Mr. Alfred Burton, although he was blissfully and completely ignorant of the fact, stood at the door of Fate. He was a little out of breath and his silk hat was reclining at the back of his head. In his mouth was a large cigar which he felt certain was going to disagree with him, but he smoked it because it had been presented to him a few minutes ago by the client upon whom he was in attendance. He had rather deep-set blue eyes, which might have been attractive but for a certain keenness in their outlook, which was in a sense indicative of the methods and character of the young man himself; a pale, characterless face, a straggling, sandy moustache, and an earnest, not to say convincing, manner. He was dressed in such garments as the head-clerk of Messrs. Waddington & Forbes, third-rate auctioneers and house agents, might have been expected to select. He dangled a bunch of keys in his hand.
"If this house don't suit you, sir," he declared, confidently, "why, there isn't one in the whole west-end that will. That's my opinion, anyway. There's nothing in our books to compare with it for value and accommodation. We nearly let it last week to Lord Leconside, but Her Ladyship—she came round with me herself—decided that it was just a trifle too large. As a matter of fact, sir," this energetic young man went on, confidentially, "the governor insisted upon a deposit and it didn't seem to be exactly convenient. It isn't always these people with titles who've got the money. That we find out in our business, sir, as quickly as anybody. As for the steam heating you were talking about, Mr. Lynn, why, that's all very well for New York," he continued, persuasively, "but over here the climate doesn't call for it—you can take it from me that it doesn't, indeed, Mr. Lynn. I have the letting in my hands of as many houses as most people, and you can take it from me, sir, as the direct result of my experience, that over here they won't have it—won't have it at any price, sir. Most unhealthy we find it, and always produces a rare crop of colds and coughs unknown to those that are used to an honest coal fire. It's all a matter of climate, sir, after all, isn't it?"
The young man paused to take breath. His client, who had been listening attentively in gloomy but not unappreciative silence, removed his cigar from his mouth. He was a middle-aged American with a wife and daughters on their way over from New York, and his business was to take a house before they arrived. It wasn't a job he liked, but he was making the best of it. This young man appealed to his sense of business.
"Say," he remarked, approvingly, "you've learned how to talk in your trade!"
Stimulated by this encouragement, Alfred Burton clapped on his hat a little more securely, took a long breath, and went at it again.
"Why, I'm giving myself a rest this morning, sir!" he declared. "I haven't troubled to tell you more than the bare facts. This house doesn't need any talking about—doesn't need a word said about it. Her Ladyship's last words to us were—Lady Idlemay, you know, the owner of the house—'Mr. Waddington and Mr. Burton,' she said—she was speaking to us both, for the governor always introduces me to clients as being the one who does most of the letting,—'Mr. Waddington and Mr. Burton,' she said, 'if a tenant comes along whom you think I'd like to have living in my rooms and using my furniture, breathing my air, so to speak, why, go ahead and let the house, rents being shockingly low just now, with agricultural depression and what not, but sooner than not let it to gentlepeople, I'll do without the money,' Her Ladyship declared. Now you're just the sort of tenant she'd like to have here. I'm quite sure of that, Mr. Lynn. I should take a pleasure in bringing you two together."
Mr. Lynn grunted. He was perfectly well aware that the house would seem more desirable to his wife and daughters from the very fact that it belonged to a "Lady" anybody. He was perfectly well aware, also, that his companion had suspected this. The consideration of these facts left him, however, unaffected. He was disposed, if anything, to admire the cleverness of the young man who had realized an outside asset.
"Well, I've seen pretty well all over it," he remarked. "I'll go back to the office with you, anyhow, and have a word with Mr. Waddington. By the way, what's that room behind you?"
The young man glanced carelessly around at the door of the room of Fate and down at the bunch of keys which he held in his hand. He even chuckled as he replied.
"I was going to mention the matter of that room, sir," he replied, "because, if perfectly agreeable to the tenant, Her Ladyship would like to keep it locked up."
"Locked up?" Mr. Lynn repeated. "And why?"
