The Eagle's Shadow

This is the story of Margaret Hugonin and of the Eagle. And with your

permission, we will for the present defer all consideration of the

bird, and devote our unqualified attention to Margaret.

I have always esteemed Margaret the obvious, sensible, most

appropriate name that can be bestowed upon a girl-child, for it is a

name that fits a woman--any woman--as neatly as her proper size in

gloves.

Yes, the first point I wish to make is that a woman-child, once

baptised Margaret, is thereby insured of a suitable name. Be she grave

or gay in after-life, wanton or pious or sullen, comely or otherwise,

there will be no possible chance of incongruity; whether she develop a

taste for winter-gardens or the higher mathematics, whether she take

to golf or clinging organdies, the event is provided for. One has only

to consider for a moment, and if among a choice of Madge, Marjorie,

Meta, Maggie, Margherita, Peggy, and Gretchen, and countless

others--if among all these he cannot find a name that suits her to a

T--why, then, the case is indeed desperate and he may permissibly

fall back upon Madam or--if the cat jump propitiously, and at his own

peril--on Darling or Sweetheart.

The second proof that this name must be the best of all possible names

is that Margaret Hugonin bore it. And so the murder is out. You may

suspect what you choose. I warn you in advance that I have no part

whatever in her story; and if my admiration for her given name appear

somewhat excessive, I can only protest that in this dissentient world

every one has a right to his own taste. I knew Margaret. I admired

her. And if in some unguarded moment I may have carried my admiration

to the point of indiscretion, her husband most assuredly knows all

about it, by this, and he and I are still the best of friends. So you

perceive that if I ever did so far forget myself it could scarcely

have amounted to a hanging matter.

I am doubly sure that Margaret Hugonin was beautiful, for the reason

that I have never found a woman under forty-five who shared my

opinion. If you clap a Testament into my hand, I cannot affirm that

women are eager to recognise beauty in one another; at the utmost they

concede that this or that particular feature is well enough. But when

a woman is clean-eyed and straight-limbed, and has a cheery heart,

she really cannot help being beautiful; and when Nature accords her

a sufficiency of dimples and an infectious laugh, I protest she is

well-nigh irresistible. And all these Margaret Hugonin had.

And surely that is enough.

I shall not endeavour, then, to picture her features to you in any

nicely picked words. Her chief charm was that she was Margaret.

And besides that, mere carnal vanities are trivial things; a gray

eye or so is not in the least to the purpose. Yet since it is the

immemorial custom of writer-folk to inventory such possessions of

their heroines, here you have a catalogue of her personal attractions.

Launce's method will serve our turn.

Imprimis, there was not very much of her--five feet three, at the

most; and hers was the well-groomed modern type that implies a

grandfather or two and is in every respect the antithesis of that

hulking Venus of the Louvre whom people pretend to admire. Item, she

had blue eyes; and when she talked with you, her head drooped forward

a little. The frank, intent gaze of these eyes was very flattering

and, in its ultimate effect, perilous, since it led you fatuously to

believe that she had forgotten there were any other trousered beings

extant. Later on you found this a decided error. Item, she had a quite

incredible amount of yellow hair, that was not in the least like gold

or copper or bronze--I scorn the hackneyed similes of metallurgical

poets--but a straightforward yellow, darkening at the roots; and she

wore it low down on her neck in great coils that were held in place

by a multitude of little golden hair-pins and divers corpulent

tortoise-shell ones. Item, her nose was a tiny miracle of perfection;

and this was noteworthy, for you will observe that Nature, who is an

adept at eyes and hair and mouths, very rarely achieves a creditable

nose. Item, she had a mouth; and if you are a Gradgrindian with a

taste for hairsplitting, I cannot swear that it was a particularly

small mouth. The lips were rather full than otherwise; one saw in them

potentialities of heroic passion, and tenderness, and generosity, and,

if you will, temper. No, her mouth was not in the least like the pink

shoe-button of romance and sugared portraiture; it was manifestly

designed less for simpering out of a gilt frame or the dribbling of

stock phrases over three hundred pages than for gibes and laughter

and cheery gossip and honest, unromantic eating, as well as another

purpose, which, as a highly dangerous topic, I decline even to

mention.

There you have the best description of Margaret Hugonin that I am

capable of giving you. No one realises its glaring inadequacy more

acutely than I.

Furthermore, I stipulate that if in the progress of our comedy she

appear to act with an utter lack of reason or even common-sense--as

every woman worth the winning must do once or twice in a

lifetime--that I be permitted to record the fact, to set it down in

all its ugliness, nay, even to exaggerate it a little--all to the end

that I may eventually exasperate you and goad you into crying out,

"Come, come, you are not treating the girl with common justice!"

For, if such a thing were possible, I should desire you to rival even

me in a liking for Margaret Hugonin. And speaking for myself, I can

assure you that I have come long ago to regard her faults with the

same leniency that I accord my own.