The Mark Of Cain Part 20

"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 ap.r.o.n and a cap and the rest of it myself at _The 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 you _are_ here, 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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, _you_ are here!" she cried, "and I have almost missed you. Now you _must_ stay 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 pa.s.sed lightly over Barton and Margaret, into the backward, where all hours--good and evil--abide, remembered or forgotten.

CHAPTER XIII.--Another Patient.

"Des ailes! des ailes! des ailes!

Comme dans le chant de Ruckert."

--Theophile 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 "Daedalus," and the same sanguine prelate's "Mercury, The Secret Messenger." Here were Cardan and Raymond Lully, and a shabby set of the cla.s.sics, 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 quant.i.ty 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--rather _too_ acute, 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--_Goories_ he calls them--endowed with the power of flight. But _they_ were 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 the _weight_ of 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 Begimonta.n.u.s of Nuremberg?"

"The iron fly!" murmured Barton. "I can't say I do."