IV
The twelve forty-five, for a wonder, was on time; and there descendedfrom it a big, blond young man, who did not look in the least like afortune-hunter.
Miss Hugonin resented this. Manifestly, he looked clean and honest forthe deliberate purpose of deceiving her. Very well! She'd show him!
He was quite unembarrassed. He shook hands cordially; then he shookhands with the groom, who, you may believe it, was grinning in a mostunprofessional manner because Master Billy was back again at Selwoode.Subsequently, in his old decisive way, he announced they would walk tothe house, as his legs needed stretching.
The insolence of it!--quite as if he had something to say to Margaretin private and couldn't wait a minute. Beyond doubt, this was a youngman 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 cutstrolling through the fields, like a house-girl and the milkman on aSunday afternoon! She would simply say she was too tired to walk, andthat 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 inall the gauds of Spring. About them the day was clear, the air bland.Spring had revamped her ageless fripperies of tender leaves andbird-cries and sweet, warm odours for the adornment of this meadow;above it she had set a turkis sky splashed here and there with littleclouds that were like whipped cream; and upon it she had scatteredlargesse, a Danae's shower of buttercups. Altogether, she had made ofit a particularly dangerous meadow for a man and a maid to frequent.
Yet there Mr. Woods paused under a burgeoning maple--pausedresolutely, with the lures of Spring thick about him, compassed withevery snare of scent and sound and colour that the witch is mistressof.
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 hopedMr. 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 recoverherself--Margaret actually sat down under the maple-tree. Peggy,indeed! Why, she hadn't been called Peggy for--no, not for four wholeyears!
"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 fitfulspring breezes. And everywhere leaves lisped to one another, and birdsshrilled insistently. It was a perilous locality.
I fancy Billy Woods was out of his head when he suggested beingfriends in such a place. Friends, indeed!--you would have thought fromthe airy confidence with which he spoke that Margaret had come safelyto forty year and wore steel-rimmed spectacles!
But Miss Hugonin merely cast down her eyes and was aware of no reasonwhy they shouldn't be. She was sure he must be hungry, and she thoughtluncheon must be ready by now.
In his soul, Mr. Woods observed that her lashes were long--long beyondall reason. Lacking the numbers that Petrarch flowed in, he did notventure, even to himself, to characterise them further. But oh, howqueer it was they should be pure gold at the roots!--she must havedipped them in the ink-pot. And oh, the strong, sudden, bewilderingcurve of 'em! He could not recall at the present moment ever noticingquite such lashes anywhere else. No, it was highly improbable thatthere were such lashes anywhere else. Perhaps a few of the superiorangels might have such lashes. He resolved for the future to attendchurch more regularly.
Aloud, Mr. Woods observed that in that case they had better shakehands.
It would have been ridiculous to contest the point. The dignifiedcourse was to shake hands, since he insisted on it, and then to returnat once to Selwoode.
Margaret Hugonin had a pretty hand, and Mr. Woods, as an artist, couldnot well fail to admire it. Still, he needn't have looked at it asthough he had never before seen anything quite like it; he needn'thave neglected to return it; and when Miss Hugonin reclaimed it, aftera decent interval, he needn't have laughed in a manner that compelledher to laugh, too. These things were unnecessary and annoying, as theycaused Margaret to forget that she despised him.
"Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, andBilly ... thought it vastly becoming"]
For the time being--will you believe it?--she actually thought he wasrather 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 forgiveyou for throwing me over for Teddy Anstruther, and at the wedding I'lldance through any number of pairs of patent-leathers you choose tomention."
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 shemost objected to. How could any one ever possibly fancy a brown-eyedman? Then, for no apparent reason, Margaret flushed, and Billy, whohad stretched his great length of limb on the grass beside her, notedit with a pair of the bluest eyes in the world and thought it vastlybecoming.
