any such fashion!" And Mr. Kennaston paused to

chuckle and to regard her with genuine esteem and affection.

But still her candid eyes weighed him, and transparently found him

wanting.

"You are thinking, perhaps, what an unutterable cad I have been?" he

suggested.

"Yes--you are rather by way of being a cad, beautiful. But I can't

help liking you, somehow. I dare say it's because you're honest

with me. Nobody--nobody," Miss Hugonin lamented, a forlorn little

quiver in her voice, "

ever

seemed to be honest with me except you,

and now I know you weren't. Oh, beautiful, aren't I ever to have any

real friends?" she pleaded, wistfully.

Kennaston had meant a deal to her, you see; he had been the one

man she trusted. She had gloried in his fustian rhetoric, his glib

artlessness, his airy scorn of money; and now all this proved mere

pinchbeck. On a sudden, too, there woke in some bycorner of her heart

a queasy realisation of how near she had come to loving Kennaston. The

thought nauseated her.

"My dear," he answered, kindly, "you will have any number of friends

now that you are poor. It was merely your money that kept you from

having any. You see," Mr. Kennaston went on, with somewhat the air of

one climbing upon his favourite hobby, "money is the only thing

that counts nowadays. In America, the rich are necessarily our only

aristocracy. It is quite natural. One cannot hope for an aristocracy

of intellect, if only for the reason that not one person in a thousand

has any; and birth does not count for much. Of course, it is quite

true that all of our remote ancestors came over with William the

Conqueror--I have sometimes thought that the number of steerage

passengers his ships would accommodate must have been little short of

marvellous--but it is equally true that the grandfathers of most of

our leisure class were either deserving or dishonest persons--who

either started life on a farm, and studied Euclid by the firelight and

did all the other priggish things they thought would look well in a

biography, or else met with marked success in embezzlement. So money,

after all, is our only standard; and when a woman is as rich as you

were yesterday she cannot hope for friends any more than the Queen

of England can. You could have plenty of flatterers, toadies,

sycophants--anything, in fine, but friends."

"I don't believe it," said Margaret, half angrily--"not a word of it.

There

must

be some honest people in the world who don't consider

that money is everything. You know there must be, beautiful!"

The poet laughed. "That," said he, affably, "is poppycock. You are

repeating the sort of thing I said to you yesterday. I am honest now.

The best of us, Margaret, cannot help being impressed by the power of

money. It is the greatest power in the world, and we cannot--cannot

possibly--look upon rich people as being quite like us. We must

toady to them a bit, Margaret, whether we want to or not. The Eagle

intimidates us all."

"I

hate

him!" Miss Hugonin announced, with vehemence.

Kennaston searched his pockets. After a moment he produced a dollar

bill and showed her the Eagle on it.

"There," he said, gravely, "is the original of the Woods Eagle--the

Eagle that intimidates us all. Do you remember what Shakespeare--one

always harks back to Shakespeare to clinch an argument, because not

even our foremost actors have been able to conceal the fact that he

was, as somebody in Dickens acutely points out, 'a dayvilish clever

fellow'--do you remember. I say, what Shakespeare observes as to this

very Eagle?"

Miss Hugonin shook her little head till it glittered in the sunlight

like a topaz. She cared no more for Shakespeare than the average woman

does, and she was never quite comfortable when he was alluded to.

"He says," Mr. Kennaston quoted, solemnly:

"The Eagle suffers little birds to sing,

And is not careful what they mean thereby,

Knowing that with the shadow of his wing

He can at pleasure still their melody."

"That's nonsense," said Margaret, calmly. "I haven't the

least

idea

what you're talking about, and I don't believe you have either."

He waved the dollar bill with a heroical gesture. "Here," he asserted,

"is the Eagle. And by the little birds, I have not a doubt he meant

charity and independence and kindliness and truth and the rest of the

standard virtues. That is quite as plausible as the interpretation of

the average commentator. The presence of money chills these little

birds--ah, it is lamentable, no doubt, but it is true."

