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

tell her that he forgave
her--to open his eyes--to stop bloodying her dress--to come to
luncheon...

A fly settled on Billy's face and came in his zig-zag course to the
red stream trickling from his nostrils, and stopped short. She brushed
the carrion thing away, but it crawled back drunkenly. She touched it
with her finger, and the fly would not move. On a sudden, every nerve
in her body began to shake and jerk like a flag snapping in the wind.



XXVI

Some ten minutes afterward, as the members of the house-party sat
chatting on the terrace before Selwoode, there came among them a mad
woman in violet trappings that were splotched with blood.

"Did you know that Billy was dead?" she queried, smilingly. "Oh, yes,
a man killed Billy just now. Wasn't it too bad? Billy was such a nice
boy, you know. I--I think it's very sad. I think it's the saddest
thing I ever knew of in my life."

Kathleen Saumarez was the first to reach her. But she drew back
quickly.

"No, ah, no!" she said, with a little shudder. "You didn't love Billy.
He loved you, and you didn't love him. Oh, Kathleen, Kathleen, how
could you help loving Billy? He was such a nice boy. I--I'm rather
sorry he's dead."

Then she stood silent, picking at her dress thoughtfully and still
smiling. Afterward, for the first and only time in history, Miss
Hugonin fainted--fainted with an anxious smile.

Petheridge Jukesbury caught her as she fell, and began to blubber like
a whipped schoolboy as he stood there holding her in his arms.



XXVII

But Billy was not dead. There was still a feeble, jerky fluttering in
his big chest when Colonel Hugonin found him. His heart still moved,
but under the Colonel's hand its stirrings were vague and aimless as
those of a captive butterfly.

The Colonel had seen dead men and dying men before this; and as he
bent over the boy he loved he gave a convulsive sob, and afterward
buried his face in his hands.

Then--of all unlikely persons in the world--it was Petheridge
Jukesbury who rose to meet the occasion.

His suavity and blandness forgotten in the presence of death, he
mounted with confident alacrity to heights of greatness. Masterfully,
he overrode them all. He poured brandy between Billy's teeth. Then he
ordered the ladies off to bed, and recommended to Mr. Kennaston--when
that gentleman spoke of a clergyman--a far more startling destination.

For, "It is far from my intention," said Mr.

Jukesbury, "to appear lacking in respect to the cloth, but--er--just
at present I am inclined to think we are in somewhat greater need of a
mattress and a doctor and--ah--the exercise of a little common-sense.
The gentleman is--er--let us hope, in no immediate danger."

"How dare you suggest such a thing, sir?" thundered Petheridge
Jukesbury. "Didn't you see that poor girl's face? I tell you I'll be
damned if he dies, sir!"

And I fancy the recording angel heard him, and against a list of wordy
cheats registered that oath to his credit.

It was Petheridge Jukesbury, then, who stalked into Mrs. Haggage's
apartments and appropriated her mattress as the first at hand, and
afterward waddled through the gardens bearing it on his fat shoulders,
and still later lifted Billy upon it as gently as a woman could have.
But it was the hatless Colonel on his favourite Black Bess ("Damn your
motor-cars!" the Colonel was wont to say; "I consider my appearance
sufficiently unprepossessing already, sir, without my arriving in
Heaven in fragments and stinking of gasoline!") who in Fairhaven town,
some quarter of an hour afterward, leaped Dr. Jeal's garden fence, and
subsequently bundled the doctor into his gig; and again yet later it
was the Colonel who stood fuming upon the terrace with Dr. Jeal on his
way to Selwoode indeed, but still some four miles from the mansion
toward which he was urging his staid horse at its liveliest gait.

Kennaston tried to soothe him. But the Colonel clamoured to the
heavens. Kennaston he qualified in various ways. And as for Dr. Jeal,
he would hold him responsible--"personally, sir"--for the consequences
of his dawdling in this fashion--"Damme, sir, like a damn' snail with
a wooden leg!"

