_ CHAPTER XVIII. THE END OF A DREAM
Dinner that evening was a curious meal, partly constrained, partly enlivened by strange little bursts of attempted geniality on the part of the professor. Mr. Bomford told long and pointless stories with much effort and the air of a man who would have made himself agreeable if he could. Edith leaned back in her chair, eating very little, her eyes large, her cheeks pale. She made her escape as soon as possible and Burton watched her with longing eyes as he passed out into the cool darkness. He half rose, indeed, to follow her, but his host and Mr. Bomford both moved their chairs so that they sat on either side of him. The professor filled the glasses with his own hand. It was his special claret, a wonderful wine, the cobwebbed bottle of which, reposing in a wicker cradle, he handled with jealous care.
"Mr. Burton," he began, settling down in his chair, "we have been unjust to you, Mr. Bomford and I. We apologize. We ask your forgiveness."
"Unjust?" Burton murmured.
"Unjust," the professor repeated. "I allude to this with a certain amount of shame. We made you an offer of a thousand pounds for a portion of that--er--peculiar product to which you owe this wonderful change in your disposition. We were in the wrong. We had thoughts in our mind which we should have shared with you. It was not fair, Mr. Burton, to attempt to carry out such a scheme as Mr. Bomford here had conceived, without including you in it." The professor nodded to himself, amiably satisfied with his words. Burton remained mystified. Mr. Bomford took up the ball.
"We yielded, Mr. Burton," he said, "to the natural impulse of all business men. We tried to make the best bargain we could for ourselves. A little reflection and--er--your refusal of our offer, has brought us into what I trust you will find a more reasonable frame of mind. We wish now to treat you with the utmost confidence. We wish to lay our whole scheme before you."
"I don't know what you mean," Burton declared, a little wearily. "You want one of my beans, for which you offered a certain sum of money. I am sorry. I would give you one if I could, but I cannot spare it. They are all that stand between me and a relapse into a state of being which I shudder to contemplate. Need we discuss it any further? I think, if you do not mind--"
He half rose to his feet, his eyes were searching the shadows of the garden. The professor pulled him down.
"Be reasonable, Mr. Burton--be reasonable," he begged. "Listen to what Mr. Bomford has to say."
Mr. Bomford cleared his throat, scratched his chin for a moment thoughtfully, and half emptied his glass of claret.
"Our scheme, my young friend," He said condescendingly, "is worthy even of your consideration. You are, I understand, gifted with some powers of observation which you have turned to lucrative account. It has naturally occurred to you, then, in your studies of life, that the greatest accumulations of wealth which have taken place during the present generation have come entirely through discoveries, which either nominally or actually have affected the personal well-being of the individual. Do I make myself clear?
"I have no doubt," Burton murmured, "that I shall understand presently."
"Once convince a man," Mr. Bomford continued, "that you are offering him something which will improve his health, and he is yours, or rather his money is--his two and sixpence or whatever particular sum you may have designed to relieve him of. It is for that reason that you see the pages of the magazines and newspapers filled with advertisements of new cures for ancient diseases. There is more money in the country than there has ever been, but there are just the same number of real and fancied diseases. Mankind is, if possible, more credulous to-day than at any epoch during our history. There are millions who will snatch at the slightest chance of getting rid of some real or fancied ailment. Great journals have endeavored to persuade us that you can attain perfect health by standing on your head in the bathroom for ten minutes before breakfast. A million bodies, distorted into strange shapes, can be seen every morning in the domestic bed-chamber. A health-food made from old bones has been one of the brilliant successes of this generation. Now listen to my motto. This is what I want to bring home to every inhabitant of this country. This is what I want to see in great black type in every newspaper, on every hoarding, and if possible flashed at night upon the sky: 'Cure the mind first; the mind will cure the body.' That," Mr. Bomford concluded, modestly, "is my idea of one of our preliminary advertisements."
The professor nodded approvingly. Burton glanced from one to the other of the two men with an air of almost pitiful non-comprehension. Mr. Bomford, having emptied his glass of claret, started afresh.
