It was locked up in that centre place in the desk, you remember.
Why--why, you yourself had the keys to it, Peggy. Surely, you
remember, dear?" And Billy's voice shook and skipped whole octaves as
he pleaded with her, for he knew she did not believe him and he could
not endure the horror of her eyes.
But Margaret shook her head; and as aforetime the twitching lips
continued to laugh beneath those tragic eyes. Ah, poor little lady of
Elfland! poor little Undine, with a soul wakened to suffering!
"Clumsy, very clumsy!" she rebuked him. "I see that you are accustomed
to prepare your lies in advance, Mr. Woods. As an extemporaneous liar
you are very clumsy. Men don't propose by mistake except in farces.
And while we are speaking of farces, don't you think it time to drop
that one of your not knowing about that last will?"
"The farce!" Billy stammered. "You--why, you saw me when I found it!"
"Ah, yes, I saw you when you pretended to find it. I saw you when you
pretended to unlock that centre place. But now, of course, I know it
never was locked. I'm very careless about locking things, Mr. Woods.
Ah, yes, that gave you a beautiful opportunity, didn't it? So, when
you were rummaging through my desk--without my permission, by the way,
but that's a detail--you found both wills and concocted your little
comedy? That was very clever. Oh, you think you're awfully smooth,
don't you, Billy Woods? But if you had been a bit more daring, don't
you see, you could have suppressed the last one and taken the money
without being encumbered by me? That was rather clumsy of you, wasn't
it?" Suave, gentle, sweet as honey was the speech of Margaret as she
lifted her face to his, but her eyes were tragedies.
"Ah!" said Billy. "Ah--yes--you think--that." He was very careful in
articulating his words, was Billy, and afterward he nodded his head
gravely. The universe had somehow suffered an airy dissolution like
that of Prospero's masque--Selwoode and its gardens, the great globe
itself, "the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn
temples" were all as vanished wraiths. There was only Peggy left--
Peggy with that unimaginable misery in her eyes that he must drive
away somehow. If that was what she thought, there was no way for him
to prove it wasn't so.
"Why, dear me, Mr. Woods," she retorted, carelessly, "what else could
I think?"
Here Mr. Woods blundered.
"Ah, think what you will, Peggy!" he cried, his big voice cracking and
sobbing and resonant with pain. "Ah, my dear, think what you will, but
don't grieve for it, Peggy! Why, if I'm all you say I am, that's no
reason you should suffer for it! Ah, don't, Peggy! In God's name,
don't! I can't bear it, dear," he pleaded with her, helplessly.
Billy was suffering, too. But her sorrow was the chief of his, and
what stung him now to impotent anger was that she must suffer and he
be unable to help her--for, ah, how willingly, how gladly, he would
have borne all poor Peggy's woes upon his own broad shoulders.
But none the less, he had lost an invaluable opportunity to hold his
tongue.
"Suffer! I suffer!" she mocked him, languidly; and then, like a
banjo-string, the tension snapped, and she gave a long, angry gasp,
and her wrath flamed.
"Upon my word, you're the most conceited man I ever knew in my life!
You think I'm in love with you! With you! Billy Woods, I wouldn't wipe
my feet on you if you were the last man left on earth! I hate you, I
loathe you, I detest you, I despise you! Do you hear me?--I hate you.
What do I care if you
are
a snob, and a cad, and a fortune-hunter,
and a forger, and--well, I don't care! Perhaps you haven't ever
forged anything yet, but I'm quite sure you would if you ever got an
opportunity. You'd be delighted to do it. Yes, you would--you're just
the sort of man who
revels
in crime. I love you! Why, that's the
best joke I've heard for a long time. I'm only sorry for you, Billy
Woods--
sorry
because Kathleen has thrown you over--sorry, do you
understand? Yes, since you're so fond of skinny women, I think it's a
great pity she wouldn't have you. Don't talk to me!--she
is
skinny.
I guess I know. She's as skinny as a beanpole. She's skinnier than I
ever imagined it possible for anybody--
anybody
--to be. And she
pads and rouges till I think it's disgusting, and not half--not
one-half
--of her hair belongs to her, and that half is dyed. But,
of course, if you like that sort of thing, there's no accounting for
tastes, and I'm sure I'm very sorry for you, even though personally I
don't
care for skinny women. I hate 'em! And I hate you, too, Billy
Woods!"
