The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton Part 16

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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sented. "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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 hoa.r.s.ely. "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."