"I don't believe it," said Margaret--quite as if that settled the

question.

But now his hobby, rowelled by opposition, was spurred to loftier

flights.

"Ah, the power of these great fortunes America has bred is monstrous,"

he suddenly cried. "And always they work for evil. If I were ever to

write a melodrama, Margaret, I could wish for no more thorough-paced

villain than a large fortune." Kennaston paused and laughed grimly.

"We cringe to the Eagle!" said he. "Eh, well, why not? The Eagle is

very powerful and very cruel. In the South yonder, the Eagle has

penned over a million children in his factories, where day by day he

drains the youth and health and very life out of their tired bodies;

in sweat-shops, men and women are toiling for the Eagle, giving their

lives for the pittance that he grudges them; in countless mines and

mills, the Eagle is trading human lives for coal and flour; in

Wall Street yonder, the Eagle is juggling as he will with life's

necessities--thieving from the farmer, thieving from the consumer,

thieving from the poor fools who try to play the Eagle's game, and

driving them at will to despair and ruin and death: look whither you

may, men die that the Eagle may grow fat. So the Eagle thrives, and

daily the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer, and the end----"

Kennaston paused, staring into vacancy. "Eh, well," said he, with a

smile and a snap of his fingers, "the end rests upon the knees of

the gods. But there must need be an end some day. And meanwhile, you

cannot blame us if we cringe to the Eagle that is master of the world.

It is human nature to cringe to its master; and while human nature

is not always an admirable thing, it is, I believe, rather widely

distributed."

Margaret did not return the smile. Like any sensible woman, she never

tolerated opinions that differed from her own.

So she waved his preachment aside. "You're trying to be eloquent," was

her observation, "and you've only succeeded in being very silly and

tiresome. Go away, beautiful. You make me awfully tired, and I don't

care for you in the least. Go and talk to Kathleen. I shall be

here--on this very spot," Margaret added, with commendable precision

and an unaccountable increase of colour, "if--if any one should happen

to ask."

Then Kennaston rose and laughed merrily.

"You are quite delicious," he commented. "It will always be a

grief and a puzzle to me that I am not mad for love of you. It is

unreasonable of me," he complained, sadly, and shook his head, "but I

prefer Kathleen. And I am quite certain that somebody will ask where

you are. I shall describe to him the exact spot--"

Mr. Kennaston paused, with a slight air of apology.

"If I were you," he suggested, pleasantly, "I would move a

little--just a little--to the left. That will enable you to obtain to

a fuller extent the benefit of the sunbeam which is falling--quite

by accident, of course--upon your hair. You are perfectly right,

Margaret, in selecting that hedge as a background. Its sombre green

sets you off to perfection."

He went away chuckling. He felt that Margaret must think him a devil

of a fellow.

She didn't, though.

"The

idea

of his suspecting me of such unconscionable vanity!" she

said, properly offended. Then, "Anyhow, a man has no business to know

about such things," she continued, with rising indignation. "I believe

Felix Kennaston is as good a judge of chiffons as any woman. That's

effeminate, I think, and catty and absurd. I don't believe I ever

liked him--not really, that is. Now, what would Billy care about

sunbeams and backgrounds, I'd like to know! He'd never even notice

them. Billy is a

man

. Why, that's just what father said yesterday!"

Margaret cried, and afterward laughed happily. "I suppose old people

are right sometimes--but, dear, dear, they're terribly unreasonable at

others!"

Having thus uttered the ancient, undying plaint of youth, Miss Hugonin

moved a matter of two inches to the left, and smiled, and waited

contentedly. It was barely possible some one might come that way; and

it is always a comfort to know that one is not exactly repulsive in

appearance.

Also, there was the spring about her; and, chief of all, there was a

queer fluttering in her heart that was yet not unpleasant. In fine,

she was unreasonably happy for no reason at all.

