THE PROFESSOR INSISTS
Crouched over his writing table, with sheets of manuscript on every side
of him, Burton worked like a slave at his novel. After a week devoted
by Mr. Waddington and himself to a fruitless search for the missing
plant, they had handed the matter over to a private detective and Burton
had settled down to make the most of the time before him. Day after day
of strange joys had dawned and passed away. He had peopled his room
with shadows. Edith had looked at him out of her wonderful eyes, he had
felt the touch of her fingers as she had knelt by his side, the glow
which had crept into his heart as he had read to her fragments of his
story and listened to her words of praise. The wall which he had built
stood firm and fast. He lived in his new days. Life was all
foreground, and hour by hour the splendid fancies came.
It was his first great effort at composition. Those little studies of
his, as he had passed backwards and forwards through the streets and
crowded places, had counted for little. Here he was making serious
demands upon his new capacity. In a sense it was all very easy, all
very wonderful, yet sometimes dejection came. Then his head drooped
upon his folded arms, he doubted himself and his work, he told himself
that he was living in a fool's Paradise--a fool's Paradise indeed!
One afternoon there came a timid knock at his door. He turned in his
chair a little impatiently. Then his pen slipped from his fingers. His
left hand gripped the side of the table, his right hand the arm of his
chair. It was a dream, of course!
"I hope we do not disturb you, Mr. Burton?" the professor inquired,
with anxious amiability. "My daughter and I were in the neighborhood
and I could not resist the visit. We had some trouble at first in
finding you."
Burton rose to his feet. He was looking past the professor, straight
into Edith's eyes. In her white muslin gown, her white hat and flowing
white veil, she seemed to him more wonderful, indeed, than any of those
cherished fancies of her which had passed through his room night and day
to the music of his thoughts.
"I am glad," he said simply. "Of course I am glad to see you! Please
come in. It is very untidy here. I have been hard at work."
He placed chairs for them. The professor glanced around the room with
some satisfaction. It was bare, but there was nothing discordant upon
the walls or in the furniture. There were many evidences, too, of a
scholarly and cultivated taste. Edith had glided past him to the window
and was murmuring her praises of the view.
"I have never seen a prettier view of the river in my life," she
declared, "and I love your big window. It is almost like living out of
doors, this. And how industrious you have been!"
She pointed to the sea of loose sheets which covered the table and the
floor. He smiled. He was beginning to recover himself.
"I have been working very hard," he admitted.
"But why?" she murmured. "You are young. Surely there is plenty of
time? Is it because the thoughts have come to you and you dared not
daily with them? Or is it because you are like every one else--in such
a terrible hurry to become rich and famous?"
He shook his head.
"It is not that," he said. "I have no thought of either. Alas!" he
added, looking into her eyes, "I lack the great incentive!"
"Then why is it?" she whispered.
"You must not ask our young friend too many questions," the professor
interrupted, a trifle impatiently. "Tell me, Mr. Burton, has there
been any change--er--in your condition?"
Burton shivered for a moment.
"None at present," he admitted. "It is scarcely due as yet."
Mr. Cowper drew his chair a little nearer. His face betokened the
liveliest interest. Edith stood in the window for a moment and then
sank into a chair in the background.
"With reference to your last remark," the professor went on, "it has
yet, I think, to be proved that these beans are of equal potency. You
understand me, I am sure, Mr. Burton? I mean that it does not in the
least follow that because one of them is able to keep you in an abnormal
condition for two months, the next one will keep you there for the same
period."
Burton was frankly startled.
"Is there anything about that in the translation, sir?" he asked.
"There is this sentence which I will read to you," the professor
pronounced, drawing a roll of paper from his pocket and adjusting his
spectacles. "I have now a more or less correct translation of the
sheets you left with me, a copy of which is at your disposal. Here it
is:--'_The formula is now enunciated and proved. The secret which has
defied the sages of the world since the ages of twilight, has yielded
itself to me, the nineteenth seeker after the truth in one direct line.