She stamped her foot, did Margaret. You must bear with her, for her
heart is breaking now, and if she has become a termagant it is because
her shamed pride has driven her mad. Bear with her, then, a little
longer.
Billy tried to bear with her, for in part he understood.
"Peggy," said he, very gently, "you're wrong."
"Yes, I dare say!" she snapped at him.
"We won't discuss Kathleen, if you please. But you're wrong about the
will. I've told you the whole truth about that, but I don't blame you
for not believing me, Peggy--ah, no, not I. There seems to be a curse
upon Uncle Fred's money. It brings out the worst of all of us. It has
changed even you, Peggy--and not for the better, Peggy. You've become
distrustful. You--ah, well, we won't discuss that now. Give me the
will, my dear, and I'll burn it before your eyes. That ought to show
you, Peggy, that you're wrong." Billy was very white-lipped as he
ended, for the Woods temper is a short one.
But she had an arrow left for him. "Give it to you! And do you think
I'd trust you with it, Billy Woods?"
"Peggy!--ah, Peggy, I hadn't deserved that. Be just, at least, to me,"
poor Billy begged of her.
Which was an absurd thing to ask of an angry woman.
"Yes, I
do
know what you'd do with it! You'd take it right off and
have it probated or executed or whatever it is they do to wills, and
turn me straight out in the gutter. That's just what you're
longing
to do this very moment. Oh, I know, Billy Woods--I know what a temper
you've got, and I know you're keeping quiet now simply because you
know that's the most exasperating thing you can possibly do. I
wouldn't have such a disposition as you've got for the world. You've
absolutely
no
control over your temper--not a bit of it. You're
vile
, Billy Woods! Oh, I
hate
you! Yes, you've made me cry, and I
suppose you're very proud of yourself.
Aren't
you proud? Don't stand
staring at me like a stuck pig, but answer me when I talk to you!
Aren't you
proud
of making me cry? Aren't you? Ah, don't talk to
me--don't talk to
me
, I tell you! I don't wish to hear a word you've
got to say. I
hate
you. And you shan't have the money, that's flat."
"I don't want it," said Billy. "I've been trying to tell you for the
last, half-hour I don't want it. In God's name, why can't you talk
like a sensible woman, Peggy?" I am afraid that Mr. Woods, too, was
beginning to lose his temper.
"That's right--swear at me! It only needed that. You do want the
money, and when you say you don't you're lying--lying--
lying
, do you
understand? You all want my money. Oh, dear,
dear
!" Margaret wailed,
and her great voice was shaken to its depths and its sobbing was the
long, hopeless sobbing of a violin, as she flung back her tear-stained
face, and clenched her little hands tight at her sides; "why
can't
you let me alone? You're all after my money--you, and Mr. Kennaston,
and Mr. Jukesbury, and all of you! Why
can't
you let me alone? Ever
since I've had it you've hunted me as if I'd been a wild beast. God
help me, I haven't had a moment's peace, a moment's rest, a, moment's
quiet, since Uncle Fred died. They all want my money--everybody wants
my money! Oh, Billy, Billy, why
can't
they let me alone?"
"Peggy----" said he.
But she interrupted him. "Don't talk to
me
, Billy Woods! Don't you
dare
talk to me. I told you I didn't wish to hear a word you had to
say, didn't I? Yes, you all want my money. And you shan't have it.
It's mine. Uncle Fred left it to me. It's mine, I tell you. I've got
the greatest thing in the world--money! And I'll keep it. Ah, I hate
you all--every one of you--but I'll make you cringe to me. I'll make
you
all
cringe, do you hear, because I've got the money you're ready
to sell your paltry souls for! Oh, I'll make you cringe most of all,
Billy Woods! I'm rich, do you hear?--rich--
rich
! Wouldn't you be
glad to marry the rich Margaret Hugonin, Billy? Ah, haven't you
schemed hard for that? You'd be glad to do it, wouldn't you? You'd
give your dirty little soul for that, wouldn't you, Billy? Ah, what a
cur you are! Well, some day perhaps I'll buy you just as I would any
other cur. Wouldn't you be glad if I did, Billy? Beg for it, Billy!