I believe the foolish poets call this feeling love and swear it

is divine; however, they will say anything for the sake of an

ear-tickling jingle. And while it is true that scientists have any

number of plausible and interesting explanations for this same

feeling, I am sorry to say I have forgotten them.

I am compelled, then, to fall back upon those same unreliable,

irresponsible rhymesters, and to insist with them that a maid waiting

in the springtide for the man she loves is necessarily happy and very

rarely puzzles her head over the scientific reason for it.

XXI

But ten minutes later she saw Mr. Woods in the distance striding

across the sunlit terraces, and was seized with a conviction that

their interview was likely to prove a stormy one. There was an ominous

stiffness in his gait.

"Oh, dear, dear!" Miss Hugonin wailed; "he's in a temper now, and

he'll probably be just as disagreeable as it's possible for any one

to be. I do wish men weren't so unreasonable! He looks exactly like a

big, blue-eyed thunder-cloud just now--just now, when I'm sure he has

every cause in the

world

to be very much pleased--after all

I've done for him. He makes me awfully tired. I think he's

very ungrateful

. I--I think I'm rather afraid."

In fact, she was. Now that the meeting she had anticipated these

twelve hours past was actually at hand, there woke in her breast an

unreasoning panic. Miss Hugonin considered, and caught up her skirts,

and whisked into the summer-house, and there sat down in the darkest

corner and devoutly wished Mr. Woods in Crim Tartary, or Jericho, or,

in a word, any region other than the gardens of Selwoode.

Billy came presently to the opening in the hedge and stared at the

deserted bench. He was undeniably in a temper. But, then, how becoming

it was! thought someone.

"Miss Hugonin!" he said, coldly.

Evidently (thought someone) he intends to be just as nasty as

possible.

"Peggy!" said Mr. Woods, after a little.

Perhaps (thought someone) he won't be

very

nasty.

"Dear Peggy!" said Mr. Woods, in his most conciliatory tone.

Someone rearranged her hair complacently.

But there was no answer, save the irresponsible chattering of the

birds, and with a sigh Billy turned upon his heel.

Then, by the oddest chance in the world, Margaret coughed.

I dare say it was damp in the summer-house; or perhaps it was caused

by some passing bronchial irritation; or perhaps, incredible as it may

seem, she coughed to show him where she was. But I scarcely think so,

because Margaret insisted afterward--very positively, too--that she

didn't cough at all.

XXII

"Well!" Mr. Woods observed, lengthening the word somewhat.

In the intimate half-light of the summer-house, he loomed prodigiously

big. He was gazing downward in careful consideration of three fat

tortoise-shell pins and a surprising quantity of gold hair, which was

practically all that he could see of Miss Hugonin's person; for that

young lady had suddenly become a limp mass of abashed violet ruffles,

and had discovered new and irresistible attractions in the mosaics

about her feet.

Billy's arms were crossed on his breast and his right hand caressed

his chin meditatively. By and bye, "I wonder, now," he reflected,

aloud, "if you can give any reason--any possible reason--why you

shouldn't be locked up in the nearest sanatorium?"

"You needn't be rude, you know," a voice observed from the

neighbourhood of the ruffles, "because there isn't anything you can do

about it."

Mr. Woods ventured a series of inarticulate observations. "But why?"

he concluded, desperately. "But why, Peggy?--in Heaven's name, what's

the meaning of all this?"

She looked up. Billy was aware of two large blue stars; his heart

leapt; and then he recalled a pair of gray-green eyes that had

regarded him in much the same fashion not long ago, and he groaned.

"I was unfair to you last night," she said, and the ring of her odd,

deep voice, and the richness and sweetness of it, moved him to faint

longing, to a sick heart-hunger. It was tremulous, too, and very

tender. "Yes, I was unutterably unfair, Billy. You asked me to marry

you when you thought I was a beggar, and--and Uncle Fred

ought

to

have left you the money. It was on account of me that he didn't, you

know. I really owed it to you. And after the way I talked to you--so

long as I had the money--I--and, anyhow, its very disagreeable and

eccentric and

horrid

of you to object to being rich!" Margaret

concluded, somewhat incoherently.

