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

In God's name, why can't you talk
like a sensible woman, Peggy?" I am afraid that Mr. Woods, too, was
beginning to lose his temper.

"That's right--swear at me! It only needed that. You do want the
money, and when you say you don't you're lying--lying--lying, do you
understand? You all want my money. Oh, dear, dear!" Margaret wailed,
and her great voice was shaken to its depths and its sobbing was the
long, hopeless sobbing of a violin, as she flung back her tear-stained
face, and clenched her little hands tight at her sides; "why can't
you let me alone? You're all after my money--you, and Mr. Kennaston,
and Mr. Jukesbury, and all of you! Why can't you let me alone? Ever
since I've had it you've hunted me as if I'd been a wild beast. God
help me, I haven't had a moment's peace, a moment's rest, a, moment's
quiet, since Uncle Fred died. They all want my money--everybody wants
my money! Oh, Billy, Billy, why can't they let me alone?"

"Peggy----" said he.

But she interrupted him. "Don't talk to me, Billy Woods! Don't you
dare talk to me. I told you I didn't wish to hear a word you had to
say, didn't I? Yes, you all want my money. And you shan't have it.
It's mine. Uncle Fred left it to me. It's mine, I tell you. I've got
the greatest thing in the world--money! And I'll keep it. Ah, I hate
you all--every one of you--but I'll make you cringe to me. I'll make
you all cringe, do you hear, because I've got the money you're ready
to sell your paltry souls for! Oh, I'll make you cringe most of all,
Billy Woods! I'm rich, do you hear?--rich--rich! Wouldn't you be
glad to marry the rich Margaret Hugonin, Billy? Ah, haven't you
schemed hard for that? You'd be glad to do it, wouldn't you? You'd
give your dirty little soul for that, wouldn't you, Billy? Ah, what a
cur you are! Well, some day perhaps I'll buy you just as I would any
other cur. Wouldn't you be glad if I did, Billy? Beg for it, Billy!
Beg, sir! Beg!" And Margaret flung back her head again, and laughed
shrilly, and held up her hand before him as one holds a lump of sugar
before a pug-dog.

In Selwoode I can fancy how the Eagle screamed his triumph.

But Billy's face was ashen.

"Before God!" he said, between his teeth, "loving you as I do, I
wouldn't marry you now for all the wealth in the world! The money has
ruined you--ruined you, Peggy."

For a little she stared at him. By and bye, "I dare say it has," she
said, in a strangely sober tone. "I've been scolding like a fishwife.
I beg your pardon, Mr. Woods--not for what I've said, because I meant
every word of it, but I beg your pardon for saying it. Don't come
with me, please."

Blindly she turned from him. Her shoulders had the droop of an old
woman's. Margaret was wearied now, weary with the weariness of death.

For a while Mr. Woods stared after the tired little figure that
trudged straight onward in the sunlight, stumbling as she went. Then a
pleached walk swallowed her, and Mr. Woods groaned.

"Oh, Peggy, Peggy!" he said, in bottomless compassion; "oh, my poor
little Peggy! How changed you are!"

Afterward Mr. Woods sank down upon the bench and buried his face in
his hands. He sat there for a long time. I don't believe he thought
of anything very clearly. His mind was a turgid chaos of misery; and
about him the birds shrilled and quavered and carolled till the air
was vibrant with their trilling. One might have thought they choired
in honour of the Eagle's triumph, in mockery of poor Billy.

Then Mr. Woods raised his head with a queer, alert look. Surely he had
heard a voice--the dearest of all voices.

"Billy!" it wailed; "oh, Billy, Billy!"



XXV

For at the height of this particularly mischancy posture of affairs
the meddlesome Fates had elected to dispatch Cock-eye Flinks to serve
as our deus ex machina. And just as in the comedy the police turn
up in the nick of time to fetch Tartuffe to prison, or in the tragedy
Friar John manages to be detained on his journey to Mantua and thus
bring about that lamentable business in the tomb of the Capulets, so
Mr. Flinks now happens inopportunely to arrive upon our lesser stage.

