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

poet laughed a little. "Beautiful child," said he--and that, under
similar circumstances, was his perfectly reasonable name for
her--"I have been discourteous. To be frank, I have been sulking as
irrationally as a baby who clamours for the moon yonder."

"You aren't really anything but a baby, you know." Indeed, Margaret
almost thought of him as such. He was so delightfully na�f.

He bent toward her. A faint tremor woke in his speech. "And so," said
he, softly, "I cry for the moon--the unattainable, exquisite moon. It
is very ridiculous, is it not?"

But he did not look at the moon. He looked toward Margaret--past
Margaret, toward the gleaming windows of Selwoode, where the Eagle
brooded:

"Oh, I really can't say," Margaret cried, in haste. "She was kind to
Endymion, you know. We will hope for the best. I think we'd better go
into the house now."

"You bid me hope?" said he.

"Beautiful, if you really want the moon, I don't see the least
objection to your continuing to hope. They make so many little
airships and things nowadays, you know, and you'll probably find it
only green cheese, after all. What is green cheese, I wonder?--it
sounds horribly indigestible and unattractive, doesn't it?" Miss
Hugonin babbled, in a tumult of fear and disappointment. He was about
to spoil their friendship now; men were so utterly inconsiderate. "I'm
a little cold," said she, mendaciously, "I really must go in."

He detained her. "Surely," he breathed, "you must know what I have so
long wanted to tell you--"

"I haven't the least idea," she protested, promptly. "You can tell
me all about it in the morning. I have some accounts to cast up
to-night. Besides, I'm not a good person to tell secrets to.
You--you'd much better not tell me. Oh, really, Mr. Kennaston," she
cried, earnestly, "you'd much better not tell me!"

"Ah, Margaret, Margaret," he pleaded, "I am not adamant. I am only a
man, with a man's heart that hungers for you, cries for you, clamours
for you day by day! I love you, beautiful child--love you with a
poet's love that is alien to these sordid days, with a love that is
half worship. I love you as Leander loved his Hero, as Pyramus loved
Thisbe. Ah, child, child, how beautiful you are! You are fairest of
created women, child--fair as those long-dead queens for whose smiles
old cities burned and kingdoms were lightly lost. I am mad for love of
you! Ah, have pity upon me, Margaret, for I love you very tenderly!"

He delivered these observations with appropriate fervour.

"Mr. Kennaston," said she, "I am sorry. We got along so nicely before,
and I was so proud of your friendship. We've had such good times
together, you and I, and I've liked your verses so, and I've liked
you--Oh, please, please, let's keep on being just friends!" Margaret
wailed, piteously.

"Friends!" he cried, and gave a bitter laugh. "I was never friends
with you, Margaret. Why, even as I read my verses to you--those
pallid, ineffectual verses that praised you timorously under varied
names--even then there pulsed in my veins the riotous p�an of love,
the great mad song of love that shamed my paltry rhymes. I cannot be
friends with you, child! I must have all or nothing. Bid me hope or
go!"

Miss Hugonin meditated for a moment and did neither.

"Beautiful," she presently queried, "would you be very, very much
shocked if I descended to slang?"

"I think," said he, with an uncertain smile, "that I could endure it."

"Why, then--cut it out, beautiful! Cut it out! I don't believe a word
you've said, in the first place; and, anyhow, it annoys me to have you
talk to me like that. I don't like it, and it simply makes me awfully,
awfully tired."

With which characteristic speech, Miss Hugonin leaned back and sat up
very rigidly and smiled at him like a cherub.

Kennaston groaned.

"It shall be as you will," he assured her, with a little quaver in his
speech that was decidedly effective. "And in any event, I am not sorry
that I have loved you, beautiful child. You have always been a power
for good in my life. You have gladdened me with the vision of a beauty
that is more than human, you have heartened me for this petty business
of living, you have praised my verses, you have even accorded me
certain pecuniary assistance as to their publication--though I must
admit that to accept it of you was very distasteful to me. Ah!" Felix
Kennaston cried, with a quick lift of speech, "impractical child that
I am, I had not thought of that! My love had caused me to forget the
great barrier that stands between us."

He gasped and took a short turn about the court.

"Pardon me, Miss Hugonin," he entreated, when his emotions were under
a little better control, "for having spoken as I did. I had forgotten.
Think of me, if you will, as no better than the others--think of me as
a mere fortune-hunter. My presumption will be justly punished."

"Oh, no, no, it isn't that," she cried; "it isn't that, is it?
You--you would care just as much about me if I were poor, wouldn't
you, beautiful? I don't want you to care for me, of course," Margaret
added, with haste. "I want to go on being friends. Oh, that money,
that nasty money!" she cried, in a sudden gust of petulance. "It
makes me so distrustful, and I can't help it!"

He smiled at her wistfully. "My dear," said he, "are there no mirrors
at Selwoode to remove your doubts?"

"I--yes, I do believe in you," she said, at length. "But I don't want
to marry you. You see, I'm not a bit in love with you," Margaret
explained, candidly.

Ensued a silence. Mr. Kennaston bowed his head.

"You bid me go?" said he.

"No--not exactly," said she.

He indicated a movement toward her.

"Now, you needn't attempt to take any liberties with me," Miss Hugonin
announced, decisively, "because if you do I'll never speak to you
again. You must let me go now. You--you must let me think."

Then Felix Kennaston acted very wisely. He rose and stood aside, with
a little bow.

"I can wait, child," he said, sadly. "I have already waited a long
time."

Miss Hugonin escaped into the house without further delay. It was very
flattering, of course; he had spoken beautifully, she thought, and
nobly and poetically and considerately, and altogether there was
absolutely no excuse for her being in a temper. Still, she was.

The moon, however, considered the affair as arranged.