"Regular queer story, sir," the young man declared, confidentially. "The late Earl was a great traveller in the East, as you may have heard, and he was always poking about in some ruined city or other in the desert, and picking up things and making discoveries. Well, last time he came home from abroad, he brought with him an old Egyptian or Arab,—I don't know which he was, but he was brown,—settled him down in this room—in his own house, mind—and wouldn't have him disturbed or interfered with, not at any price. Well, the old chap worked here night and day at some sort of writing, and then, naturally enough, what with not having the sort of grub he liked, and never going outside the doors, he croaked."
"He what?" Mr. Lynn interposed.
"He died," the young man explained. "It was just about the time that the Earl was ill himself. His Lordship gave orders that the body was to be buried and the room locked up, in case the old chap's heirs should come along. Seems he'd brought a few odd things of his own over—nothing whatever of any value. Anyway, those were Lord Idlemay's wishes, and the room has been locked up ever since."
Mr. Lynn was interested.
"No objection to our just looking inside, I suppose?"
"None whatever," the young man declared, promptly. "I was going to have a peep myself. Here goes!"
He fitted the key in the lock and pushed the door open. Mr. Lynn took one step forward and drew back hurriedly.
"Thanks!" he said. "That'll do! I've seen all I want—and smelt!"
Mr. Alfred Burton, fortunately or unfortunately, was possessed of less sensitive nasal organs and an indomitable curiosity. The room was dark and stuffy, and a wave of pungent odor swept out upon them with the opening of the door. Nevertheless, he did not immediately close it.
"One moment!" he muttered, peering inside. "I'll just look around and see that everything is in order."
He crossed the threshold and passed into the room. It was certainly a curious apartment. The walls were hung not with paper at all, but with rugs of some Oriental material which had the effect of still further increasing the gloom. There were neither chairs nor tables—no furniture at all, in fact, of any account but in the furthest corner was a great pile of cushions, and on the floor by the side a plain strip of sandalwood, covered with a purple cloth, on which were several square-shaped sheets of paper, a brass inkstand, and a bundle of quill pens. On the extreme corner of this strip of wood, which seemed to have been used as a writing desk by some one reclining upon the cushions, was the strangest article of all. Alfred Burton stared at it with wide-open eyes. It was a tiny plant growing out of a small-sized flower-pot, with real green leaves and a cluster of queer little brown fruit hanging down from among them.
"Jiminy!" the clerk exclaimed. "I say, Mr. Lynn, sir!"
But Mr. Lynn had gone off to pace the dining-room once more. Burton moved slowly forward and stooped down over the cushions. He took up the sheets of paper which lay upon the slab of sandalwood. They were covered with wholly indecipherable characters save for the last page only, and there, even as he stood with it in his fingers, he saw, underneath the concluding paragraph of those unintelligible hieroglyphics, a few words of faintly traced English, laboriously printed, probably a translation. He struck a match and read them slowly out to himself:
"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—" The translation concluded abruptly. Mr. Alfred Burton removed his silk hat and reflectively scratched his head.
"Queer sort of joker he must have been," he remarked to himself. "I wonder what he was getting at?"
His eyes fell upon the little tree. He felt the earth in the pot it was quite dry. Yet the tree itself was fresh and green.
"Here goes for a brown bean," he continued, and plucked one.
Even then, while he held it in his fingers, he hesitated.
"Don't suppose it will do me any harm," he muttered, doubtfully.
There was naturally no reply. Mr. Alfred Burton laughed uneasily to himself. The shadows of the room and its curious perfume were a trifle disconcerting.
"Risk it, anyway," he concluded. "Here goes!" He raised the little brown fruit—which did indeed somewhat resemble a bean—to his mouth and swallowed it. He found it quite tasteless, but the deed was no sooner done than he was startled by a curious buzzing in his ears and a momentary but peculiar lapse of memory. He sat and looked around him like a man who has been asleep and suddenly awakened in unfamiliar surroundings. Then the sound of his client's voice suddenly recalled him to himself. He started up and peered through the gloom.
"Who's there?" he asked, sharply.
"Say, young man, I am waiting for you when you're quite ready," Mr. Lynn remarked from the threshold. "Queer sort of atmosphere in there, isn't it?"
Mr. Alfred Burton came slowly out and locked the door of the room. Even then he was dimly conscious that something had happened to him. He hated the musty odor of the place, the dusty, unswept hall, and the general air of desertion. He wanted to get out into the street and he hurried his client toward the front door. As soon as he had locked up, he breathed a little sigh of relief.
