A doctor, especially a doctor actively practising among the poor and laborious, soon learns to take the incidents of his profession rather calmly. Barton had often been called in when a revel had ended in suicide or death; and if he had never before seen a man caught in a flying-machine, he had been used to heal wounds quite as dreadful caused by engines of a more familiar nature.
Though Barton, therefore, could go out to his round of visits on the day after his adventurous vigil without unusual emotion, it may be conceived that the distress and confusion atThe Bunhousewere very great. The police and the gloomy attendants on Death were in the place; Mrs. St. John Deloraine had to see many official people, to answer many disagreeable questions, and suffered in every way extremely from the consequences of her beneficent enterprise. But she displayed a coolness and businesslike common sense worthy of a less versatile philanthropist, and found time, amid the temporary ruin of her work, to pay due attention to Margaret. She had scarcely noticed the girl before, taking her very much on trust, and being preoccupied with various schemes of social enjoyment. But now she was struck by her beauty and her educated manner, though that, to be sure, was amply accounted for by the explanations offered by Cranley before her engagement. Already Mrs. St. John Deloraine was conceiving a project of perpetual friendship, and had made up her mind to adopt Margaret as a daughter, or, let us say, niece and companion. The girl was too refined to cope with the rough-and-ready young patronesses ofThe Bunhouse.
If the lady’s mind was even more preoccupied by the survivor in the hideous events of the evening than by the tragedy itself and the dead woman, Barton, too, found his thoughts straying to his new patient—not that he was a flirt or a sentimentalist. Even in the spring Barton’s fancy did not lightly turn to thoughts of love. He was not one of those “amatorious” young men (as Milton says, perhaps at too great length) who cannot see a pretty girl without losing their hearts to her. Barton was not so prodigal of his affections; yet it were vain to deny that, as he went his rather drowsy round of professional visits, his ideas were more apt to stray to the girl who had been stabbed, than to the man who had been rescued from the machinery. The man was old, yellow, withered, and, in Barton’s private opinion, more of a lunatic charlatan than a successful inventor. The girl was young, beautiful, and interesting enough, apart from her wound, to demand and secure a place in any fancy absolutely free.
It was no more than Barton’s actual duty to call atThe Old English Bunhousein the afternoon. Here he was welcomed by Mrs. St John Deloraine, who was somewhat pale and shaken by the horrors of the night. She had turned all her young customers out, and had stuck up a paper bearing a legend to the effect thatThe Old English Bunhousewas closed for the present and till further notice. A wistful crowd was drawn up on the opposite side of the street, and was staring atThe Bunhouse.
Mrs. St John Deloraine welcomed Barton, it might almost be said, with open arms. She had by this time, of course, laid aside the outward guise ofNitouche, and was dressed like other ladies, but better.
“My dear Mr. Barton,” she exclaimed, “your patient is doing very well indeed. She will be crazy with delight when she hears that you have called.”
Barton could not help being pleased at this intelligence, even when he had discounted it as freely as even a very brief acquaintance with Mrs. Si John Deloraine taught her friends to do.
“Do you think she is able to see me?” he asked.
“I’ll run to her room and inquire,” said Mrs. St John Deloraine, fleeting nimbly up the steep stairs, and leaving, like Astrsea, as described by Charles Lamb’s friend, a kind of rosy track or glow behind her from the chastened splendor of her very becoming hose.
Barton waited rather impatiently till the lady ofThe Bunhousereturned with the message that he might accompany her into the presence of the invalid.
A very brief interview satisfied him that his patient was going on even better than he had hoped; also that she possessed very beautiful and melancholy eyes. She said little, but that little kindly, and asked whether Mr. Cranley had sent to inquire for her. Mrs. St. John Deloraine answered the question, which puzzled Barton, in the negative; and when they had left Margaret (Miss Burnside, as Mrs. St. John Deloraine called her), he ventured to ask who the Mr. Cranley might be about whom the girl had spoken.
“Well,” replied Mrs. St. John Deloraine, “it was through Mr. Cranley that I engaged both Miss Burnside and that unhappy woman whom I can’t think of without shuddering. The inquest is to be held to-morrow. It is too dreadful when these things, that have been only names, come home to one. Now, I really do not like to think hardly of anybody, but I must admit that Mr. Cranley has quite misled me about the housekeeper. He gave her an excellent character,especiallyfor sobriety, and till yesterday I had no fault to find with her. Then, the girls say, she became quite wild and intoxicated, and it is hard to believe that this is the first time she yielded to that horrid temptation. Don’t you think it was odd of Mr. Cranley? And I sent round a messenger with a note to his rooms, but it was returned, marked, ‘Has left; address not Known.’ I don’t know what has become of him. Perhaps the housekeeper could have told us, but the unfortunate woman is beyond reach of questions.”
“Do you mean the Mr. Cranley who is Rector of St. Medard’s, in Chelsea?” asked Barton.
“No; I mean Mr. Thomas Cranley, the son of the Earl of Birkenhead. He was a great friend of mine.”
“Mr. Thomas Cranley!” exclaimed Barton, with an expression of face which probably spoke at least three volumes, and these of a highly sensational character.
