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

come to Selwoode, and Margaret is waiting for him in the dog-cart.
The glow of her eyes is very, very bright. Her father's careless words
this morning, coupled with certain speeches of Mr. Kennaston's last
night, have given her food for reflection.

"He wouldn't dare," says Margaret, to no one in particular. "Oh, no,
he wouldn't dare after what happened four years ago."

And, Margaret-like, she has quite forgotten that what happened four
years ago was all caused by her having flirted outrageously with Teddy
Anstruther, in order to see what Billy would do.



IV

The twelve forty-five, for a wonder, was on time; and there descended
from it a big, blond young man, who did not look in the least like a
fortune-hunter.

Miss Hugonin resented this. Manifestly, he looked clean and honest for
the deliberate purpose of deceiving her. Very well! She'd show him!

He was quite unembarrassed. He shook hands cordially; then he shook
hands with the groom, who, you may believe it, was grinning in a most
unprofessional manner because Master Billy was back again at Selwoode.
Subsequently, in his old decisive way, he announced they would walk to
the house, as his legs needed stretching.

The insolence of it!--quite as if he had something to say to Margaret
in private and couldn't wait a minute. Beyond doubt, this was a young
man who must be taken down a peg or two, and that at once. Of course,
she wasn't going to walk back with him!--a pretty figure they'd cut
strolling through the fields, like a house-girl and the milkman on a
Sunday afternoon! She would simply say she was too tired to walk, and
that would end the matter.

So she said she thought the exercise would do them both good.

They came presently with desultory chat to a meadow bravely decked in
all the gauds of Spring. About them the day was clear, the air bland.
Spring had revamped her ageless fripperies of tender leaves and
bird-cries and sweet, warm odours for the adornment of this meadow;
above it she had set a turkis sky splashed here and there with little
clouds that were like whipped cream; and upon it she had scattered
largesse, a Dana�'s shower of buttercups. Altogether, she had made of
it a particularly dangerous meadow for a man and a maid to frequent.

Yet there Mr. Woods paused under a burgeoning maple--paused
resolutely, with the lures of Spring thick about him, compassed with
every snare of scent and sound and colour that the witch is mistress
of.

Margaret hoped he had a pleasant passage over. Her father, thank you,
was in the pink of condition. Oh, yes, she was quite well. She hoped
Mr. Woods would not find America--

"Well, Peggy," said Mr. Woods, "then, we'll have it out right here."

His insolence was so surprising that--in order to recover
herself--Margaret actually sat down under the maple-tree. Peggy,
indeed! Why, she hadn't been called Peggy for--no, not for four whole
years!

"Because I intend to be friends, you know," said Mr. Woods.

And about them the maple-leaves made a little island of sombre green,
around which more vivid grasses rippled and dimpled under the fitful
spring breezes. And everywhere leaves lisped to one another, and birds
shrilled insistently. It was a perilous locality.

I fancy Billy Woods was out of his head when he suggested being
friends in such a place. Friends, indeed!--you would have thought from
the airy confidence with which he spoke that Margaret had come safely
to forty year and wore steel-rimmed spectacles!

But Miss Hugonin merely cast down her eyes and was aware of no reason
why they shouldn't be. She was sure he must be hungry, and she thought
luncheon must be ready by now.

In his soul, Mr. Woods observed that her lashes were long--long beyond
all reason. Lacking the numbers that Petrarch flowed in, he did not
venture, even to himself, to characterise them further. But oh, how
queer it was they should be pure gold at the roots!--she must have
dipped them in the ink-pot. And oh, the strong, sudden, bewildering
curve of 'em! He could not recall at the present moment ever noticing
quite such lashes anywhere else. No, it was highly improbable that
there were such lashes anywhere else. Perhaps a few of the superior
angels might have such lashes. He resolved for the future to attend
church more regularly.

Aloud, Mr. Woods observed that in that case they had better shake
hands.

It would have been ridiculous to contest the point. The dignified
course was to shake hands, since he insisted on it, and then to return
at once to Selwoode.

Margaret Hugonin had a pretty hand, and Mr. Woods, as an artist, could
not well fail to admire it. Still, he needn't have looked at it as
though he had never before seen anything quite like it; he needn't
have neglected to return it; and when Miss Hugonin reclaimed it, after
a decent interval, he needn't have laughed in a manner that compelled
her to laugh, too. These things were unnecessary and annoying, as they
caused Margaret to forget that she despised him.


[Illustration: "Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and
Billy ... thought it vastly becoming"]

For the time being--will you believe it?--she actually thought he was
rather nice.

"I acted like an ass," said Mr. Woods, tragically. "Oh, yes, I did,
you know. But if you'll forgive me for having been an ass I'll forgive
you for throwing me over for Teddy Anstruther, and at the wedding I'll
dance through any number of pairs of patent-leathers you choose to
mention."

So that was the way he looked at it. Teddy Anstruther, indeed! Why,
Teddy was a dark little man with brown eyes--just the sort of man she
most objected to. How could any one ever possibly fancy a brown-eyed
man? Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and Billy, who
had stretched his great length of limb on the grass beside her, noted
it with a pair of the bluest eyes in the world and thought it vastly
becoming.

"Billy," said she, impulsively--and the name having slipped out once
by accident, it would have been absurd to call him anything else
afterward--"it was horrid of you to refuse to take any of that money."