She had not thought it would be like this. He seemed so stern.

But, "Isn't that exactly like her?" Mr. Woods was demanding of his

soul. "She thinks she has been unfair to me--to me, whom she doesn't

care a button for, mind you. So she hands over a fortune to make up

for it, simply because that's the first means that comes to hand! Now,

isn't that perfectly unreasonable, and fantastic, and magnificent, and

incredible?--in short, isn't that Peggy all over? Why, God bless her,

her heart's bigger than a barn-door! Oh, it's no wonder that fellow

Kennaston was grinning just now when he sent me to her! He can afford

to grin."

Aloud, he stated, "You're an angel, Peggy that's what you are. I've

always suspected it, and I'm glad to know it now for a fact. But in

this prosaic world not even angels are allowed to burn up wills for

recreation. Why, bless my soul, child, you--why, there's no telling

what trouble you might have gotten into!"

Miss Hugonin pouted. "You needn't be such a grandfather," she

suggested, helpfully.

"But it's a serious business," he insisted. At this point Billy began

to object to her pouting as distracting one's mind from the subject

under discussion. "It--why, it's----"

"It's what?" she pouted, even more rebelliously.

"Crimson," said Mr. Woods, considering--"oh, the very deepest,

duskiest crimson such as you can't get in tubes. It's a colour was

never mixed on any palette. It's--eh? Oh, I beg your pardon."

"I think you ought to," said Margaret, primly. Nevertheless, she had

brightened considerably.

"Of course," Mr. Woods continued with a fine colour, "I can't take the

money. That's absurd."

"Is it?" she queried, idly. "Now, I wonder how you're going to help

yourself?"

"Simplest thing in the world," he assured her. "You see this match,

don't you, Peggy? Well, now you're going to give me that paper I see

in that bag-thing at your waist, and I'm going to burn it till it's

all nice, soft, feathery ashes that can't ever be probated. And then

the first will, which is practically the same as the last, will be

allowed to stand, and I'll tell your father all about the affair,

because he ought to know, and you'll have to settle with those

colleges. And in that way," Mr. Woods submitted, "Uncle Fred's last

wishes will be carried out just as he expressed them, and there

needn't be any trouble--none at all. So give me the will, Peggy?"

It is curious what a trivial matter love makes of felony.

Margaret's heart sank.

However, "Yes?" said she, encouragingly; "and what do you intend doing

afterward?--"

"I--I shall probably live abroad," said Billy. "Cheaper, you know."

[Illustration: "Miss Hugonin pouted. 'You needn't be such a

grandfather,' she suggested, helpfully"]

And here (he thought) was an excellent, an undreamed-of opportunity to

inform her of his engagement. He had much better tell her now and have

done. Mr. Woods opened his mouth and looked at Margaret, and closed

it. Again she was pouting in a fashion that distracted one's mind.

"That would be most unattractive," said Miss Hugonin, calmly. "You're

very stupid, Billy, to think of living abroad. Billy, I think you're

almost as stupid as I am. I've been very stupid, Billy. I thought I

liked Mr. Kennaston. I don't, Billy--not that way. I've just told him

so. I'm not--I'm not engaged to anybody now, Billy. But wasn't it

stupid of me to make such a mistake, Billy?"

That was a very interesting mosaic there in the summer-house.

"I don't understand," said Mr. Woods. His voice shook, and his hands

lifted a little toward her and trembled.

Poor Billy dared not understand. Her eyes downcast, her foot tapping

the floor gently, Margaret was all one blush. She, too, was trembling

a little, and she was a little afraid and quite unutterably happy; and

outwardly she was very much the tiny lady of Oberon's court, very much

the coquette quintessentialised.

It is pitiable that our proud Margaret should come to such a pass. Ah,

the men that you have flouted and scorned and bedeviled and mocked at,

Margaret--could they see you now, I think the basest of them could

not but pity and worship you. This man is bound in honour to another

woman; yet a little, and his lips will open--very dry, parched lips

they are now--and he will tell you, and your pride will drive you mad,

and your heart come near to breaking.

