The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton Part 12

"She cuts out her own clothes," Burton continued, "from patterns presented by a ladies' penny paper. She trims her own hats with an inheritance of feathers which, in their day have known every color of the rainbow. She loves strong perfumes, and she is strenuous on the subject of the primary colors. We have a table-cloth with fringed borders for tea on Sunday afternoons. She hates flowers because they mess up the rooms so, but she adorns our parlor with wool-work mementoes, artificial roses under a gla.s.s case, and crockery neatly inscribed with the name of some seaside place."

Mr. Waddington wiped the perspiration from his forehead and produced a small silver casket from his waistcoat pocket.

"Stop!" he begged. "You win! I can see what you are aiming at. Here is a bean."

Burton waved it away.

"Listen," he proceeded. "I have also a child--a little son. His name is Alfred. He is called Alf, for short. His mother greases his hair and he has a curl which comes over his forehead. I have never known him when his hands were not both sticky and dirty--his hands and his lips.

On holidays he wears a velveteen suit with grease spots inked over, an imitation lace collar, and a blue make-up tie."

Mr. Waddington re-opened the silver casket.

"It is Fate," he decided. "Here are two beans." Burton folded them up in a piece of paper and placed them carefully in his waistcoat pocket.

"I felt convinced," he said gratefully, "that I should not make my appeal to you in vain. Tell me, what do you think of doing with the rest?"

"I am not sure," Mr. Waddington admitted, after a brief pause. "We are confronted from the beginning with the fact that there isn't a living soul who would believe our story. If we tried to publish it, people would only look upon it as an inferior sort of fiction, and declare that the idea had been used before. I thought of having one of the beans resolved into its const.i.tuents by a scientific physician, but I doubt if I'd get any one to treat the matter seriously. Of course," he went on, "if there were any quant.i.ty of the beans, so that we could prove the truth of our statements upon any one who professed to doubt them, we might be able to put them to some practical use. At present," he concluded, with a little sigh, "I really can't think of any."

"When one considers," Burton remarked, "the number of people in high positions who might have discovered these beans and profited by them, it does rather appear as though they had been wasted upon an auctioneer and an auctioneer's clerk who have to get their livings."

"I entirely agree with you," Mr. Waddington a.s.sented. "I must admit that in some respects I feel happier and life seems a much more interesting place. Yet I can't altogether escape from certain apprehensions as regards the future."

"If you take my advice," Burton said firmly, "you'll continue the business exactly as you are doing at present."

"I have no idea of abandoning it," Mr. Waddington replied. "The trouble is, how long will it be before it abandons me?"

"I have a theory of my own as to that," Burton declared. "We will not talk about it at present--simply wait and see."

Mr. Waddington paid the bill.

"Meanwhile," he said, "you had better get down to Garden Green as quickly as you can. You will excuse me if I hurry off? It is almost time to start the sale again."

Burton followed his host into the street. The sun was shining, and a breath of perfume from the roses in a woman's gown a.s.sailed him, as she pa.s.sed by on the threshold to enter the restaurant. He stood quite still for a moment. He had succeeded in his object, he had acquired the beans which were to restore to him his domestic life, and in place of any sense of satisfaction he was conscious of an intense sense of depression. What magic, after all, could change Ellen! He forgot for one moment the gulf across which he had so miraculously pa.s.sed. He thought of himself as he was now, and of Ellen as she had been. The memory of that visit to Garden Green seemed suddenly like a nightmare.

The memory of the train, underground for part of the way, with its stuffy odors, made him shiver. The hot, dusty, unmade street, with its hideous rows of stuccoed villas, loomed before his eyes and confirmed his swiftly born disinclination to taking at once this final and ominous step. Something all the time seemed to be drawing him in another direction, the faint magic of a fragrant memory--a dream, was it--that he had carried with him unconsciously through a wilderness of empty days? He hesitated, and finally climbed up on to the garden seat of an omnibus on its way to Victoria.

CHAPTER IX

THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT

"I do not think," the girl with the blue eyes said, diffidently, "that I gave you permission to sit down here."

"I do not believe," Burton admitted, "that I asked for it. Still, having just saved your life--"

"Saved my life!"

"Without a doubt," Burton insisted, firmly. She laughed in his face.

When she laughed, she was good to look upon. She had firm white teeth, light brown hair which fell in a sort of fringe about her forehead, and eyes which could be dreamy but were more often humorous. She was not tall and she was inclined to be slight, but her figure was lithe, full of beautiful spring and reach.

"You drove away a cow!" she exclaimed. "It is only because I am rather idiotic about cows that I happened to be afraid. I am sure that it was a perfectly harmless animal."

"On the contrary," he a.s.sured her seriously, "there was something in the eye of that cow which almost inspired me with fear. Did you notice the way it lashed its tail?"

"Absurd!"

"At least," he protested, "you cannot find it absurd that I prefer to sit here with you in the shadow of your lilac trees, to trudging any further along that dusty road?"

"You haven't the slightest right to be here at all," she reminded him.

"I didn't even invite you to come in."

He sighed.

"Women have so little sense of consequence," he murmured. "When you came in through that gate without saying good-bye, I naturally concluded that I was expected to follow, especially as you had just pointed this out to me as being your favorite seat."

Again she laughed. Then she stopped suddenly and looked at him. He really was a somewhat difficult person to place.

"If I hadn't a very irritable parent to consider," she declared, "I think I should ask you to tea."

Burton looked very sad.

"You need not have put it into my head," he objected gently. "The inn smells so horribly of the beer that other people have drunk. Besides, I have come such a long way--just for a glimpse of you."

It seemed to her like a false note. She frowned.

"That," she insisted, "is ridiculous."

"Is it?" he murmured. "Don't you ever, when you walk in your gardens, with only that low wall between you and the road, wonder whether any of those who pa.s.s by may not carry away a little vision with them? It is a beautiful setting, you know."

"The people who pa.s.s by are few," she answered. "We are too far off the beaten track. Only on Sat.u.r.days and holiday times there are trippers, fearful creatures who pick the bracken, walk arm in arm, and sing songs.

Tell me why you look as though you were dreaming, my preserver?"

"Look along the lane," he said softly. "Can't you see them--the wagonette with the tired horse drawn up just on the common there--a tired, dejected-looking horse, with a piece of bracken tied on to his head to keep the flies off? There were three men, two women and a little boy. They drank beer and ate sandwiches behind that gorse bush there. They called one another by their Christian names, they shouted loud personal jokes, one of the women sang. She wore a large hat with dyed feathers. She had black, untidy-looking hair, and her face was red. One of the men made a noise with his lips as an accompaniment.

There was the little boy, too--a pasty-faced little boy with a curl on his forehead, who cried because he had eaten too much. One of the men sat some distance apart from the others and stared at you--stared at you for quite a long time."

"I remember it perfectly," she declared. "It was last Whit-Monday.

Hateful people they were, all of them. But how did you know? I saw n.o.body else pa.s.s by."

"I was there," he whispered.

"And I never saw you!" she exclaimed in wonder. "I remember those Bank Holiday people, though, how abominable they were."

"You saw me," he insisted gently. "I was the one who sat apart and stared."

"Of course you are talking rubbish!" she a.s.serted, uneasily.

He shook his head.