"My idea, in short," he went on, "is this. Let us three join forces. Let us analyze this marvelous product, into the possession of which you, Mr. Burton, have so mysteriously come. Let us, blending its constituents as nearly as possible, place upon the market a health-food not for the body but for the mind. You follow me now, I am sure? Menti-culture is the craze of the moment. It would become the craze of the million but for a certain vagueness in its principles, a certain lack of appeal to direct energies. We will preach the cause. We will give the public something to buy. We will ask them ten and sixpence a time and they will pay it gladly. What is more, Mr. Burton, the public will pay it all over the world. America will become our greatest market. Nothing like this has ever before been conceived, 'Leave your bodies alone for a time,' we shall say. 'Take our food and improve your moral system.' We shall become the crusaders of commerce. Your story will be told in every quarter of the globe, it will be translated into every conceivable tongue. Your picture will very likely adorn the lid of our boxes. It will be a matter for consideration, indeed, whether we shall not name this great discovery after you."
"So it was for this," Burton exclaimed, "that you offered me that thousand pounds!"
"We were to blame," Mr. Bomford admitted.
"Very much to blame," the professor echoed.
"Nevertheless," Mr. Bomford insisted, "it is an incident which you must forget. It is man's first impulse, is it not, to make the best bargain he can for himself? We tried it and failed. For the future we abandon all ideas of that sort, Mr. Burton. We associate you, both nominally and in effect, with our enterprise, in which we will be equal partners. The professor will find the capital, I will find the commercial experience, you shall hand over the bean. I promise you that before five years have gone by, you shall be possessed of wealth beyond any dreams you may ever have conceived."
Burton moved uneasily in his chair.
"But I have never conceived any dreams of wealth at all," he objected. "I have no desire whatever to be rich. Wealth seems to me to be only an additional excitement to vulgarity. Besides, the possession of wealth in itself tends to an unnatural state of existence. Man is happy only if he earns the money which buys for him the necessaries of life."
Mr. Bomford listened as one listens to a lunatic. Mr. Cowper, however, nodded his head in kindly toleration.
"Thoughts like that," he admitted, "have come to me, my young friend, in the seclusion of my study. They have come, perhaps, in the inspired moments, but in the inspired moments one is not living that every-day and necessary life which is forced upon us by the conditions of existence in this planet. There is nothing in the whole scheme of life so great as money. With it you can buy the means of gratifying every one of those unnatural desires with which Fate has endowed us. Take my case, for instance. If this wealth comes to me, I shall spend no more upon what I eat or drink or wear, yet, on the other hand, I shall gratify one of the dreams of my life. I shall start for the East with a search party, equipped with every modern invention which the mind of man has conceived. I shall go from site to site of the ruined cities of Egypt. No one can imagine what treasures I may not discover. I shall even go on to a part of Africa--but I need not weary you with this. I simply wanted you to understand that the desire for wealth is not necessarily vulgar."
Burton yawned slightly. His eyes sought once more the velvety shadows which hung over the lawn. He wondered down which of those dim avenues she had passed.
"I am so sorry," he said apologetically. "You are a man of business, Mr. Bomford, and you, professor, see much further into life than I can, but I do not wish to have anything whatever to do with your scheme. It does not appeal to me in the least--in fact it offends me. It seems crassly vulgar, a vulgar way of attaining to a position which I, personally, should loathe."
He rose to his feet.
"If you will excuse me, professor," he said. Mr. Bomford, with a greater show of vigor than he had previously displayed, jumped up and laid his hand upon the young man's shoulder. His hard face seemed suddenly to have become the rioting place for evil passions. His lips were a little parted and his teeth showed unpleasantly.
"Do you mean, young man," he exclaimed, "that you refuse to join us?"
"That is what I intended to convey," Burton replied coldly.
"You refuse either to come into our scheme or to give us one of the beans?"
Burton nodded.
"I hold them in trust for myself." There was a moment's silence. Mr. Bomford seemed to be struggling for words. The professor was looking exceedingly disappointed.
"Mr. Burton," he protested, "I cannot help feeling a certain amount of admiration for your point of view, but, believe me, you are entirely in the wrong. I beg that you will think this matter over."
"I am sure that it would be useless," Burton replied. "Nothing would induce me to change my mind."
"Nothing?" Mr. Bomford asked, with a peculiar meaning in his tone.
"Nothing?" the professor echoed softly.
Burton withdrew his eyes from the little shadowy vista of garden and looked steadfastly at the two men. Then his heart began to beat. He was filled with a sort of terror lest they should say what he felt sure was in their minds. It was like sacrilege. It was something unholy. His eyes had been caught by the flutter of a white gown passing across one of the lighter places of the perfumed darkness. They had been watching him. He only prayed that they would not interrupt until he had reached the end of his speech.
