The Eagle's Shadow by James Branch Cabell (rm book recommendations TXT) 📗

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