"I sign myself there 'A Passer-by.' My real name is Burton. Until lately I was an auctioneer's clerk. Now I am a drifter—what you will."
"You wrote those impressions of St. James's Park at dawn?" she asked eagerly.
"I did."
She smiled a smile of relief.
"Of course I knew that you were a reasonable person," she pronounced."Why couldn't you have said so at once? Come along to tea."
"Willingly," he replied, rising to his feet. "Is this your father coming across the lawn?"
She nodded.
"He's rather a dear. Do you know anything about Assyria?"
"Not a scrap."
"That's a pity," she regretted. "Come. Father, this is Mr. Burton. He is very hot and he is going to have tea with us, and he wrote those impressions in the Piccadilly Gazette which you gave me to read. My father is an Oriental scholar, Mr. Burton, but he is also interested in modern things."
Burton held out his hand.
"I try to understand London," he said. "It is enough for me. I know nothing about Assyria."
Mr. Cowper was a picturesque-looking old gentleman, with kind blue eyes and long white hair.
"It is quite natural," he assented. "You were born in London, without a doubt, you have lived there all your days and you write as one who sees. I was born in a library. I saw no city till I entered college. I had fashioned cities for myself long before then, and dwelt in them."
The girl had taken her place at the tea-table. Burton's eyes followed her admiringly.
"You were brought up in the country?" he asked his host.
"I was born in the City of Strange Imaginings," Mr. Cowper replied. "I read and read until I had learned the real art of fancy. No one who has ever learned it needs to look elsewhere for a dwelling house. It is the realism of your writing which fascinates me so, Mr. Burton. I wish you would stay here and write of my garden; the moorland, too, is beautiful."
"I should like to very much," said Burton.
Mr. Cowper gazed at him in mild curiosity.
"You are a stranger to me, Mr. Burton," he remarked. "My daughter does not often encourage visitors. Pray tell me, how did you make her acquaintance?" "There was a bull," he commenced,—"A cow," she interrupted softly.
"On the moor outside. Your daughter was a little terrified. She accepted my escort after I had driven away the—animal."
The old gentleman looked as though he thought it the most natural thing in the world.
"Dear me," he said, "how interesting! Edith, the strawberries this afternoon are delicious. You must show Mr.—Mr. Burton our kitchen gardens. Our south wall is famous."
This was the whole miracle of how Alfred Burton, whose first appearance in the neighborhood had been as an extremely objectionable tripper, was accepted almost as one of the family in a most exclusive little household. Edith, cool and graceful, sitting back in her wicker chair behind the daintily laid tea-table, seemed to take it all for granted. Mr. Cowper, after rambling on for some time, made an excuse and departed through the French windows of his library. Afterwards, Burton walked with his young hostess in the old-fashioned walled garden.
She treated him with the easy informality of privileged intimacy. She had accepted him as belonging, notwithstanding his damaging statements as to his antecedents, and he walked by the side of his divinity without a trace of awkwardness or nervousness. This world of Truth was indeed a world of easy ways! . . . The garden was fragrant with perfumes; the perfume of full-blown roses—great pink and yellow and white blossoms, drooping in clusters from trees and bushes; of lavender from an ancient bed; of stocks—pink and purple; of sweetbriar, growing in a hedge beyond. They walked aimlessly about along the gravel paths and across the deep greensward, and Burton knew no world, nor thought of any, save the world of that garden. But the girl, when they reached the boundary, leaned over the iron gate and her eyes were fixed northwards. It was the old story—she sighed for life and he for beauty. The walls of her prison-house were beautiful things, but not even the lichen and the moss and the peaches which already hung amber and red behind the thick leaves could ever make her wholly forget that they were, in a sense, symbolical—the walls of her life.
"To live here," he murmured, "must be like living in Paradise!"
She sighed. There was a little wistful droop about her lips; her eyes were still fixed northwards.
"I should like," he said, "to tell you a fairy story. It is about a wife and a little boy."
"Whose wife?" she asked quickly.
"Mine," he replied.
There was a brief silence. A shadow had passed across her face. She was very young and really very unsophisticated, and it may be that already the idea had presented itself, however faintly, that his might be the voice to call her into the promised land. Certain it is that after that silence some glory seemed to have passed from the summer evening.
"It is a fairy story and yet it is true," he went on, almost humbly."Somehow, no one will believe it. Will you try?"
"I will try," she promised.
Afterwards, he held the two beans in the palm of his hand and she turned them over curiously.
"Tell me again what your wife is like?" she asked.
He told her the pitiless truth and then there was a long silence. As he stood before her, a little breath of wind passed over the garden. He came back from the world of sordid places to the land of enchantment. There was certainly some spell upon him. He had found his way into a garden which lay beyond the world. He was conscious all at once of a strange mixture of spicy perfumes, a faint sense of intoxication, of weird, delicate emotions which caught at the breath in his throat and sent the blood dancing through his veins, warmed to a new and wonderful music. Her blue eyes were a little dimmed, the droop of her head a little sad. Quite close to them was a thick bed of lavender. He looked at the beans in his hand and his eyes sought the thickest part of the clustering mass of foliage and blossom. She had lifted her eyes now and it seemed to him that she had divined his purpose—approved of it, even. Her slim, white-clad body swayed towards him. She appeared to have abandoned finally the faint aloofness of her attitude. He raised his hand. Then she stopped him. The moment, whatever its dangers may have been, had passed.