"What a delicious soft wind!" he exclaimed, removing his unsightly hat. "Really, I think that when we get a sunny day like this, April is almost our most beautiful month."
Mr. Lynn stared at his companion, who was now slowly descending the steps.
"Say, about this house," he began, "I guess I'd better take it. It may not be exactly what I want but it seems to me to be about as near as anything I am likely to find. We'll go round to the office right away and fix things up."
Mr. Alfred Burton shook his head doubtfully.
"I don't think I would take it, if I were you, Mr. Lynn," he said.
Mr. Lynn stopped short upon the pavement and looked at his companion in amazement. The latter had the air of one very little interested in the subject of conversation. He was watching approvingly a barrowful of lilac and other spring flowers being wheeled along by a flower-seller in the middle of the road.
"What an exquisite perfume!" the young man murmured, enthusiastically. "Doesn't it remind you, Mr. Lynn, of a beautiful garden somewhere right away in the country—one of those old-fashioned gardens, you know, with narrow paths where you have to push your way through the flowers, and where there are always great beds of pink and white stocks near the box edges? And do you notice—an accident, of course—but what a delicate blend of color the lilac and those yellow jonquils make!"
"I can't smell anything," the American declared, a little impatiently, "and I don't know as I want to just now. I am here to talk business, if you don't mind."
"In one moment," Burton replied. "Excuse me for one moment, if you please."
He hastened across the street and returned a moment or two later with a bunch of violets in his hand. Mr. Lynn watched him, partly in amazement, partly in disapproval. There seemed to be very little left of the smart, businesslike young man whose methods, only a short time ago, had commanded his unwilling admiration. Mr. Alfred Burton's expression had undergone a complete change. His eyes had lost their calculating twinkle, his mouth had softened. A pleasant but somewhat abstracted smile had taken the place of his forced amiability.
"You will forgive me, won't you?" he said, as he regained the pavement.
"I really haven't smelt violets before this year. Spring comes upon us
Londoners so suddenly."
"About that house, now," the American insisted, a little sharply.
"Certainly," Burton replied, removing his eyes unwillingly from the
passing barrow. "I really don't think you had better take it, Mr.
Lynn. You see, it is not generally known, but there is no doubt that
Lord Idlemay had typhoid fever there."
"Typhoid!" Mr. Lynn exclaimed, incredulously.
His companion nodded.
"Two of the servants were down with it as well," he continued. "We implored Lady Idlemay, when she offered us the letting of the house, to have the drains put in thorough order, but when we got the estimate out for her she absolutely declined. To tell you the truth, the best agents had all refused, under the circumstances, to have the house upon their books at all. That is why we got the letting of it."
Mr. Lynn removed the cigar from his mouth for a moment. There was a slight frown Upon his forehead. He was puzzled.
"Say, you're not getting at me for any reason, are you?" he demanded.
"My dear sir!" Burton protested, eagerly. "I am simply doing my duty and telling you the truth. The house is not in a fit state to be let to any one—certainly not to a man with a family. If you will permit me to say so, you are not going the right way to secure a suitable house. You simply walked into our office because you saw the sign up, and listened to anything the governor had to say. We haven't any west-end houses at all upon our books. It isn't our business, unfortunately. Miller & Sons, or Roscoe's, are the best people. No one would even come to see you at Idlemay House, much less stay with you—the place has such a bad reputation."
"Then will you be good enough to just explain to me why you were cracking it up like blazes only a few minutes ago?" Mr. Lynn demanded, indignantly. "I nearly took the darned place!"
Mr. Burton shook his head penitently.
"I am afraid that I cannot explain, sir," he confessed. "To tell you the truth, I do not understand in the least how I could have brought myself to be so untruthful. I am only thankful that no harm has been done."
They had reached the corner of the street in which the offices of Messrs. Waddington & Forbes were situated. Mr. Lynn came to a full stop.
"I can't see but what we might just as well part here, young man," he declared. "There's no use in my coming to your office, after what you've told me."
