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

no more help cringing to
money than you or I can help it.

This is very crude and very cynical, but unfortunately it is true.

We always cringe to money; which is humiliating. And the sun always
rises at an hour when sensible people are abed and have not the least
need for its services; which is foolish. And what you and I, my dear
madam, are to do about rectifying either one of these vexatious
circumstances, I am sure I don't know.

We can, at least, be honest. Let us, then, console ourselves at will
with moral observations concerning the number of pockets in a shroud
and the difficulty of a rich man's entering into the kingdom of
Heaven; but with an humble and reverent heart, let us admit that, in
the world we know, money rules. Its presence awes us. And if we are
quite candid we must concede that we very unfeignedly envy and admire
the rich; we must grant that money confers a certain distinction on a
man, be he the veriest ass that ever heehawed a platitude, and that we
cannot but treat him accordingly, you and I.

You are friendly, of course, with your poor cousins; you are delighted
to have them drop in to dinner, and liberal enough with the claret
when they do; but when the magnate comes, there is a magnum of
champagne, and an extra lamp in the drawing-room, and--I blush to
write it--a far more agreeable hostess at the head of the table. Dives
is such good company, you see. And speaking for my own sex, I defy any
honest fellow to lay his hand upon his waistcoat and swear that it
doesn't give him a distinct thrill of pleasure to be seen in public
with a millionaire. Daily we truckle in the Eagle's shadow--the shadow
that lay so heavily across Selwoode. With the Eagle himself and with
the Eagle's work in the world--the grim, implacable, ruthless work
that hourly he goes about--our little comedy has naught to do;
Schlemihl-like, we deal but in shadows. Even the shadow of the Eagle
is a terrible thing--a shadow that, as Felix Kennaston has told you,
chills faith, and charity, and independence, and kindliness, and
truth, and--alas--even common honesty.

But this is both cynical and digressive.



XXXI

Dr. Jeal, better than his word, had Billy Woods out of bed in five
days. To Billy they were very long and very dreary days, and to
Margaret very long and penitential ones. But Colonel Hugonin enjoyed
them thoroughly; for, as he feelingly and frequently observed, it is
an immense consolation to any man to reflect that his home no longer
contains "more damn' foolishness to the square inch than any other
house in the United States."

On all sides they sought for Cock-eye Flinks. But they never found
him, and to this day they have never found him. The Fates having
played their pawn, swept it from the board, and Cock-eye Flinks
disappeared in Clotho's capacious pocket.

All this time the young people saw nothing of one another. On this
point Jeal was adamantean.

"In a sick-room," he vehemently declared, "a woman is well enough, but
the woman is the devil and all. I've told that young man plainly,
sir, that he doesn't see your daughter till he gets well--and, by
George, sir, he'll get well now just in order to see her. Nature is
the only doctor who ever cures anybody, Colonel; we humans, for
all our pill-boxes and lancets, can only prompt her--and devilish
demoralising advice we generally give her, too," he added, with a
chuckle.

"Peggy!"

This was the first observation of Mr. Woods when he came to his
senses. He swore feebly when Peggy was denied to him. He pleaded. He
scolded. He even threatened, as a last resort, to get out of bed and
go in immediate search of her; and in return, Jeal told him very
affably that it was far less difficult to manage a patient in a
straight-jacket than one out of it, and that personally nothing would
please him so much as a plausible pretext for clapping Mr. Woods into
one of 'em. Jeal had his own methods in dealing with the fractious.

Then Billy clamoured for Colonel Hugonin, and subsequently the Colonel
came in some bewilderment to his daughter's rooms.

"Billy says that will ain't to be probated," he informed her, testily.
"I'm to make sure it ain't probated till he gets well. You're to give
me your word you'll do nothing further in the matter till Billy gets
well. That's his message, and I'd like to know what the devil this
infernal nonsense means. I ain't a Fenian nor yet a Guy Fawkes,
daughter, and in consequence I'm free to confess I don't care for all
this damn mystery and shilly-shallying. But that's the message."

Miss Hugonin debated with herself. "That I will do nothing further in
the matter till Billy gets well," she repeated, reflectively. "Yes, I
suppose I'll have to promise it, but you can tell him for me that I
consider he is horrid, and just as obstinate and selfish as he can
possibly be. Can you remember that, attractive?"

"Yes, thank you," said the Colonel. "I can remember it, but I ain't
going to. Nice sort of message to send a sick man, ain't it? I don't
know what's gotten into you, Margaret--no, begad, I don't! I think
you're possessed of seventeen devils. And now," the old gentleman
demanded, after an awkward pause, "are you or are you not going to
tell me what all this mystery is about?"

"I can't," Miss Hugonin protested. "It--it's a secret, attractive."

"It ain't," said the Colonel, flatly--"it's some more damn
foolishness." And he went away in a fret and using language.



XXXII

Left to herself, Miss Hugonin meditated.

Miss Hugonin was in her kimono.

And oh, Madame Chrysastheme! oh, Madame Butterfly! Oh, Mimosa San, and
Pitti Sing, and Yum Yum, and all ye vaunted beauties of Japan! if you
could have seen her in that garb! Poor little ladies of the Orient,
how hopelessly you would have wrung your henna-stained fingers! Poor
little Ichabods of the East, whose glory departed irretrievably when
she adopted this garment, I tremble to think of the heart-burnings and
palpitations and hari-karis that would have ensued.