"I do not know whether your story is an allegory or not," she said softly. "It really doesn't matter, does it? You must come and see me again—afterwards."
Burton travelled down to Garden Green on the following morning by the Tube, which he hated, and walked along the familiar avenue with loathing at his heart. There was no doubt about Ellen's being at home. The few feet of back yard were full of white garments of unlovely shape, recently washed and fluttering in the breeze. The very atmosphere was full of soapsuds. Ellen herself opened the door to him, her skirts pinned up around her, and a clothes-peg in her mouth.
He greeted her with an effort at pleasantness. "Good morning, Ellen," he said. "I am glad to find you at home. May I come in?"
Ellen removed the clothes-peg from her mouth.
"It's your own house, isn't it?" she replied, with a suspicious little quiver in her tone. "I don't suppose you've forgotten your way into the parlor. Keep well away from me or you may get some soapsuds on your fine clothes."
She raised her red arms above her head and flattened herself against the wall with elaborate care. Burton, hating himself and the whole situation, stepped into the parlor. Ellen followed him as far as the threshold.
"What is it you want?" she demanded, still retaining one foot in the passage. "I'm busy. You haven't forgotten that it's Friday morning, have you?"
"I want to talk to you for a little while," he said, gently. "I have something to propose which may improve our relations."
Ellen's attitude became one of fierce contempt mingled with a slight tremulousness.
"Such ridiculous goings-on and ways of speaking!" she muttered. "Well, if you've anything to say to me you'll have to wait a bit, that's all. I've got some clothes I can't leave all in a scurry like this. I'll send Alf in to keep you company."
Burton sighed but accepted his fate. For a few moments he sat upon the sofa and gazed around at the hopeless little room. Then, in due course, the door was pushed open and Alfred appeared, his hair shiny, his cheeks redolent of recent ablutions, more than a trifle reluctant. His conversation was limited to a few monosyllables and a whoop of joy at the receipt of a shilling. His efforts at escape afterwards were so pitiful that Burton eventually let him out of the window, from which he disappeared, running at full tilt towards a confectioner's shop.
Presently Ellen returned. It was exceedingly manifest that her temporary absence had not been wholly due to the exigencies of her domestic occupation. Her skirt was unpinned, a mauve bow adorned her throat, a scarf of some gauzy material, also mauve, floated around her neck. She was wearing a hat with a wing, which he was guiltily conscious of having once admired, and which she attempted, in an airy but exceedingly unconvincing fashion, to explain.
"Got to go up the street directly," she said, jerkily. "What is it?"
Burton had made up his mind that the fewer words he employed, the better.
"Ellen," he began, "you have perhaps noticed a certain change in me during the last few weeks?"
Ellen's bosom began to heave and her eyes to flash. Burton hastened on.
"You will find it hard to believe how it all occurred," he continued. "I want you to, though, if you can. There have been many instances of diet influencing morals, but none quite—"
"Diet doing what?" Ellen broke in. "What's that?" Burton came very straight to the point.
"This change in me," he explained simply, "is merely because I have taken something which makes it impossible for me to say or see anything but the absolute truth. I could not tell you a falsehood if I tried. Wherever I look, or whenever I listen, I can always see or hear truth. I know nothing about music, yet since this thing happened it has been a wonderful joy to me. I can tell a false note in a second, I can tell true music from false. I know nothing about art, yet I can suddenly feel it and all its marvels. You can understand a little, perhaps, what this means? A whole new world, full of beautiful objects and inspirations, has suddenly come into my life."
Ellen stared at him blankly.
"Have you gone dotty, Alfred?" she murmured.
He shook his head.
"No," he replied gently. "If anything, I am a great deal wiser than ever I was before. Only there are penalties. It is about these penalties that I want to talk to you."
Ellen's arms became crooked and her knuckles were screwed into her waist. It was an unfortunate and inherited habit of hers, which reappeared frequently under circumstances of emotion.
"Will you answer this one question?" she insisted. "Why has all this made you leave your wife and home? Tell me that, will you?"
Burton went for his last fence gallantly.
"Because our life here is hideous," he declared, "and I can't stand it.Our house is ugly, our furniture impossible, the neighborhood atrocious.Your clothes are all wrong and so are Alfred's. I could not possiblylive here any longer in the way we have been living up to now."
Ellen gave a little gasp.
"Then what are you doing here now?"
"I cannot come back to you," he continued. "I want you to come to me. This is the part of my story which will sound miraculous, if not ridiculous to you, but you will have to take my word for it. Try and remember for a moment that there are things in life beyond the pale of our knowledge, things which we must accept simply by faith. The change which came to me came through eating a sort of bean, grown by an old man who was brought home from Asia by a great scholar. These beans are supposed to contain the germ of Truth. I have 'two here—one for you and one for Alfred. I want you to eat them, and afterwards, what I hope and believe is that we shall see things more the same way and come together again."
He produced the beans from his pocket and Ellen took a step forward. The shortness of her breath and the glitter in her eyes should have warned him. The greatness of his subject, however, had carried him away. His attention was riveted upon the beans lying in the palm of his hand. He looked at them almost reverently.
"Are those the things?" she demanded.
He held them out towards her. A faint pang of regret stirred his heart. For a single second the picture of a beautiful garden glowed and faded before his eyes. A wave of delicious perfume came and went. The girl—slim, white-clad—looked at him a little wistfully with her sad blue eyes. It was a mirage which passed, a mirage or some dear, vanishing dream.