"Not the slightest," Mr. Burton admitted frankly, "in fact you are better away. Mr. Waddington would certainly try to persuade you to take the house. If you'll accept my advice, sir, you will go to Miller & Sons in St. James's Place. They have all the best houses on their books and they are almost certain to find something to suit you."
Mr. Lynn gazed once more at his companion curiously.
"Say, I'm not quite sure that I can size you up, even now," he said. "At first I thought that you were a rare little hustler, right on the job. I was set against that house and yet you almost persuaded me into taking it. What's come over you, anyway?"
Mr. Burton shook his head dubiously.
"I am afraid that it is no use asking me," he replied, "for I really don't quite know myself."
Mr. Lynn still lingered. The longer he looked at his companion, the more he appreciated the subtle change of demeanor and language which had certainly transformed Mr. Alfred Burton.
"It was after you came out of that little room," he continued, meditatively, "where that Oriental fellow had been shut up. The more I think of it, the odder it seems. You were as perky as mustard when you went in and you've been sort of dazed ever Since you came out."
Mr. Burton lifted his hat.
"Good day, sir!" he said. "I trust that you will find a residence to suit you."
Mr. Lynn strolled off with a puzzled frown upon his forehead, and
Alfred Burton, with a slight gesture of aversion, pushed open the
swinging doors which led into the offices of Messrs. Waddington &
Forbes.
Burton stood for a moment upon the threshold of the office, looking around him. A new and peculiar distaste for these familiar surroundings seemed suddenly to have sprung into life. For the first time he realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the office-boy—a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented the remaining clerical staff of the establishment—were pinned up several illustrations cut out from Comic Cuts, the Police News, and various other publications of a similar order. As Burton looked around him, his distaste grew. It seemed impossible that he had ever existed for an hour amid such an environment. The prospect of the future was suddenly hugely distasteful.
Very slowly he changed his coat and climbed on to his worn horsehair stool, without exchanging his usual facetious badinage with the remaining member of the staff. The office-boy, who had thought of something good to say, rather resented his silence. It forced him into taking the initiative, a position which placed him from the first at a disadvantage.
"Any luck with the Yank, Mr. Burton?" he inquired, with anxious civility.
Burton shook his head.
"None at all," he confessed. "He wouldn't have anything to do with the house."
"Has any one been letting on to him about it, do you think?"
"I don't think so," Burton replied. "I don't think any one else has mentioned it to him at all. He seems to be a complete stranger here."
"Couldn't have been quite at your best, could you, Mr. Burton, sir?
Not your usual bright and eloquent self, eh?"
The boy grinned and then ducked, expecting a missile. None came, however. Alfred Burton was in a very puzzled state of mind, and he neither showed nor indeed felt any resentment. He turned and faced his subordinate.
"I really don't know, Clarkson," he admitted. "I am sure that I was quite polite, and I showed him everything he wished to see; but, of course, I had to tell him the truth about the place."
"The what?" young Clarkson inquired, in a mystified tone.
"The truth," Burton repeated.
"Wot yer mean?"
"About the typhoid and that," Burton explained, mildly.
The office-boy pondered for a moment. Then he slowly opened a ledger, drew a day-book towards him, and continued his work. He was being jollied, of course, but the thing was too subtle for him at present. He decided to wait for the next move. Burton continued to regard his subordinate, however, and by degrees an expression of pained disapproval crept into his face.
"Clarkson," he said, "if you will forgive my mentioning a purely personal matter, why do you wear such uncomfortable collars and such an exceedingly unbecoming tie?"
The office-boy swung round upon his stool. His mouth was wide open like a rabbit's. He fingered the offending articles.
"What's the matter with them?" he demanded, getting his question out with a single breath.
"Your collars are much too high," Burton pointed out. "One can see how they cut into your neck. Then why wear a tie of that particular shade of vivid purple when your clothes themselves, with that blue and yellow stripe, are somewhat noticeable? There is a lack of symphony about the arrangement, an entire absence of taste, which is apt to depress one. The whole effect which you produce upon one's vision is abominable. You won't think my mentioning this a liberty, I hope?"
"What about your own red tie and dirty collar?" young Clarkson asked, indignantly. "What price your eight and sixpenny trousers, eh, with the blue stripe and the grease stains? What about the sham diamond stud in your dickey, and your three inches of pinned on cuff? Fancy your appearance, perhaps! Why, I wouldn't walk the streets in such a rig-out!"