“Now, please,” cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, clasping her hands in a pretty attitude of entreaty, like a recording angel hesitating to enter the peccadillo of a favorite saint; “please don’t say you know anything against Mr. Cranley. I am aware that he has many enemies.”
Barton was silent for a minute. He had that good old school-boy feeling about not telling tales out of school, which is so English and so unknown in France; but, on the other side,hecould scarcely think it right to leave a lady of invincible innocence at the mercy of a confirmed scoundrel.
“Upon my word, it is a very unpleasant thing to have to say; but really, if you ask me, I should remark that Mr. Cranley’s enemies are of his own making. I would not go to him for a girl’s character, I’m sure. But I thought he had disappeared from society.”
“So he had. He told me that there was a conspiracy against him, and that I was one of the few people who, he felt sure, would never desert him. And I never would. I never turn my back on my friends.”
“If there was a conspiracy,” said Barton, “I am the ringleader in it; for, as you ask me, I must assure you, on my honor, that I detected Mr. Cranley in the act of trying to cheat some very young men at cards. I would not have mentioned it for the world,” he added, almost alarmed at the expression of pain and terror in Mrs. St John Deloraine’s face; “but you wished to be told. And I could not honestly leave you in the belief that he is a man to be trusted. What he did when I saw him was only what all who knew him well would have expected. And his treatment of you, in the matter of that woman’s character, was,” cried Barton, growing indignant as he thought of it, “one of the very basest things I ever heard of. I had seen that woman before; she was not fit to be entrusted with the care of girls. She was at one time very well known.”
Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s face had passed through every shade of expression—doubt, shame, and indignation; but now it assumed an air of hope.
“Margaret has always spoken so well of him,” she said, half to herself. “He was always very kind to her, and yet she was only the poor daughter of a humble acquaintance.”
“Perhaps he deviated into kindness for once,” said Barton; “but as to his general character, it is certain that it was on a par with the trap he laid for you. I wish I knew where to find him. You must never let him get the poor girl back into his hands.”
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, with conviction in her voice; “and now I must go back to her, and see whether she wants anything. Do you think I may soon move her to my own house, in Cheyne Walk? It is not far, and she will be so much more comfortable there.”
“The best thing you can do,” said Barton; “and be sure you send for me if you want me, or if you ever hear anything more of Mr. Cranley. I am quite ready to meet him anywhere.”
“You will call to-morrow?”
“Certainly, about this time,” said Barton; and he kept his promise assiduously, calling often.
A fortnight went by, and Margaret, almost restored to health, and in a black tea-gown, the property of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, was lying indolently on a sofa in the house in Cheyne Walk. She was watching the struggle between the waning daylight and the fire, when the door opened, and the servant announced “Dr. Barton.”
Margaret held forth a rather languid hand.
“I’m so sorry Mrs. St. John Deloraine is out,” she said. “She is at a soap-bubble party. I wish I could go. It is so long since I saw any children, or had any fun.”
So Margaret spoke, and then she sighed, remembering the reason why she should not attend soap-bubble parties.
“I’m selfish enough to be glad you could not go,” said Barton; “for then I should have missed you. But why do you sigh?”
“I have had a good many things to make me unhappy,” said Margaret, “in addition to my—to my accident. You must not think I am always bewailing myself. But perhaps you know that I lost my father, just before I entered Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s service, and then my whole course of life was altered.”
“I am very sorry for you,” said Barton, simply. He did not know what else to say; but he felt more than his conventional words indicated, and perhaps he looked as if he felt it and more.
Margaret was still too weak to bear an expression of sympathy, and tears came into her eyes, followed by a blush on her pale, thin cheeks. She was on the point of breaking down.
There is nothing in the world so trying to a young man as to see a girl crying. A wild impulse to kiss and comfort her passed through Barton’s mind, before he said, awkwardly again:
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am; I wish I could do anything for you. Can’t I help you in any way? You must not give up so early in the troubles of life; and then, who knows but yours, having begun soon, are nearly over?”
Barton would perhaps have liked to ask her to let him see that theywereover, as far as one mortal can do as much for another.
“They have been going on so long,” said Margaret “I have had such a wandering life, and such changes.”
Barton would have given much to be able to ask for more information; but more was not offered.
“Let us think of the future,” he said. “Have you any idea about what you mean to do?”
“Mrs. St. John Deloraine is very kind. She wishes me to stay with her always. But I am puzzled about Mr. Cranley. I don’t know what he would like me to do. He seems to have gone abroad.”
Barton hated to hear her mention Cranley’s name.
“Had you known him long?” he asked.
“No; for a very short time only. But he was an old friend of my father’s, and had promised him to take care of me. He took me away from school, and he gave me a start in life.”
“But surely he might have found something more worthy of you, of your education,” said Barton.
“What can a girl do?” answered Margaret. “We know so little. I could hardly even have taught very little children. They thought me dreadfully backward at school—at least, Miss—— I mean, the teachers thought me backward.”
“I’m sure you know as much as anyone should,” said Barton, indignantly. “Were you at a nice school?” he added.
He had been puzzling himself for many days over Margaret’s history. She seemed to have had at least the ordinary share of education and knowledge of the world; and yet he had found her occupying a menial position at a philanthropic bunhouse. Even now she was a mere dependent of Mrs. St. John Deloraine, though there was a stanchness in that lady’s character which made her patronage not precarious.
