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.