"Take one yourself, Ellen," he directed. "Keep the other one carefully for Alfred."
She snatched them from his hand and before he could stop her she had thrown them out of the open window into the street. He was, for an instant, stricken dumb.
"And you," she cried fiercely, "you can follow your—beans, as soon as you choose!"
He looked at her and realized how completely he had failed. She was indeed stirred to the very depths of her nature, but the emotion which possessed her was one of passionate and jealous anger.
"Not good enough for you as we are, eh?" she cried. "You don't like our clothes or our manners! You've got to be a fine gentleman in five minutes, haven't you? We were good enough for you when thirty shillings a week didn't seem enough to keep us out of debt, and I stitched my fingers to the bone with odd bits of dressmaking. Good enough for you then, my man, when I cooked your dinner, washed your clothes, kept your house clean and bore your son, working to the last moment till my head swam and my knees tottered. Truth! Truth, indeed! What is there but truth in my life, I'd like to know? Have I ever told you a lie? Have I ever looked at another man, or let one touch my fingers, since the day when you put that ring on? And now—take it—and get out!"
She wrenched her wedding ring from her finger and threw it upon the ground between them. Her bosom was heaving; her cheeks were red and her eyes glittering. Several wisps of her hair had been unable to stand the excitement and were hanging down. The mauve bow had worked its way on to one side—very nearly under her ear. There was no deceit nor any pretence about her. She was the daughter of a washerwoman and a greengrocer, and heredity had triumphantly asserted itself. Yet as he backed towards the door before her fierce onslaught, Burton, for the first time since this new thing had come, positively admired her.
"Ellen," he protested, "you are behaving foolishly. I wanted you and the boy to understand. I wanted you to share the things which I had found. It was the only way we could be happy together."
"Alfred and I will look after ourselves and our own happiness," she declared, with a little gulp.
"Other women have lost their husbands. I can bear it. Why don't you go? Don't you know the way out?"
Burton offered his hand. She frankly scoffed at him.
"I don't understand all that rigmarole about truth," she concluded, "butI'm no sort of a one at pretense. Outside, my man, and stay outside!"
She slammed the door. Burton found himself in the street. Instinctively he felt that her hasty dismissal was intended to conceal from him the torrent of tears which were imminent. A little dazed, he still groped his way to the spot where Ellen had thrown the beans. A man was there with a fruit barrow, busy, apparently, rearranging his stock. Something about his appearance struck Burton with a chill premonition. He came to a standstill and looked at him.
"Did you wish to buy any fruit, sir?" the man asked, in a tone unusually subdued for one of his class.
Burton shook his head.
"I was just wondering what you were doing," he remarked.
The man hesitated.
"To tell you the truth, guvnor," he confessed, "I was mixing up my apples and bananas a bit. You see, those at the top were all the best, and it has been my custom to add a few from underneath there—most of them a little going off. It was the only way," he added with a sigh, "that one could make a profit. I have made up my mind, though, to either throw them away or sell them separately for what they are worth, which isn't much. I've had enough of deceiving the public. If I can't get a living honestly with this barrow, I'll try another job."
"Do you happen to have eaten anything just lately?" Burton asked him, with a sinking heart.
The man looked at his questioner, for a moment, doubtfully.
"'Ad my breakfast at seven," he replied. "Just a bite of bread and cheese since, with my morning beer."
"Nothing since—not anything at all?" Burton pressed.
"I picked up a funny-colored bean and ate it, a few minutes ago. Queer flavor it had, too. Nothing else that I can think of."
Burton looked at the man and down at his barrow. He glanced around at the neighborhood in which he had to make a living. Then he groaned softly to himself.
"Good luck to you!" he murmured, and turned away.
The girl looked up from her seat wonderingly. His coming had been a little precipitate. His appearance, too, betokened a disturbed mind.
"There is a front door," she reminded him. "There are also bells."
"I could not wait," he answered simply. "I saw the flutter of your gown as I came along the lane, and I climbed the wall. All the way down I fancied that you might be wearing blue."
A slight air of reserve which she had carefully prepared for him, faded away. What was the use? He was such an extraordinary person! It was not possible to measure him by the usual standards. She was obliged to smile.
"You find blue—becoming?"
"Adorable," he replied, fervently. "I have dreamed of you in blue. You wore blue only the night before last, when I wrote my little sketch of 'The Pavements of Bond Street on a Summer Afternoon.'"
She pointed to the journal which lay at her feet.
"I recognized myself, of course," she declared, trying to speak severely. "It was most improper of you."
"It was nothing of the sort," he answered bluntly. "You came into the picture and I could not keep you out. You were there, so you had to stay."
"It was much too flattering," she objected.
Again he contradicted her.
"I could not flatter if I tried," he assured her. "It was just you."
She laughed softly.
"It is so difficult to argue with you," she murmured. "All the same, I think that it was most improper. But then everything you do is improper. You had no right to climb over that wall, you had no right to walk here with me the other afternoon, even though you had driven away a tame cow. You have no right whatever to be here to-day. What about your wife?"
"I have been to Garden Green," he announced. "I offered her emancipation, the same emancipation as that which I myself have attained. She refused it absolutely. She is satisfied with Garden Green."
"You mean," the girl asked, "that she refuses the—the—"
"Beans," he said. "Precisely! She did more than refuse them—she threw them out of the window. She has no imagination. From her point of view I suppose she behaved in a perfectly natural fashion. She told me to go my own way and leave her alone."
