We begin on a fine May morning in Colonel Hugonin's rooms at Selwoode, which is, as you may or may not know, the Hugonins' country-place. And there we discover the Colonel dawdling over his breakfast, in an intermediate stage of that careful toilet which enables him later in the day to pass casual inspection as turning forty-nine.
At present the old gentleman is discussing the members of his daughter's house-party. We will omit, by your leave, a number of picturesque descriptive passages--for the Colonel is, on occasion, a man of unfettered speech--and come hastily to the conclusion, to the summing-up of the whole matter.
"Altogether," says Colonel Hugonin, "they strike me as being the most ungodly menagerie ever gotten together under one roof since Noah landed on Ararat."
Now, I am sorry that veracity compels me to present the Colonel in this particular state of mind, for ordinarily he was as pleasant-spoken a gentleman as you will be apt to meet on the longest summer day.
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! 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 Mothers' Meetings and Educational Conferences? It would do a thousand times more good, I can tell you, than that fresh kindergarten scheme of yours for teaching the children of the labouring classes to make a new sort of mud-pie."
"You don't understand these things, attractive," Margaret gently pointed out. "You aren't in harmony with the trend of modern thought."
"No, thank God!" said the Colonel, heartily.
Ensued a silence during which he chipped at his egg-shell in an absent-minded fashion.
"That fellow Kennaston said anything to you yet?" he presently queried.
"I--I don't understand," she protested--oh, perfectly unconvincingly. The tea-making, too, engrossed her at this point to an utterly improbable extent.
Thus it shortly befell that the Colonel, still regarding her under intent brows, cleared his throat and made bold to question her generosity in the matter of sugar; five lumps being, as he suggested, a rather unusual allowance for one cup.
Then, "Mr. Kennaston and I are very good friends," said she, with dignity. And having spoiled the first cup in the making, she began on another.
"Glad to hear it," growled the old gentleman. "I hope you value his friendship sufficiently not to marry him. The man's a fraud--a flimsy, sickening fraud, like his poetry, begad, and that's made up of botany and wide margins and indecency in about equal proportions. It ain't fit for a woman to read--in fact, a woman ought not to read anything; a comprehension of the Decalogue and the cookery-book is enough learning for the best of 'em. Your mother never--never--"
Colonel Hugonin paused and stared at the open window for a little. He seemed to be interested in something a great way off.
"We used to read Ouida's books together," he said, somewhat wistfully. "Lord, Lord, how she revelled in Chandos and Bertie Cecil and those dashing Life Guardsmen! And she used to toss that little head of hers and say I was a finer figure of a man than any of 'em--thirty years ago, good Lord! And I was then, but I ain't now. I'm only a broken-down, cantankerous old fool," declared the Colonel, blowing his nose violently, "and that's why I'm quarrelling with the dearest, foolishest daughter man ever had. Ah, my dear, don't mind me--run your menagerie as you like, and I'll stand it."
Margaret adopted her usual tactics; she perched herself on the arm of his chair and began to stroke his cheek very gently. She often wondered as to what dear sort of a woman that tender-eyed, pink-cheeked mother of the old miniature had been--the mother who had died when she was two years old. She loved the idea of her, vague as it was. And, just now, somehow, the notion of two grown people reading Ouida did not strike her as being especially ridiculous.
"Was she very beautiful?" she asked, softly.
"My dear," said her father, "you are the picture of her."
"You dangerous old man!" said she, laughing and rubbing her cheek against his in a manner that must have been highly agreeable. "Dear, do you know that is the nicest little compliment I've had for a long time?"
Thereupon the Colonel chuckled. "Pay me for it, then," said he, "by driving the dog-cart over to meet Billy's train to-day. Eh?"
"I--I can't," said Miss Hugonin, promptly.
"Why?" demanded her father.
"Because----" said Miss Hugonin; and after giving this really excellent reason, reflected for a moment and strengthened it by adding, "Because----"
"See here," her father questioned, "what did you two quarrel about, anyway?"
"I--I really don't remember," said she, reflectively; then continued, with hauteur and some inconsistency, "I am not aware that Mr. Woods and I have ever quarrelled."
"By gad, then," said the Colonel, "you may as well prepare to, for I intend to marry you to Billy some day. Dear, dear, child," he interpolated, with malice aforethought, "have you a fever?--your cheek's like a coal. Billy's a man, I tell you--worth a dozen of your Kennastons and Charterises. I like Billy. And besides, it's only right he should have Selwoode--wasn't he brought up to expect it? It ain't right he should lose it simply because he had a quarrel with Frederick, for, by gad--not to speak unkindly of the dead, my dear--Frederick quarrelled with every one he ever knew, from the woman who nursed him to the doctor who gave him his last pill. He may have gotten his genius for money-making from Heaven, but he certainly got his temper from the devil. I really believe," said the Colonel, reflectively, "it was worse than mine. Yes, not a doubt of it--I'm a lamb in comparison. But he had his way, after all; and even now poor Billy can't get Selwoode without taking you with it," and he caught his daughter's face between his hands and turned it toward his for a moment. "I wonder now," said he, in meditative wise, "if Billy will consider that a drawback?"
It seemed very improbable. Any number of marriageable males would have sworn it was unthinkable.
However, "Of course," Margaret began, in a crisp voice, "if you advise Mr. Woods to marry me as a good speculation--"
But her father caught her up, with a whistle. "Eh?" said he. "Love in a cottage?--is it thus the poet turns his lay? That's damn' nonsense! I tell you, even in a cottage the plumber's bill has to be paid, and the grocer's little account settled every month. Yes, by gad, and even if you elect to live on bread and cheese and kisses, you'll find Camembert a bit more to your taste than Sweitzer."
"But I don't want to marry anybody, you ridiculous old dear," said Margaret.
"Oh, very well," said the old gentleman; "don't. Be an old maid, and lecture before the Mothers' Club, if you like. I don't care. Anyhow, you meet Billy to-day at twelve-forty-five. You will?--that's a good child. Now run along and tell the menagerie I'll be down-stairs as soon as I've finished dressing."
And the Colonel rang for his man and proceeded to finish his toilet. He seemed a thought absent-minded this morning.
"I say, Wilkins," he questioned, after a little. "Ever read any of Ouida's books?"
"Ho, yes, sir," said Wilkins; "Miss 'Enderson--Mrs. 'Aggage's maid, that his, sir--was reading haloud hout hof 'Hunder Two Flags' honly last hevening, sir."
"H'm--Wilkins--if you can run across one of them in the servants' quarters--you might leave it--by my bed--to-night."
"Yes, sir."
"And--h'm, Wilkins--you can put it under that book of Herbert Spencer's my daughter gave me yesterday. Under it, Wilkins--and, h'm, Wilkins--you needn't mention it to anybody. Ouida ain't cultured, Wilkins, but she's damn' good reading. I suppose that's why she ain't cultured, Wilkins."