"But I didn't want it," he protested. "Good Lord, I'd only have done
something foolish with it. It was awfully square of you, Peggy, to
offer to divide, but I didn't want it, you see. I don't want to be a
millionaire, and give up the rest of my life to founding libraries and
explaining to people that if they never spend any money on amusements
they'll have a great deal by the time they're too old to enjoy it. I'd
rather paint pictures."

So that I think Margaret must have endeavoured at some time to make
him accept part of Frederick R. Woods's money.

"You make me feel--and look--like a thief," she reproved him.

Then Billy laughed a little. "You don't look in the least like one,"
he reassured her. "You look like an uncommonly honest, straightforward
young woman," Mr. Woods added, handsomely, "and I don't believe you'd
purloin under the severest temptation."

She thanked him for his testimonial, with all three dimples in
evidence.

This was unsettling. He hedged.

"Except, perhaps--" said he.

"Yes?" queried Margaret, after a pause.

However, she questioned him with her head drooped forward, her brows
raised; and as this gave him the full effect of her eyes, Mr. Woods
became quite certain that there was, at least, one thing she might be
expected to rob him of, and wisely declined to mention it.

Margaret did not insist on knowing what it was. Perhaps she heard it
thumping under his waistcoat, where it was behaving very queerly.

So they sat in silence for a while. Then Margaret fell a-humming to
herself; and the air--will you believe it?--chanced by the purest
accident to be that foolish, senseless old song they used to sing
together four years ago.

Billy chuckled. "Let's!" he obscurely pleaded.

Spring prompted her.

 "Oh, where have you been, Billy boy?"
queried Margaret's wonderful contralto,

 "Oh, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy?
 Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?"

She sang it in a low, hushed voice, just over her breath. Not looking
at him, however. And oh, what a voice! thought Billy Woods. A voice
that was honey and gold and velvet and all that is most sweet and rich
and soft in the world! Find me another voice like that, you prime
donne! Find me a simile for it, you uninventive poets! Indeed, I'd
like to see you do it.

But he chimed in, nevertheless, with his pleasant throaty baritone,
and lilted his own part quite creditably.

 "I've been to seek a wife,
 She's the joy of my life;
 She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother"--

Only Billy sang it "father," just as they used to do.

And then they sang it through, did Margaret and Billy--sang of the
dimple in her chin and the ringlets in her hair, and of the cherry
pies she achieved with such celerity--sang as they sat in the
spring-decked meadow every word of that inane old song that is so
utterly senseless and so utterly unforgettable.

It was a quite idiotic performance. I set it down to the snares of
Spring--to her insidious, delightful snares of scent and sound and
colour that--for the moment, at least--had trapped these young people
into loving life infinitely.

But I wonder who is responsible for that tatter of rhyme and melody
that had come to them from nowhere in particular? Mr. Woods, as he sat
up at the conclusion of the singing vigorously to applaud, would have
shared his last possession, his ultimate crust, with that unknown
benefactor of mankind. Indeed, though, the heart of Mr. Woods just now
was full of loving kindness and capable of any freakish magnanimity.

For--will it be believed?--Mr. Woods, who four years ago had thrown
over a fortune and exiled himself from his native land, rather than
propose marriage to Margaret Hugonin, had no sooner come again into
her presence and looked once into her perfectly fathomless eyes than
he could no more have left her of his own accord than a moth can turn
his back to a lighted candle. He had fancied himself entirely cured
of that boy-and-girl nonsense; his broken heart, after the first few
months, had not interfered in the least with a naturally healthy
appetite; and, behold, here was the old malady raging again in his
veins and with renewed fervour.

And all because the girl had a pretty face! I think you will agree
with me that in the conversation I have recorded Margaret had not
displayed any great wisdom or learning or tenderness or wit, nor,
in fine, any of the qualities a man might naturally look for in a
helpmate. Yet at the precise moment he handed his baggage-check to the
groom, Mr. Woods had made up his mind to marry her. In an instant he
had fallen head over ears in love; or to whittle accuracy to a point,
he had discovered that he had never fallen out of love; and if you had
offered him an empress or fetched Helen of Troy from the grave for his
delectation he would have laughed you to scorn.

In his defense, I can only plead that Margaret was an unusually
beautiful woman. It is all very well to flourish a death's-head at the
feast, and bid my lady go paint herself an inch thick, for to this
favour she must come; and it is quite true that the reddest lips in
the universe may give vent to slander and lies, and the brightest eyes
be set in the dullest head, and the most roseate of complexions be
purchased at the corner drug-store; but, say what you will, a pretty
woman is a pretty woman, and while she continue so no amount of
common-sense or experience will prevent a man, on provocation, from
alluring, coaxing, even entreating her to make a fool of him. We like
it. And I think they like it, too.

So Mr. Woods lost his heart on a fine spring morning and was
unreasonably elated over the fact.

And Margaret? Margaret was content.



V

They talked for a matter of a half-hour in the fashion aforetime
recorded--not very wise nor witty talk, if you will, but very pleasant
to make. There were many pauses. There was much laughter over nothing
in particular. There were any number of sentences ambitiously begun
that ended nowhere. Altogether, it was just the sort of talk for a man
and a maid.

Yet some twenty minutes later, Mr. Woods, preparing for luncheon in
the privacy of his chamber, gave a sudden exclamation. Then he sat
down and rumpled his hair thoroughly.

"Good Lord!" he groaned; "I'd forgotten all about that damned money!
Oh, you ass!--you abject ass! Why, she's one of the richest women in
America, and you're only a fifth-rate painter