“There were some nice girls at it,” answered Margaret, without committing herself.
Rochefoucauld declares that there are excellent marriages, but no such thing as a delightful marriage. Perhaps school-girls may admit, as an abstract truth, that good schools exist; but few would allow that any place of education is “nice.”
“It is really getting quite late,” Barton observed, reluctantly. He liked to watch the girl, whose beauty, made wan by illness, received just a touch of becoming red from the glow of the fire. He liked to talk to her; in fact, this was his most interesting patient by far. It would be miserably black and dark in his lodgings, he was aware; and non-paying patients would be importunate in proportion to their poverty. The poor are often the most exacting of hypochondriacs. Margaret noticed his reluctance to go contending with a sense of what he owed to propriety.
“I am sure you must want tea; but I don’t like to ring. It is so short a time since I wore an apron and a cap and the rest of it myself atThe Bunhouse, that I am afraid to ask the servants to do anything for me. They must dislike me; it is very natural.”
“It is not natural at all,” said Barton, with conviction; “perfectly monstrous, on the other hand.” This little compliment eclipsed the effect of fire-light on the girl’s face. “Suppose I ring,” he added, “and then you can say, when Mary says ‘Did you ring, miss?’ ‘No, I didn’t ring; but as youarehere, Mary, would you mind bringing tea?’”
“I don’t know if that would be quite honest,” said Margaret, doubtfully.
“A pious fraud—a drawing-room comedy,” said Barton; “have we rehearsed it enough?”
Then he touched the bell, and the little piece of private theatricals was played out, though one of the artists had some difficulty (as amateurs often have) in subduing an inclination to giggle.
“Now, this is quite perfect,” said Barton, when he had been accommodated with a large piece of plum-cake. “This is the very kind of cake which we specially prohibit our patients to touch; and so near dinner-time, too! There should be a new proverb, ‘Physician, diet thyself.’ You see, we don’t all live on a very thin slice of cold bacon and a piece of dry toast.”
“Mrs. St John Deloraine has never taken up that kind of life,” said Margaret. “She tries a good many new things,” Barton remarked.
“Yes; but she is the best woman in the world!” answered the girl. “Oh, if you knew what a comfort it is to be with a lady again!” And she shuddered as she remembered her late chaperon.
“I wonder if some day—you won’t think me very rude?” asked Barton—“you would mind telling me a little of your history?”
“Mr. Cranley ordered me to say nothing about it,” answered Margaret; “and a great deal is very sad and hard to tell. You are all so kind, and everything is so quiet here, and safe and peaceful, that it frightens me to think of things that have happened, or may happen.”
“They shall never happen, if you will trust me,” cried Barton, when a carriage was heard to stop at the gateway of the garden outside.
“Here is Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last,” cried Margaret, starting to run to the window; but she was so weak that she tripped, and would have fallen had Barton not caught her lightly.
“Oh, how stupid you must think me!” she said, blushing. And Barton thought he had never seen anything so pretty.
“Once for all, I don’t think you stupid, or backward, or anything else that you call yourself.”
But at that very moment the door opened, and Mrs. St John Deloraine entered, magnificently comfortable in furs, and bringing a fresh air of hospitality and content with existence into the room.
“Oh,youare here!” she cried, “and I have almost missed you. Now youmuststay to dinner. You need not dress; we are all alone, Margaret and I.”
So he did stop to dine, and pauper hypochondriacs, eager for his society (which was always cheering), knocked, and rang also, at his door in vain. It was an excellent dinner; and, on the wings of the music Mrs. St John Deloraine was playing in the front drawing-room, two happy hours passed lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all hours—good and evil—abide, remembered or forgotten.
“Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!Comme dans le chant de Ruckert.”—Théophile Gautier.
“So you think a flying machine impossible, sir, and me, I presume, a fanatic? Well, well, you have Eusebius with you. ‘Such an one,’ he says—meaning me, and inventors like me—‘is a little crazed with the humors of melancholy.’”
The speaker was the man whom Barton had rescued from the cogs and wheels and springs of an infuriated engine. Barton could not but be interested in the courage and perseverance of this sufferer, whom he was visiting in hospital. The young surgeon had gone to inspect the room in Paterson’s Rants, and had found it, as he more or less expected, the conventional den of the needy inventor. Our large towns are full of such persons. They are the Treasure Hunters of cities and of civilization—the modern seekers for the Philosopher’s Stone. At the end of a vista of dreams they behold the great Discovery made perfect, and themselves the winners of fame and of wealth incalculable.
For the present, most of these visionaries are occupied with electricity. They intend to make the lightning a domestic slave in every house, and to turn Ariel into a common carrier. But, from the aspect of Winter’s den in Paterson’s Rents, it was easy to read that his heart was set on a more ancient foible. The white deal book-shelves, home-made, which lined every wall, were packed with tattered books on mechanics, and especially on the art of flying. Here you saw the spoils of the fourpenny box of cheap bookvendors mixed with volumes in better condition, purchased at a larger cost. Here—among the litter of tattered pamphlets and well-thumbed “Proceedings” of the Linnean and the Aeronautic Society of Great Britain—here were Fredericus Hermannus’ “De Arte Volandi,” and Cayley’s works, and Hatton Turner’s “Astra Castra,” and the “Voyage to the Moon” of Cyrano de Bergerac, and Bishop Wilkins’s “Dædalus,” and the same sanguine prelate’s “Mercury, The Secret Messenger.” Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the classics, mostly in French translations, and a score of lucubrations by French and other inventors—Ponton d’Amocourt, Borelli, Chabrier, Girard, and Marey.