Edith sighed.
"It is very unfortunate," she declared, "that you were not able to convince her."
"Is it?" he replied. "I tried my best, and when I had failed I was glad."
She raised her eyes for a moment but she shook her head.
"I am afraid that it doesn't make any difference, does it?
"Why not? It makes all the difference," he insisted.
"My dear Mr. Burton," she expostulated, making room for him to sit down beside her, "I cannot possibly allow you to make love to me because your wife refuses to swallow a bean!"
"But she threw them out of the window!" he persisted. "She understood quite well what she was doing. Her action was entirely symbolical. She declared for Garden Green and the vulgar life."
For a girl who lived in an old-fashioned garden, and who seemed herself to be part of a fairy story, Edith certainly took a practical view of the situation.
"I am afraid," she murmured, "that the Divorce Courts have no jurisdiction over your case. You are therefore a married man, and likely to continue a married man. I cannot possibly allow you to hold my hand."
His head swam for a moment. She was very alluring with her pale face set in its clouds of golden hair, her faintly wrinkled forehead, her bewitchingly regretful smile—regretful, yet in a sense provocative.
"I am in love with you," he declared.
"Naturally," she replied. "The question is—" She paused and looked intently at the tip of her slipper. It was very small and very pointed and it was quite impossible to ignore the fact that she had a remarkably pretty foot and that she wore white silk stockings. Burton had never known any one before who wore white silk stockings.
"I am very much in love with you," he repeated. "I cannot help it. It is not my fault—that is to say, it is as much your fault as it is mine."
The corners of her mouth twitched.
"Is it? Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I am going to take you down to the orchard, through the little gate, and across the plank into the hayfield," he announced, boldly. "I am going to sit with you under the oak tree, where we can just catch the view of the moor through the dip in the hills. We will lean back and watch the clouds—those little white, fleecy, broken-off pieces—and I will tell you fairy stories. We shall be quite alone there and perhaps you will let me hold your hand."
She shook her head, gently but very firmly. "Such things are impossible."
"Because I have a wife at Garden Green?"
She nodded.
"Because you have a wife, and because—I had really quite forgotten to mention it before, but as a matter of fact I am half engaged to someone myself."
He went suddenly white.
"You are not serious?" he demanded. "Perfectly," she assured him. "I can't think how I forgot it."
"Does he come here to see you?" Burton asked, jealously.
"Not very often. He has to work hard." Burton leaned back in his seat. The music of life seemed suddenly to be playing afar off—so far that he could only dimly catch the strains. The wind, too, must have changed—the perfume of the roses reached him no more.
"I thought you understood," he said slowly.
She did not speak again for several moments. Then she rose a little abruptly to her feet.
"You can walk as far as the hayfield with me," she said.
They passed down the narrow garden path in single file. There had been a storm in the night and the beds of pink and white stocks lay dashed and drooping with a weight of glistening rain-drops. The path was strewn with rose petals and the air seemed fuller than ever of a fresh and delicate fragrance. At the end of the garden, a little gate led into the orchard. Side by side they passed beneath the trees.
"Tell me," he begged in a low tone, "about this lover of yours!"
"There is so little to tell," she answered. "He is a member of the firm who publish books for my father. He is quite kind to us both. He used to come down here more often, even, than he does now, and one night he asked my father whether he might speak to me."
"And your father?"
"My father was very much pleased," she continued. "We have little money and father is not very strong. He told me that it had taken a weight off his mind."
"How often does he come?" Burton asked.
"He was here last Sunday week."
"Last Sunday week! And you call him your lover!"
"No, I have not called him that," she reminded him gently. "He is not that sort of man. Only I think that he is the person whom I shall marry—some day."
"I am sure that you were beginning to like me," he insisted.
She turned and looked at him—at his pale, eager face with the hollow eyes, the tremulous mouth—a curiously negative and wholly indescribable figure, yet in some dim sense impressive through certain unspelt suggestions of latent force. No one could have described him, in those days, though no one with perceptions could have failed to observe much that was unusual in his personality.
"It is true," she admitted. "I do like you. You seem to carry some quality with you which I do not understand. What is it, I wonder? It is something which reminds me of your writing."
"I think that it is truthfulness," he told her. "That is no virtue on my part. It is sheer necessity. I am quite sure that if I had not been obliged I should never have told you that it was I who stared at you from the Common there, one of a hideous little band of trippers. I should not even have told you about my wife. It is all so humiliating."
"It was yourself which obliged yourself," she pointed out,—"I mean that the truthfulness was part of yourself. Do you know, it has set me thinking so often. If only people realized how attractive absolute simplicity, absolute candor is, the world would be so much easier a place to live in, and so much more beautiful! Life is so full of small shams, so many imperfectly hidden little deceits. Even if you had not told me this strange story about yourself, I think that I should still have felt this quality about you."
"I should like," he declared, "to have you conceive a passion for the truth. I should like to have you feel that it was not possible to live anyhow or anywhere else save in its light. If you really felt that it would be like a guiding star to you through life, you would never be able even to consider marriage with a man whom you did not love."
"This evening," she said slowly, "he is coming down. I was thinking it all over this afternoon. I had made up my mind to say nothing about you. Since you came, however, I feel differently. I shall tell him everything."
"Perhaps," Burton suggested, hopefully, "he may be jealous."
"It is possible," she assented. "He does not seem like that but one can never tell."
