The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton Part 7

Burton smiled quite pleasantly.

"It does seem queer, sir," he admitted. "I said that I was getting on all right because I am contented and happy. That is the chief thing after all, isn't it?"

Mr. Waddington opened his mouth and closed it again.

"I wish I could make out what the devil it was that happened to you," he said. "Why, you used to be as smart as they make 'em, a regular nipper after business. I expected you'd be after me for a partners.h.i.+p before long, and I expect I'd have had to give it you. And then you went clean dotty. I shall never forget that day at the sale, when you began telling people everything it wasn't good for them to know."

"You mean that it wasn't good for us for them to know," Burton corrected gently.

Mr. Waddington laughed. He had a large amount of easy good-humor and he was always ready to laugh.

"You haven't lost your wits, I see," he declared. "What was it? Did you by any chance get religion, Burton?"

The young man shook his head.

"Not particularly, sir," he replied. "By the bye, you owe me four days'

money. Would it be quite convenient--?"

"You shall have it," Mr. Waddington declared, thrusting his hand into his trousers pocket. "I can't afford it, for things are going badly with me. Here it is, though. Thirty-four s.h.i.+llings--that's near enough. Anything else?"

"There is one other thing," Burton said slowly. "It is rather a coincidence, sir, that we should have met just here. I see that you have been into Idlemay House. I wonder whether you would lend me the keys? I will return them to the office, with pleasure, but I should very much like to go in myself for a few minutes."

Mr. Waddington stared at his late employee, thoroughly puzzled.

"If you aren't a caution!" he exclaimed. "What the mischief do you want to go in there for?"

Burton smiled.

"I should like to see if that little room where the old Egyptian died has been disturbed since I was there, sir."

Mr. Waddington hesitated. Then he turned and led the way.

"I'd forgotten all about that," he said. "Come along, I'll go in with you."

They crossed the road, ascended the steps, and in a few minutes they were inside the house. The place smelt very musty and uninhabited.

Burton delicately avoided the subject of its being still unlet. The little chamber on the right of the hall was as dark as ever. Burton felt his heart beat quickly as a little waft of familiar perfume swept out to him at the opening of the door. Mr. Waddington struck a match and held it over his head.

"So this is the room," he remarked. "Dashed if I've ever been in it!

It wants cleaning out and fumigating badly. What's this?"

He picked up the sheet of paper, which was lying exactly as Burton had left it. Then he lifted up the little dwarf tree and looked at it.

"It is finished. The nineteenth generation has triumphed. He who shall eat of the brown fruit of this tree, shall see the things of Life and Death as they are. He who shall eat--"

"Well, I'm d--d!" he muttered. "What's it all mean, anyway?"

"Try a brown bean," Burton suggested softly. "They aren't half bad."

"Very likely poison," Mr. Waddington said, suspiciously.

Burton said nothing for a moment. He had taken up the sheet of paper and was gazing at the untranslated portion.

"I wonder," he murmured, "if there is any one who could tell us what the other part of it means?"

"The d--d thing smells all right," Mr. Waddington declared. "Here goes!"

He broke off a brown bean and swallowed it. Burton turned round just in time to see the deed. For a moment he stood aghast. Then very slowly he tiptoed his way from the door and hurried stealthily from the house.

From some bills which he had been studying half an hour ago he remembered that Mr. Waddington was due, later in the morning, to conduct a sale of "antique" furniture!

CHAPTER VI

A MEETING WITH ELLEN

The clearness of vision which enabled Alfred Burton now to live in and appreciate a new and marvelous world, failed, however, to keep him from feeling, occasionally, exceedingly hungry. He lived on very little, but the weekly amount must always be sent to Garden Green. There came a time when he broke in upon the last five pound note of his savings. He realized the position without any actual misgivings. He denied himself regretfully a tiny mezzotint of the Raphael "Madonna," which he coveted for his mantelpiece. He also denied himself dinner for several evenings. When fortune knocked at his door he was, in fact, extraordinarily hungry. He still had faith, notwithstanding his difficulties, and no symptoms of dejection. He was perfectly well aware that this need for food was, after all, one of the most unimportant affairs in the world, although he was forced sometimes to admit to himself that he found it none the less surprisingly unpleasant. Chance, however, handed over to him a s.h.i.+lling discovered upon the curb, and a high-cla.s.s evening paper left upon a seat in the Park. He had no sooner eaten and drunk with the former than he opened the latter. There was an article on the front page ent.i.tled "London Awake." He read it line by line and laughed. It was all so ridiculously simple. He hurried back to his rooms and wrote a much better one on "London Asleep." He was master of his subject. He wrote of what he had seen with effortless and sublime verity. Why not? Simply with the aid of pen and ink he transferred from the cells of his memory into actual phrases the silent panorama which he had seen with his own eyes. That one matchless hour before the dawn was entirely his. Throughout its sixty minutes he had watched and waited with every sense quivering. He had watched and heard that first breath of dawn come stealing into life. It was child's play to him. He knew nothing about editors, but he walked into the office of the newspaper which he had picked up, and explained his mission.

"We are not looking for new contributors at present," he was told a little curtly. "What paper have you been on?"

"I have never written anything before in my life," Burton confessed, "but this is much better than 'London Awake,' which you published a few evenings ago."

The sub-editor of that newspaper looked at him with kindly contempt.

"'London Awake' was written for us by Rupert Mendosa. We don't get beginner's stuff like that. I don't think it will be the least use, but I'll look at your article if you like--quick!"

Burton handed over his copy with calm confidence. It was shockingly written on odd pieces of paper, pinned together anyhow--an untidy and extraordinary-looking production. The sub-editor very nearly threw it contemptuously back. Instead he glanced at it, frowned, read a little more, and went on reading. When he had finished, he looked at this strange, thin young man with the pallid cheeks and deep-set eyes, in something like awe.

"You wrote this yourself?" he asked.

"Certainly, sir," Burton answered. "If it is really worth putting in your paper and paying for, you can have plenty more."

"But why did you write it?" the editor persisted. "Where did you get the idea from?"

Burton looked at him in mild-eyed wonder.

"It is just what I see as I pa.s.s along," he explained.

The sub-editor was an ambitious literary man himself and he looked steadfastly away from his visitor, out of the window, his eyes full of regret, his teeth clenched almost in anger. Just what he saw as he pa.s.sed along! What he saw--this common-looking, half-educated little person, with only the burning eyes and sensitive mouth to redeem him from utter insignificance! Truly this was a strange finger which opened the eyes of some and kept sealed the eyelids of others! For fifteen years this very cultivated gentleman who sat in the sub-editor's chair and drew his two thousand a year, had driven his pen along the scholarly way, and all that he had written, beside this untidy-looking doc.u.ment, had not in it a single germ of the things that count.

"Well?" Burton asked, with ill-concealed eagerness.

The sub-editor was, after all, a man. He set his teeth and came back to the present.

"My readers will, I am sure, find your little article quite interesting," he said calmly. "We shall be glad to accept it, and anything else you may send us in the same vein. You have an extraordinary gift for description."

Burton drew a long sigh of relief.