Even if his books had not shown the direction of the new patient’s mind—(a man is known by his books at least as much as by his companions, and companions Winter had none)—even if the shelves had not spoken clearly, the models and odds-and-ends in the room would have proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library, and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the ceiling.
Barton, who was more than commonly tall, found his head being buffeted by big preserved wings of birds and other flying things—from the sweeping pinions of the albatross to the leathery covering of the bat. From the ceiling, too, hung models, cleverly constructed in various materials; and here—a cork with quills stuck into it, and with a kind of drill-bow—was the little flying model of Sir George Cayley. The whole place, dusty and musty, with a faded smell of the oil in birds’ feathers, was almost more noisome than curious. When Barton left it, his mind was made up as to the nature of Winter’s secret, or delusion; and when he visited that queer patient in hospital, he was not surprised either by his smattered learning or by his golden dreams.
“Yes, sir; Eusebius is against me, no doubt,” Winter went on with his eager talk. “An acute man—rathertooacute, don’t you think, for a Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the arguments of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of high matters.”
“Such as flying?” put in Barton.
“Yes; such as our great aim—the aim of all the ages, I may call it. What does Bishop Wilkins say, sir? Why, he says, (I doubt not but that flying in the air may be easily effected by a diligent and ingenious artificer.) ‘Diligent,’ I may say, I have been; as to ‘ingenious,’ I leave the verdict to others.”
“Was that Peter Wilkins you were quoting?” asked Barton, to humor his man.
“Why, no sir; the Bishop was not Peter. Peter Wilkins is the hero of a mere romance, in which, it is true, we meet with women—Goorieshe calls them—endowed with the power of flight. Buttheywere born so. We get no help from Peter Wilkins: a mere dreamer.”
“It doesn’t seem to be so easy as the Bishop fancies?” remarked Barton, leading him on.
“No, sir,” cried Winter, all his aches and pains forgotten, and his pale face flushed with the delight of finding a listener who did not laugh at him. “No, sir; the Bishop, though ingenious, was not a practical man. But look at what he says about theweightof your flying machine! Can anything be more sensible? Borne out, too, by the most recent researches, and the authority of Professor Pettigrew Bell himself. You remember the iron fly made by Begimontanus of Nuremberg?”
“The iron fly!” murmured Barton. “I can’t say I do.”
“You will find a history of it in Bamus. This fly would leap from the hands of the great Begimontanus, flutter and buzz round the heads of his guests assembled at supper, and then, as if wearied, return and repose on the finger of its maker.”
“You don’t mean to say you believethat?” asked Barton.
“Why not, sir; why not? Did not Archytas of Tarenturn, one of Plato’s acquaintances, construct a wooden dove, in no way less miraculous? And the same Regimontanus, at Nuremberg, fashioned an eagle which, by way of triumph, did fly out of the city to meet Charles V. But where was I? Oh, at Bishop Wilkins. Cardan doubted of the iron fly of Regimontanus, because the material was so heavy. But Bishop Wilkins argues, in accordance with the best modern authorities, that the weight is no hindrance whatever, if proportional to the motive power. A flying machine, says Professor Bell, in theEncyclopodia Britannica—(you will not question the authority of theEncyclopodia Britannica?)—a flying machine should be ‘a compact, moderately heavy, and powerful structure.’ There, you see, the Bishop was right.”
“Yours was deuced powerful,” remarked Barton. “I did not expect to see two limbs of you left together.”
“Itispowerful, or rather itwas,” answered Winter, with a heavy sigh; “but it’s all to do over again—all to do over again! Yet it was a noble specimen. ‘The passive surface was reduced to a minimum,’ as the learned author in theEncyclopodiarecommends.”
“By Jove! the passive surface was jolly near reduced to a mummy.Youwere the passive surface, as far as I could see.”
“Don’t laugh at me, please sir, after you’ve been so kind. All the rest laugh at me. You can’t think what a pleasure it has been to talk to a scholar,” and there was a new flush on the poor fellow’s cheek, and something watery in his eyes.
“I beg your pardon, my dear sir,” cried Barton, greatly ashamed of himself. “Pray go on. The subject is entirely new to me. I had not been aware that there were any serious modern authorities in favor of the success of this kind of experiment.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Winter, much encouraged, and taking Barton’s hand in his own battered claw; “thank you. But why should we run only to modern authorities? All great inventions, all great ideas, have been present to men’s minds and hopes from the beginning of civilization. Did not Empedocles forestall Mr. Darwin, and hit out, at a stroke, the hypothesis of natural selection?”
“Well, hedidmake a shot at it,” admitted Barton, who remembered as much as that from “the old coaching days,” and college lectures at St. Gatien’s.
“Well, what do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in Greece, we find Dædalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for ships; but I put it to you, is that probable?”
“Obvious bosh,” said Barton.
