The Eagles Shadow | Page 3

the proprieties and his daughter's inclinations, which chained him to Selwoode, in the height of the full London season, to preside over a house-party every member of which he cordially disliked. Therefore, the Colonel having glanced through the well-known names of those at Lady Pevensey's last cotillion, groaned and glared at his daughter, who sat opposite him, and reviled his daughter's friends with point and fluency, and characterised them as above, for the reason that he was hungered at heart for the shady side of Pall Mall, and that their presence at Selwoode prevented his attaining this Elysium. For, I am sorry to say that the Colonel loathed all things American, saving his daughter, whom he worshipped.
And, I think, no one who could have seen her preparing his second cup of tea would have disputed that in making this exception he acted with a show of reason. For Margaret Hugonin--but, as you know, she is our heroine, and, as I fear you have already learned, words are very paltry makeshifts when it comes to describing her. Let us simply say, then, that Margaret, his daughter, began to make him a cup of tea, and add that she laughed.
Not unkindly; no, for at bottom she adored her father--a comely Englishman of some sixty-odd, who had run through his wife's fortune and his own, in the most gallant fashion--and she accorded his opinions a conscientious, but at times, a sorely taxed, tolerance. That very month she had reached twenty-three, the age of omniscience, when the fallacies and general obtuseness of older people become dishearteningly apparent.
"It's nonsense," pursued the old gentleman, "utter, bedlamite nonsense, filling Selwoode up with writing people! Never heard of such a thing. Gad, I do remember, as a young man, meeting Thackeray at a garden-party at Orleans House--gentlemanly fellow with a broken nose-- and Browning went about a bit, too, now I think of it. People had 'em one at a time to lend flavour to a dinner--like an olive; we didn't dine on olives, though. You have 'em for breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and everything! I'm sick of olives, I tell you, Margaret!" Margaret pouted.
"They ain't even good olives. I looked into one of that fellow Charteris's books the other day--that chap you had here last week. It was bally rot--proverbs standing on their heads and grinning like dwarfs in a condemned street-fair! Who wants to be told that impropriety is the spice of life and that a roving eye gathers remorse? You may call that sort of thing cleverness, if you like; I call it damn' foolishness." And the emphasis with which he said this left no doubt that the Colonel spoke his honest opinion.
"Attractive," said his daughter patiently, "Mr. Charteris is very, very clever. Mr. Kennaston says literature suffered a considerable loss when he began to write for the magazines."
And now that Margaret has spoken, permit me to call your attention to her voice. Mellow and suave and of astonishing volume was Margaret's voice; it came not from the back of her throat, as most of our women's voices do, but from her chest; and I protest it had the timbre of a violin. Men, hearing her voice for the first time, were wont to stare at her a little and afterward to close their hands slowly, for always its modulations had the tonic sadness of distant music, and it thrilled you to much the same magnanimity and yearning, cloudily conceived; and yet you could not but smile in spite of yourself at the quaint emphasis fluttering through her speech and pouncing for the most part on the unlikeliest word in the whole sentence.
But I fancy the Colonel must have been tone-deaf. "Don't you make phrases for me!" he snorted; "you keep 'em for your menagerie Think! By gad, the world never thinks. I believe the world deliberately reads the six bestselling books in order to incapacitate itself for thinking." Then, his wrath gathering emphasis as he went on: "The longer I live the plainer I see Shakespeare was right--what fools these mortals be, and all that. There's that Haggage woman--speech-making through the country like a hiatused politician. It may be philanthropic, but it ain't ladylike--no, begad! What has she got to do with Juvenile Courts and child-labour in the South, I'd like to know? Why ain't she at home attending to that crippled boy of hers--poor little beggar!--instead of flaunting through America meddling with other folk's children?"
Miss Hugonin put another lump of sugar into his cup and deigned no reply.
"By gad," cried the Colonel fervently, "if you're so anxious to spend that money of yours in charity, why don't you found a Day Nursery for the Children of Philanthropists--a place where advanced men and women can leave their offspring in capable hands when they're busied with