Chapter 8. Hesitation

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_ CHAPTER VIII. HESITATION

Mr. Waddington called a taxicab.

"I can't stand the Golden Lion any longer," he explained. "Somehow or other, the place seems to have changed in the most extraordinary manner' during the last week or so. Everybody drinks too much there. The table-linen isn't clean, and the barmaids are too familiar. I've found out a little place in Jermyn Street where I go now when I have time. We can talk there."

Burton nodded. He was, as a matter of fact, intensely interested. Only a few weeks ago, his late employer had spent nearly every moment of his time, when his services were not urgently required at the office, at the Golden Lion, and he had been seen on more than one occasion at the theatre and elsewhere with one or another of the golden-haired ladies behind the bar. Mr. Waddington--fortunately, perhaps, considering his present predicament!--was a bachelor.

The restaurant, if small, was an excellent one, and Mr. Waddington, who seemed already to be treated with the consideration of a regular customer, ordered a luncheon which, simple though it was, inspired his companion with respect. The waiter withdrew and the auctioneer and his quondam clerk sat and looked at one another. Their eyes were full of questions. Mr. Waddington made a bad lapse.

"What in hell do you suppose it all means, Burton?" he demanded. "You see, I've got it too!"

"Obviously," Burton answered. "I am sure," he added, a little hesitatingly, "that I congratulate you."

Mr. Waddington at that moment looked scarcely a subject for congratulation. A spasm, as though of pain, had suddenly passed across his face. He clutched at the sides of his chair.

"It's marvelous!" he murmured. "A single word like that and I suffer in an absolutely indescribable sort of way. There seems to be something pulling at me all the time, even when it rises to my lips."

"I shouldn't worry about that," Burton replied. "You must get out of the habit. It's quite easy. I expect very soon you will find all desire to use strong language has disappeared entirely."

Mr. Waddington was inclined to be gloomy.

"That's all very well," he declared, "but I've my living to get."

"You seem to be doing pretty well up to now," Burton reminded him.

Mr. Waddington assented, but without enthusiasm.

"It can't last, Burton," he said. "I am ashamed to say it, but all my crowd have got so accustomed to hear me--er--exaggerate, that they disbelieve everything I say as a matter of habit. I tell them now that the goods I am offering are not what they should be, because I can't help it, and they think it's because I have some deep game up my sleeve, or because I do not want to part. I give them a week or so at the most, Burton--no more."

"Don't you think," Burton suggested doubtfully, "that there might be an opening in the profession for an auctioneer who told the truth?"

Mr. Waddington smiled sadly.

"That's absurd, Burton," he replied, "and you know it."

Burton considered the subject thoughtfully.

"There must be occupations," he murmured, "where instinctive truthfulness would be an advantage."

"I can't think of one," Mr. Waddington answered, gloomily. "Besides, I am too old for anything absolutely new."

"How on earth did you succeed in letting Idlemay House?" Burton asked suddenly.

"Most remarkable incident," his host declared. "Reminds me of my last two sales of antique furniture. This man--a Mr. Forrester--came to me with his wife, very keen to take a house in that precise neighborhood. I asked him the lowest rent to start with, and I told him that the late owner had died of typhoid there, and that the drains had practically not been touched since."

"And yet he took it?"

"Took it within twenty-four hours," Mr. Waddington continued. "He seemed to like the way I put it to him, and instead of being scared he went to an expert in drains, who advised him that there was only quite a small thing wrong. He's doing up some of the rooms and moving in in a fortnight."

"This sounds as though there might be an opening for an honest house-agent," Burton suggested.

Mr. Waddington looked dubious.

"It's never been tried. Just this once it came off, but as a regular thing I should have no confidence in it. People like to be gulled. They've been brought up to it. They ask for lies--that's why the world's so full of them. Case of supply and demand, you know."

"According to you, then," Burton remarked, a little dolefully, "it seems as though this change in us unfits us for any sort of practical life."

Mr. Waddington coughed. Even his cough was no longer strident.

"That," he confessed, "has been worrying me. I find it hard to see the matter differently. If one might venture upon a somewhat personal question, how did you manage to discover a vocation? You seem to be prospering," he added, glancing at his companion's neat clothes and gray silk tie.

"I was fortunate," Burton admitted frankly. "I discovered quite by accident the one form in which it is possible to palm off the truth on an unsuspecting public."

Mr. Waddington laid down his knife and fork. He was intensely interested.

"Art," Burton murmured softly.

"Art?" Mr. Waddington echoed under his breath, a little vaguely. The questioning gleam was still in his eyes.