It was pink--the pink of her cheeks to a shade. And scattered about it
were birds, and butterflies, and snaky, emaciated dragons, with backs
like saw-teeth, and prodigious fangs, and claws, and very curly tails,
such as they breed in Nankeen plates and used to breed on packages of
fire-crackers--all done in gold, the gold of her hair. Moreover, one
might catch a glimpse of her neck--which was a manifest favour of the
gods--and about it mysterious, lacy white things intermingling with
divers tiny blue ribbons. I saw her in it once--by accident.

And now I fancy, as she stood rigid with indignation, her cheeks
flushed, it must have been a heady spectacle to note how their
shell-pink repeated the pink of her fantastic garment like a chromatic
echo; and how her sunny hair, a thought loosened, a shade dishevelled,
clung heavily about her face, a golden snare for eye and heart; and
how her own eyes, enormous, cerulean--twin sapphires such as in the
old days might have ransomed a brace of emperors--grew wistful like a
child's who has been punished and does not know exactly why; and how
her petulant mouth quivered and the long black lashes, golden at the
roots, quivered, too--ah, yes, it must have been a heady spectacle.

"Now," she announced, "I see plainly what he intends doing. He is
going to destroy that will, and burden me once more with a large and
influential fortune. I don't want it, and I won't take it, and he
might just as well understand that in the very beginning. I don't care
if Uncle Fred did leave it to me--I didn't ask him to, did I? Besides,
he was a very foolish old man--if he had left the money to Billy
everything would have been all right. That's always the way--my
dolls are invariably stuffed with sawdust, and I never have a dear
gazelle to glad me with his dappled hide, but when he comes to know me
well he falls upon the buttered side--or something to that effect. I
hate poetry, anyhow--it's so mushy!"

And this from the Miss Hugonin who a week ago was interested in the
French decadents and partial to folk-songs from the Romaic! I think
we may fairly deduce that the reign of Felix Kennaston is over. The
king is dead; and Margaret's thoughts and affections and her very
dreams have fallen loyally to crying, Long live the king--his Majesty
Billy the First.

"Oh!" said Margaret, with an indignant gasp, what time her eyebrows
gesticulated, "I think Billy Woods is a meddlesome piece!--that's
what I think! Does he suppose that after waiting all this time for the
only man in the world who can keep me interested for four hours on
a stretch and send my pulse up to a hundred and make me feel those
thrilly thrills I've always longed for--does he suppose that now
I'm going to pay any attention to his silly notions about wills and
things? He's abominably selfish! I shan't!"

Margaret moved across the room, shimmering, rustling, glittering like
a fairy in a pantomime. Then, to consider matters at greater ease, she
curled up on a divan in much the attitude of a tiny Cleopatra riding
at anchor on a carpeted Cydnus.

"Billy thinks I want the money--bless his boots! He thinks I'm a
stuck-up, grasping, purse-proud little pig, and he has every right
to think so after the way I talked to him, though he ought to have
realised I was in a temper about Kathleen Saumarez and have paid no
attention to what I said. And he actually attempted to reason with
me! If he'd had any consideration for my feelings, he'd have simply
smacked me and made me behave--however, he's a man, and all men are
selfish, and she's a skinny old thing, and I never had any use for
her. Bother her lectures! I never understood a word of them, and I
don't believe she does, either. Women's clubs are all silly, and I
think the women who belong to them are all bold-faced jigs! If
they had any sense, they'd stay at home and take care of the babies,
instead of messing with philanthropy, and education, and theosophy,
and anything else that they can't make head or tail of. And they call
that being cultured! Culture!--I hate the word! I don't want to be
cultured--I want to be happy."

This, you will observe, was, in effect, a sweeping recantation of
every ideal Margaret had ever boasted. But Love is a canny pedagogue,
and of late he had instructed Miss Hugonin in a variety of matters.

"Before God, loving you as I do, I wouldn't marry you for all the
wealth in the world," she repeated, with a little shiver. "Even in his
delirium he said that. But I know now that he loves me. And I know
that I adore him. And if this were a sensible world, I'd walk right in
there and explain things and ask him to marry me, and then it wouldn't
matter in the least who had the money. But I can't, because it
wouldn't be proper. Bother propriety!--but bothering it doesn't do
any good. As long as I have the money, Billy will never come near me,
because of the idiotic way I talked to him. And he's bent on my taking
the money simply because it happens to belong to me. I consider that
a very silly reason. I'll make Billy Woods take the money, and
I'll make him see that I'm not a little pig, and that I trust him
implicitly. And I think I'm quite justified in using a little--we'll
call it diplomacy--because otherwise he'd go back to France or some
other objectionable place, and we'd both be very unhappy."

Margaret began to laugh softly. "I've given him my word that I'll
do nothing further in the matter till he gets well. And I won't.
But----"

Miss Hugonin rose from the divan with a gesture of sweeping back her
hair. And then--oh, treachery of tortoise-shell! oh, the villainy of
those little gold hair-pins!--the fat twisted coils tumbled loose
and slowly unravelled themselves, and her pink-and-white face,
half-eclipsed, showed a delectable wedge between big, odourful,
crinkly, ponderous masses of hair. It clung about her, a heavy cloak,
all shimmering gold like the path of sunset over the June sea. And
Margaret, looking at herself in the mirror, laughed, and appeared
perfectly content with what she saw there.

"But," said she, "if the Fates are kind to me--and I sometimes think
I have a pull with the gods--I'll make you happy, Billy Woods, in
spite of yourself."

The mirror flashed back a smile. Margaret was strangely interested in
the mirror.

"She has ringlets in her hair," sang Margaret happily--a low,
half-hushed little