The Eagles Shadow | Page 3

he was as pleasant-spoken a
gentleman as you will be apt to meet on the longest summer day.
[Illustration: "'Altogether,' says Colonel Hugonin, 'they strike me as
being the most ungodly menagerie ever gotten together under one roof
since Noah landed on Ararat.'"]
You must make allowances for the fact that, on this especial morning,
he was still suffering from a recent twinge of the gout, and that his toast
was somewhat dryer than he liked it; and, most potent of all, that the
foreign mail, just in, had caused him to rebel anew against 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!