Billy, too, had his emotions. To hear that paragon, that queen among women, descant of work done in the slums and of the mysteries of sweat-shops; to hear her state off-hand that there were seventeen hundred and fifty thousand children between the ages of ten and fifteen years employed in the mines and factories of the United States; to hear her discourse of foreign missions as glibly as though she had been born and nurtured in Zambesi Land: all these things filled him with an odd sense of alienation. He wasn't worthy of her, and that was a fact. He was only a dumb idiot, and half the words that were falling thick and fast from philanthropic lips about him might as well have been hailstones, for all the benefit he was deriving from them. He couldn't understand half she said.
In consequence, he very cordially detested the people who could—especially that grimacing ass, Kennaston.
Altogether, neither Mr. Woods nor Miss Hugonin got much comfort from their luncheon.
VII
After luncheon Billy had a quiet half-hour with the Colonel in the smoking-room.
Said Billy, between puffs of a cigar:
'Peggy's changed a bit.'
The Colonel grunted. Perhaps he dared not trust to words.
'Seems to have made some new friends.'
A more vigorous grunt.
'Cultured lot, they seem?' said Mr. Woods. 'Anxious to do good in the world, too—philanthropic set, eh?'
A snort this time.
'Eh?' said Mr. Woods. There was dawning suspicion in his tone.
The Colonel looked about him. 'My boy,' said he, 'you thank your stars you didn't get that money; and, depend upon it, there never was a gold-ship yet that wasn't followed.'
'Pirates?' Billy Woods suggested, helpfully.
'Pirates are human beings,' said Colonel Hugonin, with dignity. 'Sharks, my boy; sharks!'
VIII
That evening, after proper deliberation, 'Celestine,' Miss Hugonin commanded, 'get out that little yellow dress with the little red bandanna handkerchiefs on it; and for heaven's sake, stop pulling my hair out by the roots, unless you want a
Whereby she had landed me in a quandary. For how, pray, is it possible for me, a simple-minded male, fittingly to depict for you the clothes of Margaret?—the innumerable vanities, the quaint devices, the pleasing conceits with which she delighted to enhance her comeliness?
The thing is beyond me. Let us keep discreetly out of her wardrobe, you and I.
Otherwise, I should have to prattle of an infinity of mysteries—of her scarfs, feathers, laces, gloves, girdles, knots, hats, shoes, fans, and slippers—of her embroideries, rings, pins, pendants, ribbons, spangles, bracelets, and chains—in fine, there would be no end to the list of gewgaws that went to make Margaret Hugonin even more adorable than Nature had fashioned her. For when you come to think of it, it takes the craft and skill and life-work of a thousand men to dress one girl properly; and in Margaret's case, I protest that every one of them, could he have beheld the result of their united labours, would have so gloried in his own part therein that there would have been no putting up with any of the lot.
Yet when I think of the tiny shoes she affected—patent-leather ones mostly, with a seam running straight up the middle (and you may guess the exact date of our comedy by knowing in what year these shoes were modish); the string of fat pearls she so often wore about her round, full throat; the white frock, say, with arabesques of blue all over it, that Felix Kennaston said reminded him of Ruskin's tombstone; or that other white-and-blue one—
But the thing is beyond me. I leave such considerations, then, to Celestine, and resolve for the future rigorously to eschew all such gauds. Meanwhile, if an untutored masculine description will content you—
Margaret, I have on reliable feminine authority, was one of the very few blondes whose complexions can carry off reds and yellows.
This particular gown—I remember it perfectly—was of a dim, dull yellow—flounciful (if I may coin a word), diaphanous, expansive. I have not the least notion what fabric composed it; but scattered about it, in unexpected places, were diamond-shaped red things that I am credibly informed are called medallions. The general effect of it may be briefly characterised as grateful to the eye and dangerous to the heart, and to a rational train of thought quite fatal.
For it was cut low in the neck; and Margaret's neck and shoulders would have drawn madrigals from a bench of bishops.
And in consequence, Billy Woods ate absolutely no dinner that evening.
IX
It was an hour or two later when the moon, drifting tardily up from the south, found Miss Hugonin and Mr. Kennaston chatting amicably together in the court at Selwoode. They were discussing the deplorable tendencies of the modern drama.
The court at Selwoode lies in the angle of the building, the ground plan of which is L-shaped. Its two outer sides are formed by covered cloisters leading to the palm-garden, and by moonlight—the night bland and sweet with the odour of growing things, vocal with plashing fountains, spangled with fire-flies that flicker indolently among a glimmering concourse of nymphs and fauns eternally postured in flight or in pursuit—by moonlight, I say, the court at Selwoode is perhaps as satisfactory a spot for a
Mr. Kennaston was in vein to-night; he scintillated; he was also a little nervous. This was probably owing to the fact that Margaret, leaning against the back of the stone bench on which they both sat, her chin propped by her hand, was gazing at him in that peculiar, intent fashion of hers which—as I think I have mentioned—caused you fatuously to believe she had forgotten there were any other trousered beings extant.
Mr. Kennaston, however, stuck to apt phrases and nice distinctions.
The moon found it edifying, but rather dull.
After a little Mr. Kennaston paused in his boyish, ebullient speech, and they sat in silence. The lisping of the fountains was very audible. In the heavens, the moon climbed a little further and registered a manifestly impossible hour on the sun-dial. It also brightened.
It was a companionable sort of a moon. It invited talk of a confidential nature.
'Bless my soul,' it was signalling to any number of gentlemen at that moment, 'there's only you and I and the girl here. Speak out, man! She'll have you now, if she ever will. You'll never have a chance like this again, I can tell you. Come, now, my dear boy, I'm shining full in your face, and you've no idea how becoming it is. I'm not like that garish, blundering sun, who doesn't know any better than to let her see how red and fidgetty you get when you're excited; I'm an old hand at such matters. I've presided over these little affairs since Babylon was a paltry village.