Faithfully to narrate how Cock-eye Flinks chanced to be at Selwoode
were a task of magnitude. That gentleman travelled very quietly; and
for the most part, he journeyed incognito under a variety of aliases
suggested partly by a fertile imagination and in part by prudential
motives. For his notions of proprietary rights were deplorably vague,
and his acquaintance with the police, in consequence, extensive. And
finally, that he was now at Selwoode was not in the least his fault,
but all the doing of an N. and O. brakesman, who had in uncultured
argument, reinforced by a coupling-pin, persuaded Mr. Flinks to
disembark from the northern freight on the night previous.

Mr. Flinks, then, sat leaning against a tree in the gardens of
Selwoode, some thirty feet from the wall that stands between Selwoode
and Gridlington, and nursed his pride and foot, both injured in that
high debate of last evening, and with a jackknife rounded off the top
of a substantial staff designed to alleviate his present lameness.
Meanwhile, he tempered his solitude with music, whistling melodiously
the air of a song that pertained to the sacredness of home and of a
white-haired mother.

Subsequently to Cock-eye Flinks (as the playbill has it), enter a
vision in violet ruffles.

Wide-eyed, she came upon him in her misery, steadily trudging toward
an unknown goal. I think he startled her a bit. Indeed, it must be
admitted that Mr. Flinks, while a man of undoubted talent in his
particular line of business, was, like many of your great geniuses, in
outward aspect unprepossessing and misleading; for whereas he looked
like a very shiftless and very dirty tramp, he was as a matter of fact
as vile a rascal as ever pawned a swinish soul for whiskey.

"What are you doing here?" said Margaret, sharply. "Don't you know
this is private property?"

To his feet rose Cock-eye Flinks. "Lady," said he, with humbleness,
"you wouldn't be hard on a poor workingman, would you? It ain't my
fault I'm here, lady--at least, it ain't rightly my fault. I just
climbed over the wall to rest a minute--just a minute, lady, in the
shade of these beautiful trees. I ain't a-hurting nobody by that,
lady, I hope."

"Well, you had no business to do it," Miss Hugonin pointed out, "and
you can just climb right back." Then she regarded him more intently,
and her face softened somewhat. "What's the matter with your foot?"
she demanded.

"Brakesman," said Mr. Flinks, briefly. "Threw me off a train. He
struck me cruel hard, he did, and me a poor workingman trying to make
my way to New York, lady, where my poor old mother's dying, lady, and
me out of a job. Ah, it's a hard, hard world, lady--and me her only
son--and he struck me cruel, cruel hard, he did, but I forgive him for
it, lady. Ah, lady, you're so beautiful I know you're got a kind, good
heart, lady. Can't you do something for a poor workingman, lady, with
a poor dying mother--and a poor, sick wife," Mr. Flinks added as a
dolorous afterthought; and drew nearer to her and held out one hand
appealingly.

Petheridge Jukesbury had at divers times pointed out to her the evils
of promiscuous charity, and these dicta Margaret parroted glibly
enough, to do her justice, so long as there was no immediate question
of dispensing alms. But for all that the next whining beggar would
move her tender heart, his glib inventions playing upon it like a
fiddle, and she would give as recklessly as though there were no
such things in the whole wide world as soup-kitchens and organised
charities and common-sense. "Because, you know," she would afterward
salve her conscience, "I couldn't be sure he didn't need it, whereas
I was quite sure I didn't."

Now she wavered for a moment. "You didn't say you had a wife before,"
she suggested.