For she had been no whit more resolute in her refusal, you see, than
becomes any self-respecting maid. In fact, she had not refused him;
and the experienced moon had seen the hopes of many a wooer thrive,
chameleon-like, on answers far less encouraging than that which
Margaret had given Felix Kennaston.

Margaret was very fond of him. All women like a man who can do a
picturesque thing without bothering to consider whether or not he be
making himself ridiculous; and more than once in thinking of him she
had wondered if--perhaps--possibly--some day--? And always these vague
flights of fancy had ended at this precise point--incinerated, if you
will grant me the simile, by the sudden flaming of her cheeks.

The thing is common enough. You may remember that Romeo was not the
only gentleman that Juliet noticed at her d�but: there was the young
Petruchio; and the son and heir of old Tiberio; and I do not question
that she had a kind glance or so for County Paris. Beyond doubt, there
were many with whom my lady had danced; with whom she had laughed a
little; with whom she had exchanged a few perfectly affable words and
looks--when of a sudden her heart speaks: "Who's he that would not
dance? If he be married, my grave is like to prove my marriage-bed."
In any event, Paris and Petruchio and Tiberio's young hopeful can go
hang; Romeo has come.

Romeo is seldom the first. Pray you, what was there to prevent Juliet
from admiring So-and-so's dancing? or from observing that Signor
Such-an-one had remarkably expressive eyes? or from thinking of Tybalt
as a dear, reckless fellow whom it was the duty of some good woman to
rescue from perdition? If no one blames the young Montague for sending
Rosaline to the right-about--Rosaline for whom he was weeping and
rhyming an hour before--why, pray, should not Signorina Capulet have
had a few previous affaires du coeur? Depend upon it, she had; for
was she not already past thirteen?

In like manner, I dare say that a deal passed between Desdemona and
Cassio that the honest Moor never knew of; and that Lucrece was
probably very pleasant and agreeable to Tarquin, as a well-bred
hostess should be; and that Helen had that little affair with Theseus
before she ever thought of Paris; and that if Cleopatra died for love
of Antony it was not until she had previously lived a great while with
C�sar.

So Felix Kennaston had his hour. Now Margaret has gone into Selwoode,
flame-faced and quite unconscious that she is humming under her breath
the words of a certain inane old song:

"Oh, she sat for me a chair;
 She has ringlets in her hair;
 She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother"--

Only she sang it "father." And afterward, she suddenly frowned and
stamped her foot, did Margaret.

"I hate him!" said she; but she looked very guilty.



X

In the living-hall of Selwoode Miss Hugonin paused. Undeniably there
were the accounts of the Ladies' League for the Edification of the
Impecunious to be put in order; her monthly report as treasurer
was due in a few days, and Margaret was in such matters a careful,
painstaking body, and not wholly dependent upon her secretary; but she
was entirely too much out of temper to attend to that now.

It was really all Mr. Kennaston's fault, she assured a pricking
conscience, as she went out on the terrace before Selwoode. He had
bothered her dreadfully.

There she found Petheridge Jukesbury smoking placidly in the
effulgence of the moonlight; and the rotund, pasty countenance he
turned toward her was ludicrously like the moon's counterfeit in muddy
water. I am sorry to admit it, but Mr. Jukesbury had dined somewhat
injudiciously. You are not to stretch the phrase; he was merely
prepared to accord the universe his approval, to pat Destiny upon
the head, and his thoughts ran clear enough, but with Aprilian
counter-changes of the jovial and the lachrymose.

"Ah, Miss Hugonin," he greeted her, with a genial smile, "I am indeed
fortunate. You find me deep in meditation, and also, I am sorry to
say, in the practise of a most pernicious habit. You do not object?
Ah, that is so like you. You are always kind, Miss Hugonin. Your
kindness, which falls, if I may so express myself, as the gentle rain
from Heaven upon all deserving charitable institutions, and daily
comforts the destitute with good advice and consoles the sorrowing
with blankets, would now induce you to tolerate an odour which I am
sure is personally distasteful to you."

"But really I don't mind," was Margaret's protest.

"I cannot permit it," Mr. Jukesbury insisted, and waved a pudgy hand
in the moonlight. "No, really, I cannot permit it. We will throw
it away, if you please, and say no more about it," and his glance
followed the glowing flight of his cigar-end somewhat wistfully. "Your
father's cigars are such as it is seldom my privilege to encounter;
but, then, my personal habits are not luxurious, nor my private
income precisely what my childish imaginings had pictured it at this
comparatively advanced period of life. Ah, youth, youth!--as the poet
admirably says, Miss Hugonin, the thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts, but its visions of existence are rose-tinged and free from
care, and its conception of the responsibilities of manhood--such
as taxes and the water-rate--I may safely characterise as extremely
sketchy. But pray be seated, Miss Hugonin," Petheridge Jukesbury
blandly urged.

Common courtesy forced her to comply. So Margaret seated herself on
a little red rustic bench. In the moonlight--but I think I have
mentioned how Margaret looked in the moonlight; and above her golden
head the Eagle, sculptured over the door-way, stretched his wings to
the uttermost, half-protectingly, half-threateningly, and seemed to
view Mr. Jukesbury with a certain air of expectation.

"A beautiful evening," Petheridge Jukesbury suggested, after a little
cogitation.

She conceded that this was undeniable.

"Where Nature smiles, and only the conduct of man is vile and
altogether what it ought not to be," he continued, with unction--"ah,
how true that is and how consoling! It is a good thing to meditate
upon our own vileness, Miss Hugonin--to reflect that we are but worms
with naturally the most vicious inclinations. It is most salutary.
Even I am but a worm, Miss Hugonin, though the press has been pleased
to speak most kindly of me. Even you--ah,