“And the meteorological mycologists, sir,theymaintain that Dædalus is only the lightning flying in the breast of the storm!”
“There’s nothing those fellows won’t say,” replied Barton.
“I’m glad you are with me, sir. In DædalusIsee either a record of a successful attempt at artificial flight, or at the very least, the expression of an aspiration as old as culture.Youwouldn’t make Dædalus the evening clouds accompanying Minos, the sun, to his setting in Sicily, in the west?” added Winter anxiously.
“I never heard of such nonsense,” said Barton.
“Sir Frederick Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy, is with me, sir, if I may judge by his picture of Dædalus.”
“Every sensible man must be with you,” answered Barton.
“Well, sir, I won’t detain you with other famous flyers of antiquity, such as Abaris, mounted on an arrow, as described by Herodotus. Doubtless the arrow was a flying machine, a novelty to the ignorant Scythians.”
“Itmusthave been, indeed.”
“Then there was the Greek who flew before Nero in the circus; but he, I admit, had a bad fall, as Seutonius recounts. That character of Lucian’s, who employed an eagle’s wing and a vulture’s in his flight, I take to be a mere figment of the satirist’s imagination. But what do you make of Simon Magus? He, I cannot doubt, had invented a machine in which, like myself, he made use of steam or naphtha. This may be gathered from Arnobius, our earliest authority. He mentions expresslycurrum Simonis Magi et quadrigas igneas, the chariot of Simon Magus and hisvehicles of flame—clearly the naphtha is alluded to—which vanished into air at the word of the Apostle Peter. The latter circumstances being miraculous, I take leave to doubt; but certainly Simon Magus had overcome the difficulties of aerial navigation. But, though Petrus Crinitus rejects the tradition as fabulous, I am prepared to believe that Simon Magus actually flew from the Capitol to the Aventine!
“‘The world knows nothing of its greatest men,’” quoted Barton.
“Simon Magus has been the victim, sir, of theological acrimony, his character blackened, his flying machine impugned, or ascribed, as by the credulous Arnobius, to diabolical arts. In the dark ages, naturally, the science of Artificial Flight was either neglected or practised in secret, through fear of persecution. Busbequius speaks of a Turk at Constantinople who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I mean), was untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we tarry in the past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both inKnowledgeand theCornhill? Does not the preeminent authority, Professor Pettigrew Bell, himself declare, with the weight, too, of theEncyclopodia Britannica, that ‘the number of successful flying models is considerable. It is not too much to expect,’ he goes on, ‘that the problem of artificial flight will be actually solved, or at least much simplified.’ What less can we expect, as he observes, in the land of Watt and Stephenson, when the construction of flying machines has been ‘taken up in earnest by practical men?’”
“We may indeed,” said Barton, “hope for the best when persons of your learning and ingenuity devote their efforts to the cause.”
“As to my learning, you flatter me,” said Winter. “I am no scholar; but an enthusiast will study the history of his subject Did I remark that the great Dr. Johnson, in these matters so sceptical, admits (in a romance, it is true) the possibility of artificial flight? The artisan of the Happy Valley expected to solve the problem in one year’s time. ‘If all men were equally virtuous,’ said this artist, ‘I should with equal alacrity teach them all to fly.’”
“And you will keep your secret, like Dr. Johnson’s artist?”
“ToyouI do not mind revealing this much. The vans or wings of my machine describe elliptic figures of eight.”
“I’ve seen them dothat, said Barton.
“Like the wings of birds; and have the same forward and downward stroke, by a direct piston action. The impetus is given, after a descent in air—which I effected by starting from a height of six feet only—by a combination of heated naphtha and of india rubber under torsion. By steam alone, in 1842, Philips made a model of a flying-machine soar across two fields. Penaud’s machine, relying only on india rubber under torsion, flies for some fifty yards. What a model can do, as Bishop Wilkins well observes, a properly weighted and proportioned flying-machine, capable of carrying a man, can do also.”
“But yours, when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, was not carrying you at all.”
“Something had gone wrong with the mechanism,” answered Winter, sighing. “It is always so. An inventor has many things to contend against. Remember Ark-wright, and how he was puzzled hopelessly by that trifling error in the thickness of the valves in his spinning machine. He had to give half his profits to Strutt, the local blacksmith, before Strutt would tell him that he had only to chalk his valves! The thickness of a coating of chalk made all the difference. Some trifle like that, depend on it, interfered with my machine. You see, I am obliged to make my experiments at night, and in the dark, for fear of being discovered and anticipated. I have been on the verge—nay,overthe verge—of success. ‘No imaginable invention,’ Bishop Wilkins says, ‘could prove of greater benefit to the world, or greater glory to the author.’ A few weeks ago that glory was mine!”
“Why a few weeks ago?” asked Barton. “Was your machine more advanced then than when I met you?”
“I cannot explain what had happened to check its motion,” said Winter, wearily; “but a few weeks ago mymachine acted, and I may say that I knew the sensations of a bird on the wing.”
“Do you mean that you actuallyflew?”
“For a very short distance, I did indeed, sir!”
Barton looked at him curiously: two currents of thought—one wild and credulous, the other practical and professional—surged and met in his brain. The professional current proved the stronger for the moment.