"An invalid," sighed Mr. Flinks--"a helpless invalid, lady. And six
small children probably crying for bread at this very moment. Ah,
lady, think what my feelings must be to hear 'em cry in vain--think
what I must suffer to know that I summoned them cherubs out of Heaven
into this here hard, hard world, lady, and now can't do by 'em
properly!" And Cock-eye Flinks brushed away a tear which I, for one,
am inclined to regard as a particularly ambitious flight of his
imagination.

Promptly Margaret opened the bag at her waist and took out her purse.
"Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't! I--I'm upset already. Take this,
and please--oh, please, don't spend it in getting drunk or gambling
or anything horrid," Miss Hugonin implored him. "You all do, and it's
so selfish of you and so discouraging."

Mr. Flinks eyed the purse hungrily. Such a fat purse! thought Cock-eye
Plinks. And there ain't nobody within a mile of here, neither. You are
not to imagine that Mr. Flinks was totally abandoned; his vices were
parochial, restrained for the most part by a lively apprehension of
the law. But now the spell of the Eagle was strong upon him.

"Lady," said Mr. Flinks, twisting in his grimy hand the bill she had
given him--and there, too, the Eagle flaunted in his vigour and
heartened him, "lady, that ain't much for you to give. Can't you do a
little better than that by a poor workingman, lady?"

A very unpleasant-looking person, Mr. Cock-eye Flinks. Oh, a
peculiarly unpleasant-looking person to be a model son and a loving
husband and a tender father. Margaret was filled with a vague alarm.

But she was brave, was Margaret. "No," said she, very decidedly, "I
shan't give you another cent. So you climb right over that wall and go
straight back where you belong."

The methods of Mr. Flinks, I regret to say, were somewhat more crude
than those of Mesdames Haggage and Saumarez and Messieurs Kennaston
and Jukesbury.

"Cheese it!" said Mr. Flinks, and flung away his staff and drew very
near to her. "Gimme that money, do you hear!"

"Don't you dare touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you dare!"

"Aw, hell!" said Mr. Flinks, disgustedly, and his dirty hands were
upon her, and his foul breath reeked in her face.

In her hour of need Margaret's heart spoke.

"Billy!" she wailed; "oh, Billy, Billy!"

      *       *       *       *       *

He came to her--just as he would have scaled Heaven to come to her,
just as he would have come to her in the nethermost pit of Hell if she
had called. Ah, yes, Billy Woods came to her now in her peril, and
I don't think that Mr. Flinks particularly relished the look upon
Billy's face as he ran through the gardens, for Billy was furiously
moved.

Cock-eye Flinks glanced back at the wall behind him. Ten feet high,
and the fellow ain't far off. Cock-eye Flinks caught up his staff, and
as Billy closed upon him, struck him full on the head. Again and again
he struck him. It was a sickening business.

Billy had stopped short. For an instant he stood swaying on his feet,
a puzzled face showing under the trickling blood. Then he flung out
his hands a little, and they flapped loosely at the wrists, like
wet clothes hung in the wind to dry, and Billy seemed to crumple up
suddenly, and slid down upon the grass in an untidy heap.

"Ah-h-h!" said Mr. Flinks. He drew back and stared stupidly at that
sprawling flesh which just now had been a man, and was seized with
uncontrollable shuddering. "Ah-h-h!" said Mr. Flinks, very quietly.

And Margaret went mad. The earth and the sky dissolved in many
floating specks and then went red--red like that heap yonder. The
veneer of civilisation peeled, fell from her like snow from a shaken
garment. The primal beast woke and flicked aside the centuries' work.
She was the Cave-woman who had seen the death of her mate--the brute
who had been robbed of her mate.

"Damn you! Damn you!" she screamed, her voice high, flat, quite
unhuman; "ah, God in Heaven damn you!" With inarticulate bestial cries
she fell upon the man who had killed Billy, and her violet fripperies
fluttered, her impotent little hands beat at him, tore at him. She was
fearless, shameless, insane. She only knew that Billy was dead.

With an oath the man flung her from him and turned on his heel. She
fell to coaxing the heap in the grass to