"He may even give you up!"
She smiled.
"If he did," she reminded him, "it would not make any difference."
"I will not admit that," he declared. "I want your love—I want your whole love. I want you to feel the same things that I feel, in the same way. You live in two places—in a real garden and a fairy garden, the fairy garden of my dreams. I want you to leave the real garden and let me try and teach you how beautiful the garden of fancies may become."
She sighed.
"Alas!" she said, "it is because I may not come and live always in that fairy garden that I am going to send you away."
"Don't!" he pleaded,—"not altogether, at any rate. Life is so short, so pitifully incomplete. We live through so many epochs and each epoch has its own personality. It was not I who married Ellen. It was Burton, the auctioneer's clerk. I cannot carry the burden of that fellow's asinine mistakes upon my shoulders forever."
"I am afraid," she murmured, "that however clever the Mr. Burton of to-day may be, he will never be able to rid himself altogether of his predecessor's burdens."
They were leaning over the gate, looking into the deserted hayfield. The quiet of evening had stolen down upon them. He drew a little nearer to her.
"Dear," he whispered, "there isn't really any Ellen, there isn't really any woman in the world of my thoughts, the world in which I live, save you."
She was almost in his arms. She did not resist but she looked a little pitifully into his face. "You will not—please!" she begged.
Once more the music passed away into the clouds. It was the gate into Paradise over which he had leaned, but the gate was locked, and as he stood there it seemed to grow higher and higher, until he could not even see over the top. Almost roughly he turned away.
"Quite right," he muttered. "I must not touch the Princess of my fairy garden. Only let us go back now, please. I cannot stay here any longer."
She obeyed at once. There was a queer, pathetic little droop at the corners of her lips, and she avoided his eyes.
"Good-bye!" he said.
His tone was dull and spiritless. Something, for the moment, seemed to have passed from him. He seemed, indeed, to lack both inspiration and courage. Her fingers clung slightly to his. She was praying, even, that he might laugh to scorn her unspoken appeal. He moved a yard away and stood looking at her. Her heart began to beat wildly. Surely her prayer would be granted! The light of adoration was coming back to his eyes.
"I cannot see the truth!" he cried hoarsely. "You belong to me—I feel that you belong to me! You are part of the great life. I have found you—you are mine! And yet . . . I feel I mustn't touch you. I don't understand. Perhaps I shall come back."
He turned and hurried off. She watched him until he was a speck upon the road; watched him, even then, from among the shadows of the trees. There was a lump in her throat and a misty light in her eyes. She had forgotten everything that had seemed absurd to her in this strange little romance. Her eyes and her arms, almost her lips, were calling him to her.
Burton's life moved for a time among the easy places. The sub-editor of the Piccadilly Gazette, to which he still contributed, voluntarily increased his scale of pay and was insatiable in his demand for copy. Burton moved into pleasant rooms in a sunny corner of an old-fashioned square. He sent Ellen three pounds a week—all she would accept—and save for a dull pain at his heart which seldom left him, he found much pleasure in life. Then came the first little break in the clear sky. Mr. Waddington came in to see him one day and Mr. Waddington was looking distinctly worried. He was neatly and tastefully dressed, and his demeanor had lost all its old offensiveness. His manner, too, was immensely improved. His tone was almost gentle. Nevertheless, there was a perplexed frown upon his forehead and an anxious look in his eyes.
"Business all right, I hope?" Burton asked him, after he had welcomed his late employer, installed him in an easy chair and pushed a box of cigarettes towards him.
"It is better than all right," Mr. Waddington replied. "It is wonderful. We have never had such crowds at the sales, and I have taken on four more clerks in the house-letting department."
Burton laughed softly. The humor of the auctioneer's position appealed to him immensely.
"I am making money fast," Mr. Waddington admitted, without enthusiasm."Another year or two of this and I could retire comfortably."
"Then what," Burton asked, "is the worry?"
Mr. Waddington smoked vigorously for a moment. "Has it ever occurred to you, Burton," he inquired, "to ask yourself whether this peculiar state, in which you and I find ourselves, may be wholly permanent?"
Burton was genuinely startled. He sat looking at his visitor like one turned to stone. The prospect called up by that simple question was appalling. His cigarette burned idly away between his fingers. The shadow of fear lurked in his eyes.
"Not permanent?" he repeated. "I never thought of that. Why do you ask?"
Mr. Waddington scratched his chin thoughtfully. It was not a graceful proceeding, and Burton, with a sinking heart, remembered that this was one of his employer's old habits. He scrutinized his visitor more closely. Although his appearance at first sight was immaculate, there were certain alarming symptoms to be noted. His linen collar was certainly doing service for the second time, and Burton noticed with dismay a slight revival of the auctioneer's taste for loud colors in his shirt and socks.
"It was yesterday afternoon," Mr. Waddington continued. "I was selling an oak chest. I explained that it was not a genuine antique but that it had certainly some claims to antiquity on account of its design. That seemed to me to be a very fair way of putting it. Then I saw a man, who was very keen on buying it, examining the brass handles. He looked up at me. 'Why, the handles are genuine!' he exclaimed. 'They're real old brass, anyway!' Now I knew quite well, Burton, that those handles, though they were extraordinarily near the real thing, were not genuine. I opened my mouth to tell him so, and then, Burton, do you know that I hesitated?"
"You didn't tell him—that they were genuine!" Burton gasped.
Mr. Waddington shook his head.