"Billy," said she, impulsively--and the name having slipped out onceby accident, it would have been absurd to call him anything elseafterward--"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 donesomething foolish with it. It was awfully square of you, Peggy, tooffer to divide, but I didn't want it, you see. I don't want to be amillionaire, and give up the rest of my life to founding libraries andexplaining to people that if they never spend any money on amusementsthey'll have a great deal by the time they're too old to enjoy it. I'drather paint pictures."
So that I think Margaret must have endeavoured at some time to makehim 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, straightforwardyoung woman," Mr. Woods added, handsomely, "and I don't believe you'dpurloin under the severest temptation."
She thanked him for his testimonial, with all three dimples inevidence.
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 browsraised; and as this gave him the full effect of her eyes, Mr. Woodsbecame quite certain that there was, at least, one thing she might beexpected to rob him of, and wisely declined to mention it.
Margaret did not insist on knowing what it was. Perhaps she heard itthumping under his waistcoat, where it was behaving very queerly.
So they sat in silence for a while. Then Margaret fell a-humming toherself; and the air--will you believe it?--chanced by the purestaccident to be that foolish, senseless old song they used to singtogether 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 lookingat him, however. And oh, what a voice! thought Billy Woods. A voicethat was honey and gold and velvet and all that is most sweet and richand soft in the world! Find me another voice like that, you _primedonne!_ Find me a simile for it, you uninventive poets! Indeed, I'dlike 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 thedimple in her chin and the ringlets in her hair, and of the cherrypies she achieved with such celerity--sang as they sat in thespring-decked meadow eve
ry word of that inane old song that is soutterly senseless and so utterly unforgettable.
It was a quite idiotic performance. I set it down to the snares ofSpring--to her insidious, delightful snares of scent and sound andcolour that--for the moment, at least--had trapped these young peopleinto loving life infinitely.
But I wonder who is responsible for that tatter of rhyme and melodythat had come to them from nowhere in particular? Mr. Woods, as he satup at the conclusion of the singing vigorously to applaud, would haveshared his last possession, his ultimate crust, with that unknownbenefactor of mankind. Indeed, though, the heart of Mr. Woods just nowwas full of loving kindness and capable of any freakish magnanimity.
For--will it be believed?--Mr. Woods, who four years ago had thrownover a fortune and exiled himself from his native land, rather thanpropose marriage to Margaret Hugonin, had no sooner come again intoher presence and looked once into her perfectly fathomless eyes thanhe could no more have left her of his own accord than a moth can turnhis back to a lighted candle. He had fancied himself entirely curedof that boy-and-girl nonsense; his broken heart, after the first fewmonths, had not interfered in the least with a naturally healthyappetite; and, behold, here was the old malady raging again in hisveins and with renewed fervour.
And all because the girl had a pretty face! I think you will agreewith me that in the conversation I have recorded Margaret had notdisplayed any great wisdom or learning or tenderness or wit, nor,in fine, any of the qualities a man might naturally look for in ahelpmate. Yet at the precise moment he handed his baggage-check to thegroom, Mr. Woods had made up his mind to marry her. In an instant hehad 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 hadoffered him an empress or fetched Helen of Troy from the grave for hisdelectation he would have laughed you to scorn.
In his defense, I can only plead that Margaret was an unusuallybeautiful woman. It is all very well to flourish a death's-head at thefeast, and bid my lady go paint herself an inch thick, for to thisfavour she must come; and it is quite true that the reddest lips inthe universe may give vent to slander and lies, and the brightest eyesbe set in the dullest head, and the most roseate of complexions bepurchased at the corner drug-store; but, say what you will, a prettywoman is a pretty woman, and while she continue so no amount ofcommon-sense or experience will prevent a man, on provocation, fromalluring, coaxing, even entreating her to make a fool of him. We likeit. And I think they like it, too.
So Mr. Woods lost his heart on a fine spring morning and wasunreasonably elated over the fact.
And Margaret? Margaret was content.