Burton listened to his junior's attack unresentingly but with increasing bewilderment. Then he slipped from his seat and walked hurriedly across to the looking-glass, which he took down from its nail. He gazed at himself long and steadily and from every possible angle. It is probable that for the first time in his life he saw himself then as he really was. He was plain, of insignificant appearance, he was ill and tastelessly dressed. He stood there before the sixpenny-ha'penny mirror and drank the cup of humiliation.
"Calling my tie, indeed!" the office-boy muttered, his smouldering resentment bringing him back to the attack. "Present from my best girl, that was, and she knows what's what. Young lady with a place in a west-end milliner's shop, too. If that doesn't mean good taste, I should like to know what does. Look at your socks, too, all coming down over the tops of your boots! Nasty dirty pink and green stripes! There's another thing about my collar, too," he continued, speaking with renewed earnestness as he appreciated his senior's stupefaction. "It was clean yesterday, and that's more than yours was—or the day before!"
Burton shivered as he finally turned away from that looking-glass. The expression upon his face was indescribable.
"I am sorry I spoke, Clarkson," he apologized humbly. "It certainly seemed to have slipped my memory that I myself—I can't think how I managed to make such hideous, unforgivable mistakes."
"While we are upon the subject," his subordinate continued, ruthlessly, "why don't you give your fingernails a scrub sometimes, eh? You might give your coat a brush, too, now and then, while you are about it. All covered with scurf and dust about the shoulders! I'm all for cleanliness, I am."
Burton made no reply. He was down and his junior kicked him.
"I'd like to see the color of your shirt if you took those paper cuffs off!" the latter exclaimed. "Why don't you chuck that rotten dickey away? Cave!"
The door leading into the private office was brusquely opened. Mr. Waddington, the only existing member of the firm, entered—-a large, untidy-looking man, also dressed in most uncomely fashion, and wearing an ill-brushed silk hat on the back of his head. He turned at once to his righthand man.
"Well, did you land him?" he demanded, with some eagerness.
Burton shook his head regretfully.
"It was quite impossible to interest him in the house at all, sir," he declared. "He seemed inclined to take it at first, but directly he understood the situation he would have nothing more to do with it."
Mr. Waddington's face fell. He was disappointed. He was also puzzled.
"Understood the situation," he repeated. "What the dickens do you mean,
Burton? What situation?"
"I mean about the typhoid, sir, and Lady Idlemay's refusal to have the drains put in order."
Mr. Waddington's expression for a few moments was an interesting and instructive study. His jaw had fallen, but he was still too bewildered to realize the situation properly.
"But who told him?" he gasped.
"I did," Burton replied gently. "I could not possibly let him remain in ignorance of the facts."
"You couldn't—what?"
"I could not let him the house without explaining all the circumstances, sir," Burton declared, watching his senior anxiously. "I am sure you would not have wished me to do anything of the sort, would you?"
What Mr. Waddington said was unimportant. There was very little that he forgot and he was an auctioneer with a low-class clientele and a fine flow of language. When he had finished, the office-boy was dumb with admiration. Burton was looking a little pained and he had the shocked expression of a musician who has been listening to a series of discords. Otherwise he was unmoved.
"Your duty was to let that house," Mr. Waddington wound up, striking the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. "What do I give you forty-four shillings a week for, I should like to know? To go and blab trade secrets to every customer that comes along? If you couldn't get him to sign the lease, you ought to have worked a deposit, at any rate. He'd have had to forfeit that, even if he'd found out afterwards."
"I am sorry," Burton said, speaking in a much lower tone than was usual with him, but with a curious amount of confidence. "It would have been a moral falsehood if I had attempted anything of the sort. I could not possibly offer the house to Mr. Lynn or anybody else, without disclosing its drawbacks."
The auctioneer's face had become redder. His eyes seemed on the point of coming out of his head. He became almost incoherent.
"God bless my soul!" he spluttered. "Have you gone mad, Burton? What's come to you since the morning? Have you changed into a blithering fool, or what?"
"I think not, sir," Burton replied, gravely. "I don't—exactly remember for the moment," he went on with a slight frown. "My head seems a little confused, but I cannot believe that it has been our custom to conduct our business in the fashion you are suggesting."
