The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton Part 19

"Mr. Waddington," he said, "let me take these to my friend. I feel that the last few hours must have been a sort of nightmare, and yet--"

He drew out a little box from his waistcoat pocket and peered inside.

He was suddenly grave.

"It was no nightmare, then," he muttered. "I have really taken a bean."

"You took it not a quarter of an hour ago," Mr. Waddington told him.

Burton sighed.

"It is awful to imagine that I should have needed it," he confessed.

"There must be some way out of this. You will trust me with these sheets, Mr. Waddington? If my friend in the country can do nothing for us, I will take them to the British Museum."

"By all means," Mr. Waddington replied. "Take care of them and bring them back safely. I should like, if possible, to have a written translation. It should indeed prove most interesting."

Burton went out with the musky-smelling sheets in his pocket. All the temptations of the earlier part of the evening had completely pa.s.sed away. He walked slowly because a big yellow moon hung down from the sky, and because Mr. Waddington's rooms were in a neighborhood of leafy squares and picturesque houses. When he came back to the more travelled ways he ceased, however, to look about him. He took a 'bus to Westminster and returned to his rooms. Somehow or other, the possession of the sheets acted like a sedative. He felt a new confidence in himself. The absurdity of any return to his former state had never been more established. The remainder of the night he spent in the same way as many others. He drew his writing-table up to the open window, and with the lights of the city and the river spread out before him, and the faint wind blowing into the room, he worked at his novel.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LEGEND OF THE PERFECT FOOD

A foretaste of autumn had crept into the midst of summer. There were gray clouds in the sky, a north wind booming across the moors. Burton even shivered as he walked down the hill to the house where she lived.

There was still gorse, still heather, still a few roses in the garden and a glimmering vision of the beds of other flowers in the background.

But the sun which gave them life was hidden. Burton looked eagerly into the garden and his heart sank. There was no sign there of any living person. After a moment's hesitation, he opened the gate, pa.s.sed up the neat little path and rang the bell. It was opened after the briefest of delays by the trim parlor-maid.

"Is your mistress at home?" he asked.

"Miss Edith has gone to London for two days, sir," the girl announced.

"The professor is in his study, sir."

Burton stood quite still for a moment. It was absurd that his heart should be so suddenly heavy, that all the spring and buoyancy should have gone out of life! For the first time he realized the direction in which his thoughts had been travelling since he had left his rooms an hour ago. He had to remind himself that it was the professor whom he had come to see.

Mr. Cowper received him graciously, if a little vaguely. Burton wasted no time, however, in announcing the nature of his errand. Directly he produced the sheets, the professor became interested. The faint odor which seemed shaken out from them into the room stimulated his curiosity. He sniffed at it with great content.

"Strange," he remarked, "very strange. I haven't smelt that perfume since I was with the excavators at Chaldea. A real Oriental flavor, young man, about your ma.n.u.script."

"There is very little of it," Burton said,--"just a page or so which apparently the writer never had time to finish. The sheets came into my hands in rather a curious way, and I should very much like to have an exact translation of them. I don't even know what the language is. I thought, perhaps, that you might be able to help me. I will explain to you later, if you will allow me, the exact nature of my interest in them."

Mr. Cowper took the pages into his hand with a benevolent smile. At the first glance, however, his expression changed. It was obvious that he was greatly interested. It was obvious, also, that he was correspondingly surprised.

"My dear young man," he exclaimed, "my dear Mr.--Mr. Burton--why, this is wonderful! Where did you get these sheets, do you say? Are you honestly telling me that they were written within the last thousand years?"

"Without a doubt," Burton replied. "They were written in London, a few months ago."

Mr. Cowper was already busy surrounding himself with strange-looking volumes. His face displayed the utmost enthusiasm in his task.

"It is most amazing, this," he declared, drawing a chair up to the table. "These sheets are written in a language which has been dead as a medium of actual intercourse for over two thousand years. You meet with it sometimes in old Egyptian ma.n.u.scripts. There was a monastery somewhere near the excavations which I had the honor to conduct in Syria, where an ancient prayer-book contained several prayers in this language. Literally I cannot translate this for you; actually I will.

I can get at the sense--I can get at the sense quite well. But if one could only find the man who wrote it! He is the man I should like to see, Mr. Burton. If the pages were written so recently, where is the writer?"

"He is dead," Burton replied.

Mr. Cowper sighed.

"Well, well," he continued, starting upon his task with avidity, "we will talk about him presently. This is indeed miraculous. I am most grateful--deeply grateful to you--for having brought me this ma.n.u.script."

Mr. Cowper was busy for the next quarter of an hour. His expression, as he turned up dictionaries and made notes, was still full of the liveliest and most intense interest. Presently he leaned back in his chair. He kept one hand upon the loose sheets of ma.n.u.script, while with the other he removed his spectacles. Then he closed his eyes for a moment.

"My young friend," he said, "did you ever hear a quaint Asiatic legend--scarcely a legend, perhaps, but a superst.i.tion--that many and many a wise man, four thousand years ago, spent his nights and his days, not as our more modern scientists of a few hundred years ago have done, in the attempt to turn baser metals into gold, but in the attempt to const.i.tute from simple elements the perfect food for man?"

Burton shook his head. He was somewhat mystified.

"I have never heard anything of the sort," he acknowledged.

"The whole literature of ancient Egypt and the neighboring countries,"

Mr. Cowper proceeded, "abounds with mystical stories of this perfect food. It was to come to man in the nature of a fruit. It was to give him, not eternal life--for that was valueless--but eternal and absolute understanding, so that nothing in life could be harmful, nothing save objects and thoughts of beauty could present themselves to the understanding of the fortunate person who partook of it. These pages which you have brought to me to translate are concerned with this superst.i.tion. The writer claims here that after centuries of research and blending and grafting, carried on without a break by the priests of his family, each one handing down, together with an inheritance of his sacerdotal office, many wonderful truths respecting the growth of this fruit,--the writer of these lines claims here, that he, the last of his line, has succeeded in producing the one perfect food, from which everything gross is eliminated, and whose spiritual result upon a normal man is such as to turn him from a thing of clay into something approaching a G.o.d."

"Does he mention anything about beans?" Burton asked anxiously.

Mr. Cowper nodded benignantly.

"The perfect food referred to," he said, "appears to have been produced in the shape of small beans. They are to be eaten with great care, and to ensure permanency in the results, a green leaf of the little tree is to follow the consumption of the bean."

Burton sprang to his feet.

"A thousand thanks, professor!" he cried. "That is the one thing we were seeking to discover. The leaves, of course!"

Mr. Cowper looked at his visitor in amazement.

"My young friend," he said, "are you going to tell me that you have seen one of these beans?"

"Not only that but I have eaten one," Burton announced,--"in fact I have eaten two."

Mr. Cowper was greatly excited.

"Where are they?" he exclaimed. "Show me one! Where is the tree? How did the man come to write this? Where did he write it? Let me look at one of the beans!"

Burton produced the little silver snuff-box in which he carried them.

With his left hand he kept the professor away.

"Mr. Cowper," he said, "I cannot let you touch them or handle them.

They mean more to me than I can tell you, yet there they are. Look at them. And let me tell you this. That old superst.i.tion you have spoken of has truth in it. These beans are indeed a spiritual food. They alter character. They have the most amazing effect upon a man's moral system."

"Young man," Mr. Cowper insisted, "I must eat one."

Burton shook his head.