Andrew Lang

“ Whir, whir, flap, thump, came the sounds, and then, mixed with and dominating them, the choking scream of a human being in agony. But, strangely enough, the scream appeared to be half checked and suppressed, as if the sufferer, whoever he might be, and whatever his torment, were striving with all his might to endure in silence. Barton had heard such cries in the rooms of the hospital. To such sounds the Question Chambers of old prisons and palaces must often have echoed. Barton stopped, thrilling with a half-superstitious dread; so moving, in that urban waste, were the accents of pain. ”

“ Just under the window one of the little girls was standing, throwing crumbs, remains of the tartines, to robins and sparrows, which chattered and fought over the spoil. One or two blackbirds, with their yellow bills, fluttered shyly on the outside of the ring of more familiar birds. Up from the south a miserable blue-gray haze was drifting and shuddering, ominous of a thaw. From the eaves and the branches of the trees heavy drops kept falling, making round black holes in the snow, and mixing and melting here and there in a yellowish plash.
Margaret shivered. ”

“ The girl trembled a little as the school-mistress drew her closer, and made her sit down on a sofa.
“What has happened?” she asked. Her lips were so dry that she could scarcely speak.
“You must make up your mind to be very brave. Your father——”
“Was it an accident?” asked Margaret, suddenly. She knew pretty well what was coming. Often she had foreseen the end, which it needed no prophet to foretell. “Was it anything very dreadful?”
“Mr. Maitland does not say. You are to be called for to-day. Poor Daisy!”
“Oh, Miss Marlett, I am so very unhappy!” the girl sobbed. ”

“ Cranley at the house of the lady of The Bunhouse, Barton, when he came home from a round of professional visits, had found Maitland waiting in his chill, unlighted lodgings. Of late, Maitland had got into the habit of loitering there, discussing and discussing all the mysteries which made him feel that he was indeed “moving about in worlds not realized.” Keen as was the interest which Barton took in the labyrinth of his friend’s affairs, he now and again wearied of Maitland, and of a conversation that ever revolved round the same fixed but otherwise uncertain points. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Hit or Miss tavern, to customers (rough customers, at least) who entered it on a foggy winter night, seemed merely a public by the river’s brim. Not being ravaged and parched by a thirst for the picturesque, Tommy and his mates failed to pause and observe the architectural peculiarities of the building. Even if they had been of a romantic and antiquarian turn, the fog was so thick that they could have seen little to admire, though there was plenty to be admired. The Hit or Miss was not more antique in its aspect than modern in its fortunes. ”

“ The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were drawn, and a monster of the deep—one of the famous Oxford soles, larger than you ever see them elsewhere—smoked between Maitland and Barton. Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of “strong,” a reminiscence of “the old coaching days,” when Maitland had read with Barton for Greats. ”

“ He was as drowsy as a man can be who still steps along and keeps an open eye. The streets were empty, a sandy wind was walking them alone, and hard by the sullen river flowed on, the lamplights dimly reflected in the growing blue of morning. Barton was just passing the locked doors of the Hit or Miss—for he preferred to go homeward by the riverside—when a singular sound, or mixture of sounds, from behind the battered old hoarding close by, attracted his attention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Barlow, Robert Maitland had conceived the hope that he might have a girl educated up to his own intellectual standard, and made, or “ready-made,” a helpmate meet for him. He was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian of Margaret Shields, and the ward might be expected (by anyone who did not know human nature any better) to blossom into the wife.
Maitland could “please himself,” as people say; that is, in his choice of a partner he had no relations to please—no one but the elect young lady, who, after all, might not be “pleased” with alacrity. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The usual troubles of a winter voyage, acting on a dilapidated digestive system, were not spared the guardian of Margaret But everything—-even a period of waiting at the Paris salle d’attente, and a struggle with the cochers at the station (who, for some reason, always decline to take a fare) —must come to an end at last. About dinner-time, Maitland was jolted through the glare of the Parisian streets, to the Avenue de l’Opéra. At the Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine he determined not to betray himself by too precipitate eagerness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a dead silence while Martin made this experiment.
“By gad, I can see every pip on the cards!” cried Martin.
“Of course you can; and if you had the art of correcting fortune, you could make use of what you see. At the least you would know whether to take a card or stand.”
“I didn’t,” said the wretched Cranley. “How on earth was I to know that the infernal fool of a waiter would spill the liquor there, and give you a chance against me?”
“You spilt the liquor yourself,” Barton answered coolly, “when I took away your cigarette-case. ”

“ Through the crepuscular light, bulks of things—big, black, formless—were dimly seen; but nearer the hoarding than the middle of the waste open ground was a spectacle that puzzled the looker-on. Great fans were winnowing the air, a wheel was running at prodigious speed, flaming vapors fled hissing forth, and the figure of a man, attached in some way to the revolving fans, was now lifted several feet from the ground, now dashed to earth again, now caught in and now torn from the teeth of the flying wheel.
Barton did not pause long in empty speculation; he shouted, “Hold on!” ”

“ I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her? Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil’s brew have you been making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?”
“My dear girl,” replied Mr. Cranley, “you put too many questions at once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper. As to the ‘devil’s brew’ which you indicate in a style worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? ”

“ Gatien’s, whom, in his heart, Maitland could not but accuse of being at the bottom of all these unprecedented troubles. If Bielby had not driven him, as it were, out of Oxford, by urging him to acquire a wider knowledge of humanity, and to expand his character by intercourse with every variety of our fallen species, Maitland felt that he might now be vegetating in an existence peaceful, if not well satisfied. “Adventures are to the adventurous.” It is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not adventurous at all. ”

“ Then he went down-stairs with the candle.
“Did you see him?” asked Eliza, with wide-open eyes.
“Don’t be childish, Eliza: there’s no one to see. Why is the room left all untidy?”
“Mother dare not go in!” whispered the child. Then she asked in a low voice, “Did you never hear no more of that awful big Bird I saw the night old Shields died in the snow?”
“The Bird was a dream, Eliza. I am surprised such a clever girl as you should go on thinking about it,” said Barton, rather sternly. ”

“ Looking at his friend, Maitland envied the learned calm of a man who had not contrived, in the task of developing his own human nature, to become involved, like his pupil, in a singular and deplorable conjuncture of circumstances.
“The men are making a terrible riot in quad,” he said, answering the other’s remark.
“Yes, yes,” replied Bielby, genially; “boys will be boys, and so will young men. ”

“ If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby’s, Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic enterprise, he never would have taken the Hit or Miss he never would have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he would not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated old wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl. ”

“ Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a license and discretion not customary in common society.
Finally, even had the girl’s suspicions been awakened, her illness prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her father’s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father’s wish, and hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own livelihood; and independence was Margaret’s ideal. ”

“ As this moment Miss Marlett finished the fraternal epistle of Lieutenant Wyville, which she folded up with a frown and returned to the envelope.
“Jeanne je veux vous parler à part, après, dans mon boudoir,” remarked Miss Marlett severely; and Miss Herman, becoming a little blanched, displayed no further appetite for tartines, nor for French conversation.
Indeed, to see another, and a much older lady, read letters written to one by a lieutenant at Aldershot, whom one has known for years, and who is just like one’s brother, is a trial to any girl. ”