Mr. Waddington walked round the office, holding his head between his hands.
"I don't suppose either of us has been drinking at this hour in the morning," he muttered, when he came to a standstill once more. "Look here, Burton, I don't want to do anything rash. Go home—never mind the time—go home this minute before I break out again. Come to-morrow morning, as usual. We'll talk it out then. God bless my soul!" he added, as Burton picked up his hat with a little sigh of relief and turned toward the door. "Either I'm drunk or the fellow's got religion or something! I never heard such infernal rubbish in my life!"
"Made a nasty remark about my tie just now, sir," Clarkson said, with dignity, as his senior disappeared. "Quite uncalled for. I don't fancy he can be well."
"Ever known him like it before?" Mr. Waddington inquired.
"Never, sir. I thought he seemed chippier than ever this morning when he went out. His last words were that he'd bet me a packet of Woodbines that he landed the old fool."
"He's gone dotty!" the auctioneer decided, as he turned back towards his sanctum. "He's either gone dotty or he's been drinking. The last chap in the world I should have thought it of!"
The mental attitude of Alfred Burton, as he emerged into the street, was in some respects curious. He was not in the least sorry for what had happened. On the contrary, he found himself wishing that the day's respite had not been granted to him, and that his departure from the place of his employment was final. He was very much in the position of a man who has been transferred without warning or notice from the streets of London to the streets of Pekin. Every object which he saw he looked upon with different eyes. Every face which he passed produced a different impression upon him. He looked about him with all the avidity of one suddenly conscious of a great store of unused impressions. It was like a second birth. He neither understood the situation nor attempted to analyze it. He was simply conscious of a most delightful and inexplicable light-heartedness, and of a host of sensations which seemed to produce at every moment some new pleasure. His first and most pressing anxiety was a singular one. He loathed himself from head to foot. He shuddered as he passed the shop-windows for fear he should see his own reflection. He made his way unfalteringly to an outfitter's shop, and from there, with a bundle under his arm, to the baths. It was a very different Alfred Burton indeed who, an hour or two later, issued forth into the streets. Gone was the Cockney young man with the sandy moustache, the cheap silk hat worn at various angles to give himself a rakish air, the flashy clothes, cheap and pretentious, the assured, not to say bumptious air so sedulously copied from the deportment of his employer. Enter a new and completely transformed Alfred Burton, an inoffensive-looking young man in a neat gray suit, a lilac-colored tie of delicate shade, a flannel shirt with no pretence at cuffs, but with a spotless turned down collar, a soft Homburg hat, a clean-shaven lip. With a new sense of self-respect and an immense feeling of relief, Burton, after a few moments' hesitation, directed his footsteps towards the National Gallery. He had once been there years ago on a wet Bank Holiday, and some faint instinct of memory which somehow or other had survived the burden of his sordid days suddenly reasserted itself. He climbed the steps and passed through the portals with the beating heart of the explorer who climbs his last hill. It was his entrance, this, into the new world whose call was tearing at his heartstrings. He bought no catalogue, he asked no questions. From room to room he passed with untiring footsteps. His whole being was filled with the immeasurable relief, the almost passionate joy, of one who for the first time is able to gratify a new and marvelous appetite. With his eyes, his soul, all these late-born, strange, appreciative powers, he ministered to an appetite which seemed unquenchable. It was dusk when he came out, his cheeks burning, his eyes bright. He carried a new music, a whole world of new joys with him, but his most vital sensation was one of glowing and passionate sympathy. They were splendid, these heroes who had seen the truth and had struggled to give life to it with pencil or brush or chisel, that others, too, might see and understand. If only one could do one's little share!
He walked slowly along, absorbed in his thoughts, unconscious even of the direction in which his footsteps were taking him. When at last he paused, he was outside a theatre. The name of Ibsen occupied a prominent place upon the boards. From somewhere among the hidden cells of his memory came a glimmering recollection—a word or two read at random, an impression, only half understood, yet the germ of which had survived. Ibsen! A prophet of truth, surely! He looked eagerly down the placard for the announcements and the prices of admission. And then a sudden cold douche of memory descended upon his new enthusiasms. There was Ellen!