“Good-night,” he said. “You are tiring and over-exciting yourself. I will call again soon.”
Hedidcall again, and Winter told him a tale which will be repeated in its proper place.
“All precious things, discovered late,To those that seek them issue forth;For Love, in sequel, works with Fate,And draws the veil from hidden worth.”—The Sleeping Beauty.
That Margaret and Barton were losing their hearts to each other could not, of course, escape the keen eye of Mrs. St. John Deloraine. She noticed that Margaret, though perfectly restored to health, and lacking only the clear brown over the rose of her cheeks, was by no means so light of heart as in the very earliest days of her recovery. Love makes men and women poor company, and, to speak plainly, takes the fun out of them. Margaret was absent-minded, given to long intervals of silence, a bad listener—all of them things hateful to Mrs. St. John Delo-raine, but pardoned, in this instance, by the benevolent lady. Margaret was apt to blush without apparent cause, to start when a knock came to the door, to leave the room hurriedly, and need to be sought and brought back, when Barton called. Nor was Barton himself such good company as he had been. His manner was uncertain and constrained; his visits began to be paid at longer intervals; he seemed to have little to say, or talked in fits and starts; and yet he did not know how to go away.
Persons much less clear-sighted than Mrs. St John Deloraine could have interpreted, without difficulty, this awkward position of affairs.
Now, like most women of her kindly and impulsive character (when it has not been refined away into nothing by social hypocrisies), Mrs. St. John Deloraine was a perfectly reckless match-maker. She believed in love with her whole heart; it was a joy to her to mark the beginnings of inclination in two young souls, and she simply revelled in an “engagement.” All considerations of economy, prudence, and foresight melted away before the ardor of her enthusiasm: to fall in love first, to get engaged next, and to be married as soon as possible afterward, without regard to consequences of any kind, were, in this lady’s mind, heroic actions, and almost the whole duty of men and women.
In her position, and with her opportunities, she soon knew all that was to be known about Margaret’s affections, and also about Barton’s.
“He’s as much in love with you as a man can be, my dear,” she said to Margaret “Not worthy of him? Your past a barrier between you and him? Nonsense, Daisy; that ishisaffair. I know you are as good a girl as ever lived. Your father was poor, no doubt, and that wretched Mr. Cranley—yes, he was a wretch—had a spite against you. I don’t know why, and you won’t help me to guess. But Mr. Barton is too much of a man to let that kind of thing disturb him, I’m sure. You are afraid of something, Margaret Your nerves have been unstrung. I’m sure I don’t wonder at it. I know what it is to lose one’s nerve. I could no more drive now, as I used to do, or go at the fences I used to thinknothingof! But once you are married to a man like Mr. Barton, who is there can frighten you? And as to being poor,” and Mrs. St. John Deloraine explained her generous views as to arrangements on her part, which would leave Margaret far from portionless.
Then Margaret would cry a little, and lay her head on her friend’s shoulder, and the friend would shed some natural tears for company; and they would have tea, and Barton would call, and look a great deal at his boots, and fidget with his hat.
“I’ve no patience with you, Mr. Barton,” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine at last, when she had so manouvred as to have some private conversation with him, and Barton had unpacked his heart. “I’ve no patience with you. Why, where is your courage? ‘She has a history?’ She’s been persecuted. Well, where’s your chivalry? Why don’t you try your fortune? There never was a better girl, nor a pleasanter companion when she’s not—when she’s not disturbed by the nervousness of an undecided young man. If you don’t take your courage in both hands, I will carry Margaret off on a yachting voyage to the Solomon Islands, or Jericho, or somewhere. Look here, I am going to take her for a drive in Battersea Park; it is handy, and looking very pretty, and as lonely as Tadmor in the wilderness. We will get out and saunter among the ponds. I shall be tired and sit down; you will show Margaret the marvels of natural history in the other pond, and when you come back you will both have made up your minds!”
With this highly transparent ruse Barton expressed his content. The carriage was sent for, and in less than half an hour Barton and Margaret were standing alone, remote, isolated from the hum of men, looking at a pond where some water-hens were diving, while a fish (“coarse,” but not uninteresting) occasionally flopped on the surface, The trees—it was the last week of May—were in the earliest freshness of their foliage; the air, for a wonder, was warm and still.
“How quiet and pretty it is!” said Margaret “Who would think we were in London?”
Barton said nothing. Like the French parrot, mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, he thought the more.
“Miss Burnside!” he exclaimed suddenly, “we have known each other now for some time.”
This was a self evident proposition; but Margaret felt what was coming, and trembled. She turned for a moment, pretending to watch the movements of one of the water-fowls. Inwardly she was nerving herself to face the hard part of her duty, and to remind Barton of the mystery in her life.
“Yes,” she said at last; “we have known each other for some time, and yet—you know nothing about me.”
With these words she lifted her eyes and looked him straight in the face. There seemed a certain pride and nobility in her he had not seen before, though her beautiful brown eyes were troubled, and there was a mark of pain on her brow. What was she going to tell him?
Barton felt his courage come back to him.
“I know one thing about you, and that is enough for me. I know I love you!” he said. “Margaret, can’t you care for me a little? Don’t tell me anything you think you should not say. I’m not curious.”