"Don't you understand--oh, you silly Billy!" She was peeping at him

meltingly from under her lashes.

"I--I'm imagining vain things," said Mr. Woods. "I--oh, Peggy, Peggy,

I think I must be going mad!"

He stared hungrily at the pink, startled face that lifted toward his.

Ah, no, no, it could not be possible, this thing he had imagined for a

moment. He had misunderstood.

And now just for a little (thought poor Billy) let my eyes drink in

those dear felicities of colour and curve, and meet just for a little

the splendour of those eyes that have the April in them, and rest just

for a little upon that sanguine, close-grained, petulant mouth; and

then I will tell her, and then I think that I must die.

"Peggy----" he began, in a flattish voice.

"They have evidently gone," said the voice of Mr. Kennaston; "yes,

those beautiful, happy young people have foolishly deserted the very

prettiest spot in the gardens. Let us sit here, Kathleen."

"But I'm not an eavesdropper," Mr. Woods protested, half angrily.

I fear Margaret was not properly impressed.

"Please, Billy," she pleaded, in a shrill whisper, "please let's

listen. He's going to propose to her now, and you've no idea how

funny he is when he proposes. Oh, don't be so pokey, Billy--do let's

listen!"

But Mr. Woods had risen with a strange celerity and was about to leave

the summer-house.

Margaret pouted. Mrs. Saumarez and Mr. Kennaston were seated not

twenty feet from the summer-house, on the bench which Miss Hugonin had

just left. And when that unprincipled young woman finally rose to her

feet, it must be confessed that it was with a toss of the head and

with the reflection that while to listen wasn't honourable, it would

at least be very amusing. I grieve to admit it, but with Billy's

scruples she hadn't the slightest sympathy.

Then Kennaston cried, suddenly: "Why, you're mad, Kathleen! Woods

wants to marry

you

! Why, he's heels over head in love with Miss

Hugonin!"

Miss Hugonin turned to Mr. Woods with a little intake of the breath.

No, I shall not attempt to tell you what Billy saw in her countenance.

Timanthes-like, I drape before it the vines of the summer-house. For

a brief space I think we had best betake ourselves outside,

leaving Margaret in a very pitiable state of anger, and shame, and

humiliation, and heartbreak--leaving poor Billy with a heart that

ached, seeing the horror of him in her face.

XXIII

Mrs. Saumarez laughed bitterly.

"No," she said, "Billy cared for me, you know, a long time ago. And

this morning he told me he still cared. Billy doesn't pretend to be

a clever man, you see, and so he can afford to practice some of the

brute virtues, such as constancy and fidelity."

There was a challenging flame in her eyes, but Kennaston let the stab

pass unnoticed. To do him justice, he was thinking less of himself,

just now, than of how this news would affect Margaret; and his face

was very grave and strangely tender, for in his own fashion he loved

Margaret.

"It's nasty, very nasty," he said, at length, in a voice that was

puzzled. "Yet I could have sworn yesterday----" Kennaston paused and

laughed lightly. "She was an heiress yesterday, and to-day she is

nobody. And Mr. Woods, being wealthy, can afford to gratify the

virtues you commend so highly and, with a fidelity that is most

edifying, return again to his old love. And she welcomes him--and the

Woods millions--with open arms. It is quite affecting, is it not,

Kathleen?"

"You needn't be disagreeable," she observed.

"My dear Kathleen, I assure you I am not angry. I am merely a little

sorry for human nature. I could have sworn Woods was honest. But

rogues all, rogues all, Kathleen! Money rules us in the end; and now

the parable is fulfilled, and Love the prodigal returns to make merry

over the calf of gold. Confess," Mr. Kennaston queried, with a smile,

"is it not strange an all-wise Creator should have been at pains to

fashion this brave world about us for little men and women such as