"No," he admitted, "I did not go so far as that. Still, it was almost as great a shock to me. I felt a distinct impulse to tell him that they were. A few days ago, such an idea would never have entered my head. It would have been a sheer impossibility."
"Anything else?"
Mr. Waddington hesitated. He seemed to be feeling the shame of these avowals.
"This morning," he confessed, "I passed the door of the Golden Lion on my way to the office. For the first time since—you know when—I felt a desire—a faint desire but still it was there—to go in and chaff Milly and have a pint of beer in a tankard. I didn't go, of course, but I felt the impulse, nevertheless."
Burton had turned very pale.
"This," he exclaimed, "is terrible! What have you done with the rest of the beans?"
"I have nine," Mr. Waddington replied. "I carry them in my waistcoat pocket. I am perfectly convinced now that there is trouble ahead, for on my way up the stairs here I felt a strong inclination to tell you that I had lost them, in case you should want any."
"It would be only fair," Burton declared warmly, "to divide them." Mr.Waddington frowned.
"I see no reason for that at all," he objected, feeling his waistcoat pocket. "The beans are in my possession."
"But if we are to revert to our former state of barbarism," Burton urged, "let us at least do so together."
"You are some time ahead of me," Mr. Waddington pointed out. "None of these warnings have come to you yet. It may be something wrong with my disposition, or the way I have swallowed my bean. Yours may be a permanent affair."
Burton hesitated. Then he threw himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
"My time is coming, too!" he confessed mournfully. "I am in the same position. Even while you were speaking just now, I felt a strong desire to deceive you, to invent some experience similar to your own."
"Are you sure of that?" Mr. Waddington asked anxiously.
"Quite sure!" Burton groaned.
"Then we are both of us in it, and that's a fact," Mr. Waddington affirmed.
Burton looked up.
"About those beans?"
Mr. Waddington thought for some few moments.
"I shall keep five and give you four," he decided. "It is treating you very generously. I am not obliged to give you any at all, you know. I am doing it because I am good-natured and because we are in this thing together. If the worst happens, you can come back to your old place in the firm. I dare say we shall pull along somehow."
Burton shuddered from head to foot. He saw it all mapped out before him—the miserable routine of dull, undignified work, the whole intolerable outlook of that daily life. He covered his face with his hands to shut out the prospect.
"I couldn't come back!" he muttered "I couldn't!"
"That's all very well," Mr. Waddington objected, "but if this thing really passes off, you'll be only too glad to. I suppose I shall flirt with Milly again, and drink beer, give up Ruskin for the Sporting Times, wear loud clothes, tell most frightful falsehoods when I sell that terrible furniture and buy another trotting horse to drive out on Sundays. Oh, Lord!"
Mr. Waddington rose slowly to his feet. He lit a cigarette, sniffed it, and looked at it disparagingly. It was very fine Turkish tobacco and one of Burton's extravagances.
"I am not sure, after all," he declared, "that there isn't more flavor in a British cigar."
Burton shuddered
"You had better take a bean at once," he groaned. "Those cigarettes are made from the finest tobacco imported."
Mr. Waddington felt in his waistcoat pocket with trembling fingers, slowly produced a little silver box, took out a bean and crunched it between his teeth. An expression of immense relief at once spread over his features. He sniffed at his cigarette with an air of keen appreciation, and deliberately handed over to Burton his share of the remaining beans.
"I am myself again," he declared firmly. "I can feel the change already."
Burton eyed him anxiously.
"Cigarette taste all right now?"
"Delicious!" Mr. Waddington replied. "Most exquisite tobacco! Makes me shiver inside to think how I could ever have smoked that other filthy rubbish."
"No idea of calling in at the Golden Lion on your way back, eh?" Burton persisted.
Mr. Waddington's expression was full of reproach. "The very thought of that place, with its smell of stale beer and those awful creatures behind the bar, makes me shiver," he confessed. "I shall walk for an hour before lunch in Kensington Gardens. If I have a moment to spare I shall run into the Museum and spend a little time with the mosaics. What a charming effect the sunlight has coming through those trees, Burton! I want you to come down and see my rooms sometime. I have picked up a few trifles that I think you would appreciate."
"I will come with pleasure," Burton replied. "This afternoon, if you could spare a few minutes?" the auctioneer suggested. "We might go around and look at that Romney which has just been unearthed. I have been to Christie's three times already to see it, but I should like to take you. There's something about the face which I don't quite understand. There is a landscape there, too, just sent up from some country house, which I think would interest you."
Burton shook his head and moved feverishly towards his desk.
"I am going to work," he declared. "You have frightened me a little. I must economize time. I shall write a novel, a novel of real life. I must write it while I can still see the perfect truth."
Burton did not get very far with his novel. About nine o'clock on the same evening, Mr. Waddington, who was spending a quiet hour or two with his books, was disturbed by a hasty knock at the door of his rooms. He rose with some reluctance from his chair to answer the summons.
"Burton!" he exclaimed.
Burton came quickly in. He was paler, even, than usual, and there were black shadows under his eyes. There was a change in his face, indescribable but very apparent. His eyes had lost their dreamy look, he glanced furtively about him, he had the air of a man who has committed a crime and fears detection. His dress was not nearly so neat as usual. Mr. Waddington, whose bachelor evening clothes—a loose dinner-jacket and carefully tied black tie—were exactly as they should be, glanced disparagingly at his visitor.