Margaret turned back again to her inspection of the pond and its inmates, grasping the iron railing in front of her and gazing down into the waters, so that he could not see her face.
“No,” she said at last, in a very low voice; “it would not be fair.” Then, after another pause, “There is someone—” she murmured, and stopped.
This was the last thing Barton had expected. If she did not care forhim, he fancied she cared for nobody.
“If you like someone better—” he was beginning.
“But I don’t like him at all,” interrupted Margaret. “He was very kind, but—”
“Then can’t you likeme?” asked Barton; and by this time he was very near her, and was looking down into her face, as curiously as she was still studying the natural history of Battersea Ponds.
“Perhaps I should not; it is so difficult to know,” murmured Margaret. And yet her rosy confusion, and beautiful lowered eyes, tender and ashamed, proved that she knew very well. Love is not always so blind but that Barton saw his opportunity, and was assured that she had surrendered. And he prepared, a conqueror, to march in with all the honors and rewards of war; for the place was lonely, and a covenant is no covenant until it is sealed.
But when he would have kissed her, Margaret disengaged herself gently, with a little sigh, and returned to the strong defensible position by the iron railings.
“I must tell you about myself,” she said. “I have promised never to tell, but I must. I have been so tossed about, and so weak, and so many things have happened.” And she sighed.
However impassioned a lover may be, he does naturally prefer that there should be no mystery about her he adores. Barton had convinced himself (aided by the eloquence and reposing on the feminine judgment of Mrs. St. John Deloraine) that Margaret could have nothing that was wrong to conceal. He could not look at her frank eyes and kind face and suspect her; though, to anyone but a lover, these natural advantages are no argument. He, therefore, prepared to gratify an extreme curiosity, and, by way of comforting and aiding Margaret, was on the point of assuming an affectionate attitude. But she moved a little away, and, still turning toward the friendly ponds, began her story:
“The person—the gentleman whom I was thinking of was a friend of my father’s, who, at one time, wanted him”—here Margaret paused—“wanted me to—to be his wife some day.”
The rapid imagination of Barton conjured up the figure of a well-to-do local pawnbroker, or captain of a trading vessel, as the selected spouse of Margaret. He fumed at the picture in his fancy.
“I didn’t like him much, though he certainly was very kind. His name—but perhaps I should not mention his name?”
“Never mind,” said Barton. “I dare say I never heard of him.”
“But I should tell you, first of all, that my own name is not that which you, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine know me by. I had often intended to tell her; but I have become so frightened lately, and it seemed so mean to be living with her under a false name. But to speak of it brought so many terrible things back to mind.”
“Dear Margaret,” Barton whispered, taking her hand.
They were both standing, at this moment, with their backs to the pathway, and an observer might have thought that they were greatly interested in the water-fowl.
“My name is not Burnside,” Margaret went on, glancing over her shoulder across the gardens and toward the river; “my name is—”
“Daisy Shields!” cried a clear voice. “Daisy, you’re found at last, and I’ve found you! How glad Miss Marlett will be!”
But by this time the astonished Barton beheld Margaret in the impassioned embrace of a very pretty and highly-excited young lady; while Mrs. St. John Deloraine, who was with her, gazed with amazement in her eyes.
“Oh, my dear!” Miss Harman (for it was that enthusiast) hurried on, in a pleasant flow of talk, like a brook, with pleasant interruptions. “Oh, my dear! I was walking in the park with my maid, and I met Mrs. St. John Deloraine, and she said she had lost her friends, and I came to help her to look for them; and I’ve foundyou!It’s like Stanley finding Livingstone. ‘How I Found Daisy.’ I’ll write a book about it. And wherehaveyou been hiding yourself? None of the girls ever knew anything was the matter—only Miss Mariett and me! And I’ve left for good; and she and I are quite friends, and I’m to be presented next Drawing Room.”
While this address (which, at least, proved that Margaret had acquaintances in the highest circles) was being poured forth, Mrs. St. John Deloraine and Barton were observing all with unfeigned astonishment and concern.
They both perceived that the mystery of Margaret’s past was about to be dispelled, or rather, for Barton, it alreadywasdispelled. The names of Shields and Miss Marlett had toldhimall that he needed to know. But he would rather have heard the whole story from his lady’s lips; and Mrs. St. John Deloraine was mentally accusing Janey Harman of having interrupted a “proposal,” and spoiled a darling scheme.
It was therefore with a certain most unfamiliar sharpness that Mrs. St John Deloraine, observing that the day was clouded over, requested Margaret to return to the carriage.
“And as Miss Harman seems to havea great dealto say to you, Margaret,” added the philanthropic lady, “you two had better walk on as fast as you can; foryoumust be very careful not to catch cold! I see Miss Harman’s maid waiting for her in the distance there. And you and I, Mr. Barton, if you will give me your arm, will follow slower; I’m not a good walker.”
“Now,” said Barton’s companion eagerly, when Margaret and Janey, about three yards in advance, might be conventionally regarded as beyond earshot—“Now, Mr. Barton, am I to congratulate you?”
Barton gave a little shamefaced laugh, uneasily.
“I don’t know—I hope so—I’m not sure.”