"Painting, sculpture, in my case writing," Burton explained. "I read something when I was half starving which was in a newspaper and had obviously been paid for, and I saw at once that the only point about it was that the man had put down what he saw instead of what he thought he saw. I tried the same thing, and up to the present, at any rate, it seems to go quite Well."

"That's queer," Mr. Waddington murmured. "Do you know," he continued, dropping his voice and looking around him anxiously, "that I've taken to reading Ruskin? I've got a copy of 'The Seven Lamps' at the office, and I can't keep away from it. I slip it into my drawer if any one comes in, like an office boy reading the Police Gazette. All the time I am in the streets I am looking at the buildings, and, Burton, this is the extraordinary part of it, I know no more about architecture than a babe unborn, and yet I can tell you where they're wrong, every one of them. There are some streets I can't pass through, and I close my eyes whenever I get near Buckingham Palace. On the other hand, I walked a mile the other day to see a perfect arch down in South Kensington, and there are some new maisonettes in Queen Anne Street without a single erring line."

Burton poured himself out a glass of wine from the bottle which his companion had ordered.

"Mr. Waddington," he said, "this is a queer thing that has happened to us."

"Not a soul would believe it," the auctioneer assented. "No one will ever believe it. The person who declared that there was nothing new under the sun evidently knew nothing about these beans!"

Burton leaned across the table.

"Mr. Waddington," he continued, "I was around at Idlemay House this morning. I went to see what had become of the flower-pot. I found the little room swept bare. One of the workmen told me that the things had been stolen."

Mr. Waddington showed some signs of embarrassment. He waited for his companion to proceed.

"I wanted the rest of those beans," Burton confessed.

Mr. Waddington shook his head slowly.

"I haven't made up my mind about them yet," he said. "Better leave them alone."

"You do know where they are, then?" Burton demanded breathlessly.

The auctioneer did not deny it.

"I had them removed," he explained "in a somewhat peculiar fashion. The fact of it is, the new tenant is a very peculiar man and I did not dare to ask him to give me that little tree. I simply did not dare to run the risk. It is a painful subject with me, this, because quite thoughtlessly I endeavored to assume the appearance of anger on discovering the theft. The words nearly stuck in my throat and I was obliged to lie down for an hour afterwards."

Burton drew a little breath of relief.

"I wish I'd asked you about this before," he declared. "I should have enjoyed my luncheon better."

Mr. Waddington coughed.

"The beans," he remarked, "are in my possession. There are only eleven of them and I have not yet made up my mind exactly what to do with them."

"Mr. Waddington," Burton said impressively, "have you forgotten that I am a married man?"

Mr. Waddington started.

"God bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "I had forgotten that!

"A wife and one little boy," Burton continued. "We were living at Garden Green in a small plastered edifice called Clematis Villa. My wife is a vigorous woman, part of whose life has been spent in domestic service, and part in a suburban dressmaker's establishment. She keeps the house very clean, pins up the oleographs presented to us at Christmas time by the grocer and the oil-man, and thinks I look genteel in a silk hat when we walk out to hear the band in the public gardens on Thursday evenings."

"I can see her!" Mr. Waddington groaned. "My poor fellow!"

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

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

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

Burton waved it away.

"Listen," he proceeded. "I have also a child--a little son. His name is Alfred. He is called Alf, for short. His mother greases his hair and he has a curl which comes over his forehead. I have never known him when his hands were not both sticky and dirty--his hands and his lips. On holidays he wears a velveteen suit with grease spots inked over, an imitation lace collar, and a blue make-up tie."

Mr. Waddington re-opened the silver casket.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Waddington paid the bill.

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

Burton followed his host into the street. The sun was shining, and a breath of perfume from the roses in a woman's gown assailed him, as she passed by on the threshold to enter the restaurant. He stood quite still for a moment. He had succeeded in his object, he had acquired the beans which were to restore to him his domestic life, and in place of any sense of satisfaction he was conscious of an intense sense of depression. What magic, after all, could change Ellen! He forgot for one moment the gulf across which he had so miraculously passed. He thought of himself as he was now, and of Ellen as she had been. The memory of that visit to Garden Green seemed suddenly like a nightmare. The memory of the train, underground for part of the way, with its stuffy odors, made him shiver. The hot, dusty, unmade street, with its hideous rows of stuccoed villas, loomed before his eyes and confirmed his swiftly born disinclination to taking at once this final and ominous step. Something all the time seemed to be drawing him in another direction, the faint magic of a fragrant memory--a dream, was it--that he had carried with him unconsciously through a wilderness of empty days? He hesitated, and finally climbed up on to the garden seat of an omnibus on its way to Victoria. _

Read next: Chapter 9. The Land Of Enchantment

Read previous: Chapter 7. The Truthful Auctioneer

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