At the Sign of the Eagle Part 1

At The Sign Of The Eagle.

by Gilbert Parker.

"Life in her creaking shoes Goes, and more formal grows, A round of calls and cues: Love blows as the wind blows.

Blows!..."

"Well, what do you think of them, Molly?" said Sir Duke Lawless to his wife, his eyes resting with some amus.e.m.e.nt on a big man and a little one talking to Lord Hampstead.

"The little man is affected, gauche, and servile. The big one picturesque and superior in a raw kind of way. He wishes to be rude to some one, and is disappointed because, just at the moment, Lord Hampstead is too polite to give him his cue. A dangerous person in a drawing-room, I should think; but interesting. You are a bold man to bring them here, Duke. Is it not awkward for our host?"

"Hampstead did it with his eyes open. Besides, there is business behind it--railways, mines, and all that; and Hampstead's nephew is going to the States fortune-hunting. Do you see?"

Lady Lawless lifted her eyebrows. "'To what base uses are we come, Horatio!' You invite me to dinner and--'I'll fix things up right.' That is the proper phrase, for I have heard you use it. Status for dollars.

Isn't it low? I know you do not mean what you say, Duke."

Sir Duke's eyes were playing on the men with a puzzled expression, as though trying to read the subject of their conversation; and he did not reply immediately. Soon, however, he turned and looked down at his wife genially, and said: "Well, that's about it, I suppose. But really there is nothing unusual in this, so far as Mr. John Vandewaters is concerned, for in his own country he travels 'the parlours of the Four Hundred,'

and is considered 'a very elegant gentleman.' We must respect a man according to the place he holds in his own community. Besides, as you suggest, Mr. Vandewaters is interesting. I might go further, and say that he is a very good fellow indeed."

"You will be asking him down to Craigruie next," said Lady Lawless, inquisition in her look.

"That is exactly what I mean to do, with your permission, my dear. I hope to see him laying about among the grouse in due season."

"My dear Duke, you are painfully Bohemian. I can remember when you were perfectly precise and exclusive, and--"

"What an awful prig I must have been!"

"Don't interrupt. That was before you went aroving in savage countries, and picked up all sorts of acquaintances, making friends with the most impossible folk. I should never be surprised to see you drive Shon McGann--and his wife, of course--and Pretty Pierre--with some other man's wife--up to the door in a dogcart; their clothes in a saddle-bag, or something less reputable, to stay a month. Duke, you have lost your decorum; you are a gipsy."

"I fear Shon McGann and Pierre wouldn't enjoy being with us as I should enjoy having them. You can never understand what a life that is out in Pierre's country. If it weren't for you and the bairn, I should be off there now. There is something of primeval man in me. I am never so healthy and happy, when away from you, as in prowling round the outposts of civilisation, and living on beans and bear's meat."

He stretched to his feet, and his wife rose with him. There was a fine colour on his cheek, and his eye had a pleasant fiery energy. His wife tapped him on the arm with her fan. She understood him very well, though pretending otherwise. "Duke, you are incorrigible. I am in daily dread of your starting off in the middle of the night, leaving me--"

"Watering your couch with your tears?"

"--and hearing nothing more from you till a cable from Quebec or Winnipeg tells me that you are on your way to the Arctic Circle with Pierre or some other heathen. But, seriously, where did you meet Mr.

Vandewaters--Heavens, what a name!--and that other person? And what is the other person's name?"

"The other person carries the contradictory name of Stephen Pride."

"Why does he continually finger his face, and show his emotions so? He a.s.sents to everything said to him by an appreciative exercise of his features."

"My dear, you ask a great and solemn question. Let me introduce the young man, that you may get your answer at the fountain-head."

"Wait a moment, Duke. Sit down and tell me when and where you met these men, and why you have continued the acquaintance."

"Molly," he said, obeying her, "you are a terrible inquisitor, and the privacy of one's chamber were the kinder place to call one to account.

But I bend to your implacability.... Mr. Vandewaters, like myself, has a taste for roving, though our aims are not identical. He has a fine faculty for uniting business and pleasure. He is not a thorough sportsman--there is always a certain amount of enthusiasm, even in the unrewarded patience of the true hunter; but he sufficeth. Well, Mr.

Vandewaters had been hunting in the far north, and looking after a promising mine at the same time. He was on his way south at one angle, I at another angle, bound for the same point. Shon McGann was with me; Pierre with Vandewaters. McGann left me, at a certain point, to join his wife at a Barracks of the Riders of the Plains. I had about a hundred miles to travel alone. Well, I got along the first fifty all right.