"Professor," he said softly, turning to his host, "there is one thing which I desire so greatly that I would give my life itself for it. I would give even what you have asked for to-night and be content to leave the world in so much shorter time. But that one thing I may not ask of you, for in those days of which I have told you, before the wonderful adventure came, I was married. My wife lives now in Garden Green. I have also a little boy. You will forgive me."
He passed through the open French windows and neither of them made any further attempt to detain him. Their silence was a little unnatural and from the walk outside he glanced for a moment behind him. The two men were sitting in exactly the same positions, their faces were turned towards him, and their eyes seemed to be following his movements. Yet there was a change. The professor was no longer the absorbed, mildly benevolent man of science. Mr. Bomford had lost his commonplace expression. There was a new thing in their faces, something eager, ominous. Burton felt a sudden depression as he turned away. He looked with relief at the thin circle of the moon, visible now through the waving elm trees at the bottom of the garden. He drew in with joy a long breath of the delicious perfume drawn by the night from the silent boughs of the cedar tree. Resolutely he hurried away from the sight of that ugly little framed picture upon which he had gazed through the open French windows--the two men on either side of the lamp, watching him.
"Edith!" he called softly.
She answered him with a little laugh. She was almost by his side. He took a quick step forward. She was standing among the deepest shadows, against the trunk of the cedar tree, her slim body leaning slightly against it. It seemed to him that her face was whiter, her eyes softer than ever. He took her hand in his.
She smiled.
"You must not come out to me here," she whispered. "Mr. Bomford will not like it. It is most improper."
"But it may be our good-bye," he pleaded. "They want me to do something, Mr. Bomford and your father, something hideous, utterly grotesque. I have refused and they are very angry."
"What is it that they want you to do?"
"Dear," he answered, "you, I am sure, will understand. They want me to give them one of my beans. They want to make some wretched drug or medicine from it, to advertise it all over the world, to amass a great fortune."
"Are you in earnest?" she cried.
"Absolutely," he assured her. "It is Mr. Bomford's scheme. He says that it would mean great wealth for all of us. Your father, too, praises it. He, too, seemed to come--for the moment, at any rate--under the curse. He, too, is greedy for money."
"And you?" she whispered. "What did you say?
"What did I say?" he repeated wonderingly. "But of course you know! Imagine the horror of it--a health-food for the mind! Huge sums of money rolling in from the pockets of credulous people, money stinking with the curse of vulgarity and quackery! It is almost like a false note, dear, to speak of it out here, but I must tell you because they are angry with me. I am afraid that your father will send me away, and I am afraid that our little dream is over and that I shall not wander with you any more evenings here in the cool darkness, when the heat of the day is past and the fragrance of the cedar tree and your roses fills the air, and you, your sweet self, Edith, are here."
She was looking at him very fixedly. Her lips were a little parted, her eyes were moist, her bosom was rising and falling as though she were shaken by some wonderful emotion.
"Dear!" she murmured.
It seemed to him that she leaned a little towards him. His heart ached with longing. Very slowly, almost reverently, his hands touched her shoulders, drew her towards him.
"You and I," he whispered, "at least we live in the same world. Nothing will ever be able to take the joy of that thought from my heart."
She remained quite passive. In her eyes there was a far-away look.
"Dear," she said softly in his ear, "you are such a dreamer, aren't you--such a dear unpractical person? Have you never used your wonderful imagination to ask yourself what money may really mean? You can buy a world of beautiful things, you can buy the souls of men and women, you can buy the law."
He felt a cold pain in his heart. Looking at her through the twilight he could almost fancy that there was a gleam in her face of something which he had seen shining out of her father's eyes. His arms fell away from her. The passion which had thrilled him but a moment ago seemed crushed by that great resurgent impulse which he was powerless to control.
"You think that I should do this?" he cried, hoarsely.
"Why not?" she answered. "Money is only vulgar if you spend it vulgarly. It might mean so much to you and to me."
"Tell me how?" he faltered.
"Mr. Bomford is very fond of money," she continued. "He is fonder of money, I think, than he is of me. And then," she added, her voice sinking to a whisper, "there is Garden Green. Of course, I do not know much about these things, but I suppose if you really wanted to, and spent a great deal of money, you could buy your freedom, couldn't you?"
The air seemed full of jangling discords. He closed his eyes. It was as though a shipwreck was going on around him. His dream was being broken up into pieces. The girl with the fair hair was passing into the shadows from which she had come. She called to him across the lawn as he hurried away, softly at first and then insistently. But Burton did not return. He spent his night upon the Common. _