The Mark Of Cain

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 is his affair. 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 think nothing of! 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 for him, 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 like me?” 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 found you! It’s like Stanley finding Livingstone. ‘How I Found Daisy.’ I’ll write a book about it. And where have you 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 already was dispelled. The names of Shields and Miss Marlett had told him all 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 have a great deal to say to you, Margaret,” added the philanthropic lady, “you two had better walk on as fast as you can; for you must 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 you still shilly-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 at The Bunhouse, that that dreadful Mr. Cranley sent her to me under a false name. It was not her fault. 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 a protégée– 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 she does care 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’s heart is 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 in love with 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’m sure you are right. You must know. He is not in 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, nothing to prevent us – I mean» Margaret, if you really care 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 is nothing to 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. She did believe him.

The position was carried!