"I am afraid," said Kennaston, gravely, "that the doctor will be of
very little use when he does arrive."

There was that in his face which made the Colonel pause in his
objurgations.

"Sir," said the Colonel, "what--do--you--mean?" He found articulation
somewhat difficult.

"In your absence," Kennaston answered, "Mr. Jukesbury, who it
appears knows something of medicine, has subjected Mr. Woods to an
examination. It--it would be unkind to deceive you----"

"Come to the point, sir," the Colonel interrupted him. "What--do
you--mean?"

"I mean," said Felix Kennaston, sadly, "that--he is afraid--Mr. Woods
will never recover consciousness."

Colonel Hugonin stared at him. The skin of his flabby, wrinkled old
throat was working convulsively.

Then, "You're wrong, sir," the Colonel said. "Billy shan't die. Damn
Jukesbury! Damn all doctors, too, sir! I put my trust in my God, sir,
and not in a box of damn' sugar-pills, sir. And I tell you, sir, that
boy is not going to die."

Afterward he turned and went into Selwoode defiantly.



XXVIII

In the living-hall the Colonel found Margaret, white as paper, with
purple lips that timidly smiled at him.

"Why ain't you in bed?" the old gentleman demanded, with as great an
affectation of sternness as he could muster. To say the truth, it was
not much; for Colonel Hugonin, for all his blustering optimism, was
sadly shaken now.

"Attractive," said Margaret, "I was, but I couldn't stay there. My--my
brain won't stop working, you see," she complained, wearily. "There's
a thin little whisper in the back of it that keeps telling me about
Billy, and what a liar he is, and what nice eyes he has, and how
poor Billy is dead. It keeps telling me that, over and over again,
attractive. It's such a tiresome, silly little whisper. But he is
dead, isn't he? Didn't Mr. Kennaston tell me just now that he was
dead?--or was it the whisper, attractive?"

The Colonel coughed. "Kennaston--er--Kennaston's a fool," he declared,
helplessly. "Always said he was a fool. We'll have Jeal in presently."

"No--I remember now--Mr. Kennaston said Billy would die very soon. You
don't like people to disagree with you, do you, attractive? Of course,
he will die, for the man hit him very, very hard. I'm sorry Billy is
going to die, though, even if he is such a liar!"

"Don't!" said the Colonel, hoarsely; "don't, daughter! I don't know
what there is between you and Billy, but you're wrong. Oh, you're very
hopelessly wrong! Billy's the finest boy I know."

Margaret shook her head in dissent.

"No, he's a very contemptible liar," she said, disinterestedly, "and
that is what makes it so queer that I should care for him more than I
do for anything else in the world. Yes, it's very queer."

Then Margaret went into the room opening into the living-hall, where
Billy Woods lay unconscious, pallid, breathing stertorously. And the
Colonel stared after her.

"Oh, my God, my God!" groaned the poor Colonel; "why couldn't it have
been I? Why couldn't it have been I that ain't wanted any longer?
She'd never have grieved like that for me!"

And indeed, I don't think she would have.

For to Margaret there had come, as, God willing, there comes to every
clean-souled woman, the time to put away all childish things, and all
childish memories, and all childish ties, if need be, to follow one
man only, and cleave to him, and know his life and hers to be knit up
together, past severance, in a love that death itself may not affright
nor slay.



XXIX

She sat silent in one corner of the darkened room. It was the bedroom
that Frederick R. Woods formerly occupied--on the ground floor of
Selwoode, opening into the living-hall--to which they had carried
Billy.

Jukesbury had done what he could. In the bed lay Billy Woods, swathed
in hot blankets, with bottles of hot water set to his feet. Jukesbury
had washed his face clean of that awful red, and had wrapped bandages
of cracked ice about his head and propped it high with pillows. It
was little short of marvellous to see the pursy old hypocrite going
cat-footed about the room on his stealthy ministrations, replenishing
the bandages, forcing spirits of ammonia between Billy's teeth,
fighting deftly and confidently with death.