"My dear Burton," he gasped, "whatever is the matter with you? You seem all knocked over."
Burton had thrown himself into a chair. He was contemplating the little silver box which he had drawn from his pocket.
"I've got to take one of these," he muttered, "that's all. When I have eaten it, there will be three left. I took the last one exactly two months and four days ago. At the same rate, in just eight months and sixteen days I shall be back again in bondage."
Mr. Waddington was very much interested. He was also a little distressed.
"Are you quite sure," he asked, "of your symptoms?"
"Absolutely certain," Burton declared sadly. "I found myself this evening trying to kiss my landlady's daughter, who is not in the least good-looking. I was attracted by the programme of a music hall and had hard work to keep from going there. A man asked me the way to Leicester Square just now, and I almost directed him wrongly for the sheer pleasure of telling a lie. I nearly bought some ties at an outfitter's shop in the Strand—such ties! It's awful—awful, Mr. Waddington!"
Mr. Waddingon nodded his head compassionately.
"I suppose you know what you're talking about," he said. "You see, I have already taken my second bean and to me the things that you have spoken of seem altogether incredible. I could not bring myself to believe that an absolute return to those former horrible conditions would be possible for either you or me. By the bye," he added, with a sudden change of tone, "I've just managed to get a photograph of the Romney I was telling you of."
Burton waved it away.
"It doesn't interest me in the least," he declared gloomily. "I very nearly bought a copy of Ally Sloper on my way down here."
Mr. Waddington shivered.
"I suppose there is no hope for you," he said. "It is excessively painful for me to see you in this state. On the whole, I think that the sooner you take the bean, the better."
Burton suddenly sat up in his chair.
"What are those sheets of paper you have on the table?" he asked quickly.
"They are the sheets of paper left with the little flower-pot in the room of Idlemay House," Mr. Waddington answered. "I was just looking them through and wondering what language it was they were written in. It is curious, too, that our friend should have only translated the last few lines."
Burton rose from his chair and leaned over the table, looking at them with keen interest.
"It was about those papers that I started out to come and see you," he declared. "There must be some way by which we could make the action of these beans more permanent. I propose that we get the rest of the pages translated. We may find them most valuable."
Mr. Waddington was rather inclined to favor the idea.
"I cannot think," he admitted, "why it never occurred to us before.Whom do you propose to take them to?"
"There is some one I know who lives a little way down in the country," Burton replied. "He is a great antiquarian and Egyptologist, and if any one can translate them, I should think he would be able to. Lend me the sheets of manuscript just as they are, and I will take them down to him to-morrow. It may tell us, perhaps, how to deal with the plant so that we can get more of the beans. Eight months is no use to me. When I am like this, just drifting back, everything seems possible. I can even see myself back at Clematis Villa, walking with Ellen, listening to the band, leaning over the bar of the Golden Lion. Listen!"
He stopped short. A barrel organ outside was playing a music hall ditty. His head kept time to the music.
"I wish I had my banjo!" he exclaimed, impulsively. Then he shivered."Did you hear that? A banjo! I used to play it, you know."
Mr. Waddington looked shocked.
"The banjo!" he repeated. "Do you really mean that you want to play it at the present moment?"
"I do," Burton replied. "If I had it with me now, I should play that tune. I should play others like it. Everything seems to be slipping away from me. I can smell the supper cooking in my little kitchen at Clematis Villa. Delicious! My God, I can't bear it any longer! Here goes!"
He took a bean from his pocket with trembling fingers and swallowed it.Then he leaned back in his chair for several moments with closed eyes.When he opened them again, an expression of intense relief was upon hisface.
"I am coming back already," he declared faintly. "Thank Heavens! Mr.Waddington, your room is charming, sir. Japanese prints, too! I had noidea that you were interested in them. That third one is exquisite.And what a dado!"
"Hewlings himself designed it for me," Mr. Waddington observed, with satisfaction. "There are several things I should like you to notice, Burton. That lacquer-work box!"
Burton was already holding it in his fingers and was gazing at it lovingly.
"It is perfect," he admitted. "What workmanship! You are indeed fortunate, Mr. Waddington. And isn't that Mona Lisa on the walls? What a beautiful reproduction! I am saving up money even now to go to Paris to see the original. Only a few nights ago I was reading Pater's appreciation of it."
He rose and wandered around the room, making murmured comments all the time. Presently he came back to the table and glanced down at the sheets of manuscript.
"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 passed 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.
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, passed 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 manuscript."
"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 manuscripts. 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 manuscript."
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 manuscript, 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 superstition—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 constitute 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 superstition. 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 god."
"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 superstition 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.
"Mr. Cowper," he said, "there are reasons why I find it very hard to deny you anything, but as regards those three beans, you will neither eat one nor even hold it in your hand. Sit down and I will tell you a story which sounds as though it might have happened a thousand years ago. It happened within the last three months. Listen."
Burton told his story with absolute sincerity. The professor listened with intense interest. It was perhaps strange that, extraordinary though it was, he never for one moment seemed to doubt the truth of what he heard. When Burton had finished, he rose to his feet in a state of great excitement.
"This is indeed wonderful," he declared. "It is more wonderful, even, than you can know of. The legend of the perfect food appears in the manuscripts of many centuries. It antedates literature by generations. There is a tomb in the interior of Japan, sacred to a saint who for seventy years worked for the production of this very bean. That, let me tell you, was three thousand years ago. My young friend, you have indeed been favored!"