Then came trouble. In a bad place of the hills I fell and broke an ankle bone. I had an Eskimo dog of the right sort with me. I wrote a line on a bit of birch bark, tied it round his neck, and started him away, trusting my luck that he would pull up somewhere. He did. He ran into Vandewaters's camp that evening. Vandewaters and Pierre started away at once. They had dogs, and reached me soon.

"It was the first time I had seen Pierre for years. They fixed me up, and we started south. And that's as it was in the beginning with Mr.

John Vandewaters and me."

Lady Lawless had been watching the two strangers during the talk, though once or twice she turned and looked at her husband admiringly. When he had finished she said: "That is very striking. What a pity it is that men we want to like spoil all by their lack of form!"

"Don't be so sure about Vandewaters. Does he look flurried by these surroundings?"

"No. He certainly has an air of contentment. It is, I suppose, the usual air of self-made Americans."

"Go to London, E.C., and you will find the same, plus smugness. Now, Mr.

Vandewaters has real power--and taste too, as you will see. Would you think Mr. Stephen Pride a self-made man?"

"I cannot think of any one else who would be proud of the patent. Please to consider the seals about his waistcoat, and the lady-like droop of his shoulders."

"Yet he is thought to be a young man of parts. He has money, made by his ancestors; he has been round the world; he belongs to societies for culture and--"

"And he will rave of the Poet's Corner, ask if one likes Pippa Pa.s.ses, and expect to be introduced to every woman in the room at a tea-party, to say nothing of proposing impossible things, such as taking one's girl friends to the opera alone, sending them boxes of confectionery, and writing them dreadfully reverential notes at the same time. Duke, the creature is impossible, believe me. Never, never, if you love me, invite him to Craigruie. I met one of his tribe at Lady Macintyre's when I was just out of school; and at the dinner-table, when the wine went round, he lifted his voice and asked for a cup of tea, saying he never 'drank.'

Actually he did, Duke."

Her husband laughed quietly. He had a man's enjoyment of a woman's dislike of bad form. "A common criminal man, Molly. Tell me, which is the greater crime: to rob a bank or use a fish-knife for asparagus?"

Lady Lawless fanned herself. "Duke, you make me hot. But if you will have the truth: the fish-knife business by all means. n.o.body need feel uncomfortable about the burglary, except the burglar; but see what a position for the other person's hostess."

"My dear, women have no civic virtues. Their credo is, 'I believe in beauty and fine linen, and the thing that is not gauche.'"

His wife was smiling. "Well, have it your own way. It is a creed of comfort, at any rate. And now, Duke, if I must meet the man of mines and railways and the spare person making faces at Lord Hampstead, let it be soon, that it may be done with; and pray don't invite them to Craigruie till I have a chance to speak with you again. I will not have impossible people at a house-party."

"What a difficult fellow your husband is, Molly!"

"Difficult; but perfectly possible. His one fault is a universal sympathy which shines alike on the elect--and the others."

"So. Well, this is our dance. After it is over, prepare for the Americanos."

Half-an-hour later Mr. Vandewaters was standing in a conspicuous corner talking to Lady Lawless.

"It is, then, your first visit to England?" she asked. He had a dry, deliberate voice, unlike the smooth, conventional voices round him.

"Yes, Lady Lawless," he replied: "it's the first time I've put my foot in London town, and--perhaps you won't believe it of an American--I find it doesn't take up a very conspicuous place."

The humour was slightly accentuated, and Lady Lawless shrank a little, as if she feared the depths of divertis.e.m.e.nt to which this speech might lead; but a quick look at the man a.s.sured her of his common-sense, and she answered: "It is of the joys of London that no one is so important but finds the s.p.a.ce he fills a small one, which may be filled acceptably by some one else at any moment. It is easy for kings and princes even--we have secluded princes here now--to get lost and forgotten in London." "Well, that leaves little chance for ordinary Americans, who don't bank on t.i.tles."

She looked up, puzzled in spite of herself. But she presently said, with frankness and naivete: "What does 'bank on t.i.tles' mean?"

He stroked his beard, smiling quaintly, and said: "I don't know how to put the thing better-it seems to fill the bill. But, anyway, Americans are republicans; and don't believe in t.i.tles, and--"

"O, pardon me," she interrupted: "of course, I see."