There certainly was Ellen! Like a man on his way to prison, Alfred Burton took his place in a third-class carriage in his customary train to Garden Green. Ned Miles, who travelled in the oil trade, came up and smote him upon the shoulder.
"Say, cocky, what have you been doing to yourself?" he demanded in amazement. "Have you robbed a bank and going about in disguise, eh? Why, the missis won't know you!"
Burton shrank a little back in his place. His eyes seemed filled with some nameless distaste as he returned the other's gaze.
"I have taken a dislike to my former style of dress," he replied simply, "also to my moustache."
"Taken a dislike—Lord love a duck!" his quondam friend exclaimed. "Strike me blind if I should have known you! Taken a dislike to the—here, Alf, is this a game?"
"Not at all," Burton answered quietly. "It is the truth. It is one of those matters, I suppose," he continued, "which principally concern oneself."
"No need to get jumpy about it," Mr. Miles remarked, still a little dazed. "Come in and have some farthing nap with the boys. They won't recognize you in that get-up. We'll have a lark with them."
Burton shook his head. Again he was unable to keep the distaste from his eyes or tone.
"Not to-night, thank you."
The train was just moving, so Miles was obliged to hurry off, but at Garden Green, Burton was compelled to run the gauntlet of their cheers and mockery as he passed down the platform. Good sports and excellent fellows he had thought them yesterday. To-day he had no words for them. He simply knew that they grated upon every nerve in his body and that he loathed them. For the first time he began to be frightened. What was this thing that had happened to him? How was it possible for him to continue his daily life?
As soon as he was out of the station, his troubles began again. A veil seemed to have been torn from before his eyes. Just as in London every face into which he had looked, every building which he had passed, had seemed to him unfamiliar, appealing to an altered system of impressions, so here, during that brief walk, a new disgust was born in him. The showy-looking main street with its gingerbread buildings, all new and glittering with paint, appalled him. The larger villas—self-conscious types all reeking with plaster and false decorations—set him shivering. He turned into his own street and his heart sank. Something had indeed touched his eyes and he saw new and terrible things. The row of houses looked as though they had come out of a child's playbox. They were all untrue, shoddy, uninviting. The waste space on the other side of the unmade street, a repository for all the rubbish of the neighborhood, brought a groan to his lips. He stopped before the gate of his own little dwelling. There were yellow curtains in the window, tied back with red velvet. Even with the latch of the gate in his hand, he hesitated. A child in a spotted velveteen suit and a soiled lace collar, who had been playing in the street, greeted him with an amazed shout and then ran on ahead.
"Mummy, come and look at Daddy!" the boy shrieked. "He's cut off all the hair from his lip and he's got such funny clothes on! Do come and look at his hat!"
The child was puny, unprepossessing, and dirty. Worse tragedy than this, Burton knew it. The woman who presently appeared to gaze at him with open-mouthed wonder, was pretentiously and untidily dressed, with some measure of good looks woefully obscured by a hard and unsympathetic expression. Burton knew these things also. It flashed into his mind as he stood there that her first attraction to him had been because she resembled his ill-conceived idea of an actress. As a matter of fact, she resembled much more closely her cousin, who was a barmaid. Burton looked into the tragedy of his life and shivered.
"What in the name of wonder's the meaning of this, Alfred?" his better half demanded. "What are you standing there for, looking all struck of a heap?"
He made no reply. Speech, for the moment, was absolutely impossible. She stood and stared at him, her arms akimbo, disapproval written in her face. Her hair was exceedingly untidy and there was a smut upon her cheek. A soiled lace collar, fastened with an imitation diamond brooch, had burst asunder.
"What's come to your moustache?" she demanded. "And why are you dressed like—like a house-painter on a Sunday?"
Burton found his first gleam of consolation. A newly-discovered sense of humor soothed him inexplicably.
"Sorry you don't like my clothes," he replied. "You'll get used to them."
"Get used to them!" his better half repeated, almost hysterically. "Do you mean to say you are going about like that?"
"Something like it," Burton admitted.
"No silk hat, no tail coat?"
Burton shook his head gently.
"I trust," he said, "that I have finished, for the present, at any rate, with those most unsightly garments."