"Let me understand this thing," Burton said, anxiously. "Those pages say that if one eats a green leaf after the bean, the change wrought in one will become absolutely permanent?"
"That is so," the professor assented. "Now all that you have to do, is to eat a green leaf from the little tree. After that, you will have no more need of those three beans, and you can therefore give them to me."
Burton made no attempt to produce his little silver box.
"First of all," he said, "I must test the truth of this. I cannot run any risks. I must go and eat a leaf. If in three months no change has taken place in me, I will lend you a bean to examine. I can do no more than that. Until this matter is absolutely settled, they are worth more than life itself to me."
Mr. Cowper seemed annoyed.
"Surely," he protested, "you are not going to ask me to wait three months until I can examine one of these?"
"Three months will soon pass," Burton replied. "Until that time is up,I could not part with them."
"But you can't imagine," the professor pleaded, "how marvelously interesting this is to me. Remember that I have spent all my life digging about among the archives and the literature and the superstitions of these pre-Egyptian peoples. You are the first man in the world, outside a little circle of fellow-workers, to speak to me of this perfect food. Your story as to how it came into your hands is the most amazing romance I have ever heard. It confirms many of my theories. It is wonderful. Do you realize what has happened? You, sir, you in your insignificant person," the professor continued, shaking his finger at his visitor, "have tasted the result of thousands of years of unceasing study. Wise men in their cells, before Athens was built, before the Pyramids were conceived, were thinking out this matter in strange parts of Egypt, in forgotten parts of Syria and Asia. For generations their dream has been looked upon as a thing elusive as the philosopher's stone, the transmutation of metals—any of these unsolved problems. For five hundred years—since the days of a Russian scientist who lived on the Black Sea, but whose name, for the moment, I have forgotten—the whole subject has lain dead. It is indeed true that the fairy tales of one generation become the science of the next. Our own learned men have been blind. The whole chain of reasoning is so clear. Every article of human food contains its separate particles, affecting the moral as well as the physical system. Why should it have been deemed necromancy to endeavor to combine these parts, to evolve by careful elimination and change the perfect food? In the house, young man, which you have told me of, there died the hero of the greatest discovery which has ever been made since the world began to spin upon its orbit."
"Will Miss Edith be back to-morrow?" Burton asked.
The professor stared at him.
"Miss Edith?" he repeated. "Oh! my daughter? Is she not in?"
"She is away for two days, your servant told me," Burton replied.
"Perhaps so—perhaps so," the professor agreed. "She has gone to her aunt's, very likely, in Chelsea. My sister has a house there in Bromsgrove Terrace."
Burton rose to his feet. He held out his hand for the manuscript.
"I am exceedingly obliged to you," he said. "Now I must go."
The professor gripped the manuscript in his hand. He was no longer a harmless and benevolent old gentleman. He was like a wild animal about to be robbed of its prey.
"No," he cried. "You must not take these away. You must not think of it. They are of no use to you. Leave me the sheets, just as they are. I will go further back. There are several words at the meaning of which I have only guessed. Leave them with me for a few days, and I will make you an exact translation."
"Very well," Burton assented.
"And one bean?" the professor begged. "Leave me one bean only? I promise not to eat it, not to dissect it, not to subject it to experiments of any sort. Let me just have it to look at, to be sure that what you have told me is not an hallucination."
Burton shook his head.
"I dare not part with one. I am going straight back to test the leaf theory. If it is correct, I will keep my promise. And—will you remember me to Miss Edith when she returns, professor?"
"To Miss Edith? Yes, yes, of course," Mr. Cowper declared, impatiently. "When shall you be down again, my young friend?" he went on earnestly. "I want to hear more of your experiences. I want you to tell me the whole thing over again. I should like to get a signed statement from you. There are several points in connection with what you say, which bear out a favorite theory of mine."
"I will come in a few days, if I may," Burton assured him.
The professor walked with his guest to the front door. He seemed reluctant to let him go.
"Take care of yourself, Mr. Burton," he enjoined. "Yours is a precious life. On no account subject yourself to any risks. Be careful of the crossings. Don't expose yourself to inclement weather. Keep away from any place likely to harbor infectious disease. I should very much like to have a meeting in London of a few of my friends, if I could ensure your presence."
"When I come down again," Burton promised, "we will discuss it."
He shook hands and hurried away. In less than an hour and a half he was in Mr. Waddington's rooms. The latter had just arrived from the office.
"Mr. Waddington," Burton exclaimed, "the little tree on which the beans grew—where is it?"
Mr. Waddington was taken aback.
"But I picked all the beans," he replied. "There were only the leaves left."
"Never mind that!" Burton cried. "It is the leaves we want! The tree—where is it? Quick! I want to feel myself absolutely safe."
Mr. Waddington's face was blank.
"You have heard the translation of those sheets?"
"I have," Burton answered hastily. "I will tell you all about it directly—as soon as you have brought me the tree."
Mr. Waddington had turned a little pale.
"I gave it to a child in the street, on my way home from Idlemay House," he declared. "There was no sign of any more beans coming and I had more than enough to carry."
Burton sank into a chair and groaned.
"We are lost," he exclaimed, "unless you can find that child! Our cure is only temporary. We need a leaf each from the tree. I have only eight months and two weeks more!"
Mr. Waddington staggered to a seat. He produced his own beans and counted them eagerly.
"A little under eleven months!" he muttered. "We must find the tree!"