“Oh, you’re not satisfactory—not at all satisfactory. Are youstillshilly-shallying? What is the matter with young people?” cried the veteran of twenty-nine. “Or was it that wretched Janey, rushing in, like a cow in a conservatory? She’s a regular school-girl!”
“It isn’t that exactly, or at least that’s not all. I hope—I think she does care for me, or will care for me, a little.”
“Oh, bother!” said Mrs. St John Deloraine. She would not, for all the world, reveal the secrets of the confessional, and tell Barton what she knew of the state of Margaret’s heart But she was highly provoked, and showed it in her manners, at no time applauded for their repose.
“The fact is,” Barton admitted, “that I’m so taken by surprise I hardly know where I am! I do think, if I may say so without seeming conceited, that I have every reason to be happy. But, just as she was beginning to tell me about herself, that young lady, who seems to have known her at school, rushed in and explained the whole mystery.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Si John Deloraine, turning a little pale and looking anxiously at Barton, “was it anything so very dreadful?”
“She called her Daisy Shields,” said Barton.
“Well, I suppose she did! I always fancied, after what happened atThe Bunhouse, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false name. It was notherfault. The question is, What was her reason for keeping her real name concealed?”
“That’s what I’m coming to,” said Barton. “I have a friend, a Mr. Maitland.”
“Mr. Maitland of St. Gatien’s?” asked the widow.
“Yes.”
“I know him.”
“Yes, I have often heard him speak of you,” said Barton. “Well, he had aprotégée—a kind of ward, to tell a long story in few words—a girl whom he had educated, and whom he was under some kind of promise to her father to marry. The father died suddenly; the girl disappeared mysteriously from school at the same moment; and Maitland, after many efforts, has never been able to find out anything about her. Now, this girl’s name, this girl in whom my friend was interested, was Margaret Shields. That is the very name by which your friend, Miss Harman, called Margaret. So, you see, even if I am right, and if shedoescare for me, what a dreadful position I am in! I want to marry the girl to whom my friend is, more or less, engaged! My friend, after doing his best to find his ward, and after really suffering a great deal of anxiety and annoyance, is living abroad. What am I to say to him?”
“Mr. Barton,” said Mrs. St John Deloraine, “perhaps you alarm yourself too much. I think”—here she dropped her voice a little—“I think—I don’t think Mr. Maitland’sheartis very deeply concerned about Miss Shields. I may be wrong, but I know him pretty well”—she gave a little nervous laugh—“and I don’t think he’s inlovewith Margaret.”
By the time she reached the end of this interrupted and tentative discourse Mrs. St. John Deloraine was blushing like a rose in June.
Barton felt an enormous weight lifted from his heart, and a flood of welcome light poured into his mind. The two philanthropists were in love with each other!
“He’s an awfully good fellow, Maitland,” he replied. “But you are right; I’msureyou are right. You must know. He isnotin love with Margaret.”
Mrs. St. John Deloraine seemed not displeased at the tribute to Maitland’s unobtrusive virtues, and replied:
“But he will be very glad to hear that she is found at last, and quite safe; and I’ll write to him myself, this very evening. I heard from him—about a charity, you know—a few days ago, and I have his address.”
By this time they had reached the carriage. Janey, with many embraces, tore herself from Margaret, and went off with her attendant; while Mrs. St John Deloraine, with a beaming face, gave the coachman the order “Home.”
“We shall see you to-morrow at luncheon,” she cried to Barton; and no offer of hospitality had ever been more welcome.
He began to walk home, turning over his discoveries in his thoughts, when he suddenly came to a dead halt.
“By George!” he said out loud; “I’ll go back and have it out with her at once. I’ve had enough of this shillyshally.”
He turned and strode off in the direction of Cheyne Walk. In a few minutes he was standing at the familiar door.
“Will you ask Miss—Miss Burnside if she can see me for one moment?” he said to the servant “I have forgotten something she wished me to do for her,” he added in a mumble.
Then he was taken into the boudoir, and presently Margaret appeared, still in her bonnet and furs.
“I couldn’t help coming back, Margaret,” he said, as soon as she entered the room. “I want to tell you that it is all right, that you needn’t think—I mean, that I know all about it, and that there is nothing,nothingto prevent us—I mean» Margaret, if youreallycare for me—”
Then he came to a dead stop.
It was not a very easy situation. Barton could not exactly say to Margaret, “My dear girl, you need not worry yourself about Maitland. He does not care a pin for you; he’ll be delighted at being released. He is in love with Mrs. St. John Deloraine.”
That would have been a statement both adequate and explicit; but it could not have been absolutely flattering to Margaret, and it would have been exceedingly unfair to her hostess.
The girl came forward to the table, and stood with her hand on it, looking at Barton. She did not help him out in any way; her attitude was safe, but embarrassing.
He made a charge, as it were, at the position—a random, desperate charge.
“Margaret, can you trust me?” he asked.
She merely put out her hand, which he seized.
“Well, then, believe me when I tell you that I know everything about your doubts; that I know more than anyone else can do; and that there isnothingto prevent us from being happy. More than that, if you will only agree to make me happy, you will make everyone else happy too. Can’t you take it on trust? Can’t you believe me?”
Margaret said nothing; but she hid her face on Barton’s shoulder. Shedidbelieve him.
The position was carried!