Billy still breathed.

The Colonel came and went uneasily. The clock on the mantel ticked.
Margaret brooded in a silence that was only accentuated by that
horrible wheezing, gurgling, tremulous breathing in the bed yonder.
Would the doctor never come!

She was curiously conscious of her absolute lack of emotion.

But always the interminable thin whispering in the back of her head
went on and on. "Oh, if he had only died four years ago! Oh, if he had
only died the dear, clean-minded, honest boy I used to know! When that
noise stops he will be dead. And then, perhaps, I shall be able to
cry. Oh, if he had only died four years ago!"

And then da capo. On and on ran the interminable thin whispering as
Margaret waited for death to come to Billy. Billy looked so old now,
under his many bandages. Surely he must be very, very near death.

Suddenly, as Jukesbury wrapped new bandages about his forehead, Billy
opened his eyes and, without further movement, smiled placidly up at
him.

"Hello, Jukesbury," said Billy Woods, "where's my armour?"

Jukesbury, too, smiled. "The man is bringing it downstairs now," he
answered, quietly.

"Because," Billy went on, fretfully, "I don't propose to miss the
Trojan war. The princes orgulous with high blood chafed, you know, are
all going to be there, and I don't propose to miss it."

Behind his fat back, Petheridge Jukesbury waved a cautioning hand at
Margaret, who had risen from her chair.

"But it is very absurd," Billy murmured, in the mere ghost of a voice,
"because men don't propose by mistake except in farces. Somebody told
me that, but I can't remember who, because I am a misogynist. That is
a Greek word, and I would explain it to Peggy, if she would only give
me a chance, but she can't because she has those seventeen hundred
and fifty thousand children to look after. There must be some way to
explain to her, though, because where there's a will there is always
a way, and there were three wills. Uncle Fred should not have left so
many wills--who would have thought the old man had so much ink in him?
But I will be a very great painter, Uncle Fred, and make her sorry for
the way she has treated me, and then Kathleen will understand I was
talking about Peggy."

His voice died away, and Margaret sat with wide eyes listening for it
again. Would the doctor never come!

Billy was smiling and picking at the sheets.

"But Peggy is so rich," the faint voice presently complained--"so
beastly rich! There is gold in her hair, and if you will look very
closely you will see that her lashes were pure gold until she dipped
them in the ink-pot. Besides, she expects me to sit up and beg for
lumps of sugar, and I never take sugar in my coffee. And Peggy
doesn't drink coffee at all, so I think it is very unfair, especially
as Teddy Anstruther drinks like a fish and she is going to marry him.
Peggy, why won't you marry me? You know I've always loved you, Peggy,
and now I can tell you so because Uncle Fred has left me all his
money. You think a great deal about money, Peggy. You said it was the
greatest thing in the world. And it must be, because it is the only
thing--the only thing, Peggy--that has been strong enough to keep
us apart. A part is never greater than the whole, Peggy, but I will
explain about that when you open that desk. There are sharks in it.
Aren't there, Peggy?--aren't there?"

His voice had risen to a querulous tone. Gently the fat old man
restrained him.

"Yes," said Petheridge Jukesbury; "dear me, yes. Why, dear me, of
course."

But his warning hand held Margaret back--Margaret, who stood with big
tears trickling down her cheeks.

"Dearer than life itself," Billy assented, wearily, "but before God,
loving you as I do, I wouldn't marry you now for all the wealth in the
world. I forget why, but all the world is a stage, you know, and they
don't use stages now, but only railroads. Is that why you rail at me
so, Peggy? That is a joke. You ought to laugh at my jokes, because I
love you, but I can't ever, ever tell you so because you are rich. A
rich man cannot pass through a needle's eye. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, I love
your eyes, but they're so big, Peggy!"

So Billy Woods lay still and babbled ceaselessly. But through all his
irrelevant talk, as you may