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The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 10. No Reconciliation |
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_ CHAPTER X. NO RECONCILIATION 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 possibly live 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, "but I'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. _ |
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