Beg, sir! Beg!" And Margaret flung back her head again, and laughed
shrilly, and held up her hand before him as one holds a lump of sugar
before a pug-dog.
In Selwoode I can fancy how the Eagle screamed his triumph.
But Billy's face was ashen.
"Before God!" he said, between his teeth, "loving you as I do, I
wouldn't marry you now for all the wealth in the world! The money has
ruined you--ruined you, Peggy."
For a little she stared at him. By and bye, "I dare say it has," she
said, in a strangely sober tone. "I've been scolding like a fishwife.
I beg your pardon, Mr. Woods--not for what I've said, because I meant
every
word
of it, but I beg your pardon for saying it. Don't come
with me, please."
Blindly she turned from him. Her shoulders had the droop of an old
woman's. Margaret was wearied now, weary with the weariness of death.
For a while Mr. Woods stared after the tired little figure that
trudged straight onward in the sunlight, stumbling as she went. Then a
pleached walk swallowed her, and Mr. Woods groaned.
"Oh, Peggy, Peggy!" he said, in bottomless compassion; "oh, my poor
little Peggy! How changed you are!"
Afterward Mr. Woods sank down upon the bench and buried his face in
his hands. He sat there for a long time. I don't believe he thought
of anything very clearly. His mind was a turgid chaos of misery; and
about him the birds shrilled and quavered and carolled till the air
was vibrant with their trilling. One might have thought they choired
in honour of the Eagle's triumph, in mockery of poor Billy.
Then Mr. Woods raised his head with a queer, alert look. Surely he had
heard a voice--the dearest of all voices.
"Billy!" it wailed; "oh, Billy,
Billy
!"
XXV
For at the height of this particularly mischancy posture of affairs
the meddlesome Fates had elected to dispatch Cock-eye Flinks to serve
as our
deus ex machina
. And just as in the comedy the police turn
up in the nick of time to fetch Tartuffe to prison, or in the tragedy
Friar John manages to be detained on his journey to Mantua and thus
bring about that lamentable business in the tomb of the Capulets, so
Mr. Flinks now happens inopportunely to arrive upon our lesser stage.
Faithfully to narrate how Cock-eye Flinks chanced to be at Selwoode
were a task of magnitude. That gentleman travelled very quietly; and
for the most part, he journeyed incognito under a variety of aliases
suggested partly by a fertile imagination and in part by prudential
motives. For his notions of proprietary rights were deplorably vague,
and his acquaintance with the police, in consequence, extensive. And
finally, that he was now at Selwoode was not in the least his fault,
but all the doing of an N. and O. brakesman, who had in uncultured
argument, reinforced by a coupling-pin, persuaded Mr. Flinks to
disembark from the northern freight on the night previous.
Mr. Flinks, then, sat leaning against a tree in the gardens of
Selwoode, some thirty feet from the wall that stands between Selwoode
and Gridlington, and nursed his pride and foot, both injured in that
high debate of last evening, and with a jackknife rounded off the top
of a substantial staff designed to alleviate his present lameness.
Meanwhile, he tempered his solitude with music, whistling melodiously
the air of a song that pertained to the sacredness of home and of a
white-haired mother.
Subsequently to Cock-eye Flinks (as the playbill has it), enter a
vision in violet ruffles.
Wide-eyed, she came upon him in her misery, steadily trudging toward
an unknown goal. I think he startled her a bit. Indeed, it must be
admitted that Mr. Flinks, while a man of undoubted talent in his
particular line of business, was, like many of your great geniuses, in
outward aspect unprepossessing and misleading; for whereas he looked
like a very shiftless and very dirty tramp, he was as a matter of fact
as vile a rascal as ever pawned a swinish soul for whiskey.
"What are you doing here?" said Margaret, sharply. "Don't you know
this is private property?"
To his feet rose Cock-eye Flinks. "Lady," said he, with humbleness,
"you wouldn't be hard on a poor workingman, would you? It ain't my