One slight detail alone baffles me. So far as I have gone at present,
the constituent parts, containing always the same elements and
producing, therefore, the same effect, appear in variable dimensions or
potencies, for reasons which at present elude me. Of my formula there
is no longer any doubt. This substance which I have produced shall
purify and make holy the world._'"
The professor looked up from his paper.
"Our interesting friend," he remarked, "seems to have been interrupted at
this point, probably by the commencement of that illness which had,
unfortunately, a fatal conclusion. Yet the meaning of what he writes is
perfectly clear. This substance, consolidated, I believe, into what you
term a bean, is not equally distributed. Therefore, I take it that you
may remain in your present condition for a longer or shorter period of
time. The potency of the first--er--dose, is nothing to go by. You
have, however, already learned how to render your present condition
eternal."
Burton sighed.
"The knowledge came too late," he said. "The tree had disappeared. It
was given away, by the Mr. Waddington I told you of, to a child whom he
met in the street."
"Dear me!" Mr. Cowper exclaimed gravely. "This is most disappointing.
Is there no chance of recovering it?
"We are trying," Burton replied. "Mr. Waddington has engaged a private
detective and we are also advertising in the papers."
"You have the beans still, at any rate," the professor remarked,
hopefully.
"We have the beans," Burton admitted, "but it is very awkward not
knowing how long one's condition is going to last. I might go out
without my beans one day, and find myself assailed by all manner of
amazing inclinations."
"My dear young man," the professor said earnestly, "let me point out to
you that this is a wonderful position in which you have been placed.
You ought to be most proud and grateful. Any trifling inconveniences
which may result should be, I venture to say, utterly ignored by you.
Now come, let me ask you a question. Are you feeling absolutely
your--how shall I call it--revised self to-day?"
"Absolutely, thank Heaven!" Burton declared, fervently.
The professor nodded his head. All the time his eyes were roving about
Burton's person, as though he were longing to make a minute study of his
anatomy.
"It would be most interesting," he said, "to trace the commencement
of any change in your condition. I am here with a proposition,
Mr. Burton. I appeal to you in the name of science as well
as--er--hospitality. The change might come to you here while you are
alone. There would be no one to remark upon it, no one to make those
interesting and instructive notes which, in justice to the cause of
progress, should be made by some competent person such as--forgive
me--myself. I ask you, therefore, to pack up and return with us to
Leagate. You shall have a study to yourself, my daughter will be only
too pleased and proud to assist you in your work, and I have also a
young female who comes to type-write for me, whose services you can
entirely command. I trust that you will not hesitate, Mr. Burton. We
are most anxious--indeed we are most anxious, are we not, Edith?--to
have you come."
Burton turned his head and glanced toward the girl. She had raised her
veil. Her eyes met his, met his question and evaded it. She studied
the pattern of the carpet. When she looked up again, her cheeks were
pink.
"Mr. Burton will be very welcome," she said.
There was a short silence in the room. The sunshine fell across the
dusty room in a long, quivering shaft. Outside, the branches of an elm
tree swinging in the wind cast a shadow across the floor. The
professor, with folded arms, sat alert and expectant. Burton, pale and
shrunken with the labors of the last ten days, looked out of his burning
eyes at the girl. For a single moment she had raised her head, had met
his fierce inquiry with a certain wistful pathos, puzzling, an
incomplete sentiment. Now she, too, was sitting as though in an
attitude of waiting. Burton felt his heart suddenly leap. What might
lie beyond the wall was of no account. He was a man with only a few
brief months to live, as he had come to understand life. He would
follow the eternal philosophy. He would do as the others and make the
best of them.
"It is very kind of you," he said. "I am not prepared to make a
visit,--I mean my clothes, and that sort of thing,--but if you will take
me as I am, I will come with pleasure."
Mr. Cowper's face showed the liveliest satisfaction. Edith, on the
other hand, never turned her head, although she felt Burton's eyes upon
her.
"Capital!" the professor declared. "Now do not think that we are trying
to abduct you, but there is a motor-car outside. We are going to take
you straight home. You can have a little recreation this beautiful
afternoon--a walk on the moors, or some tennis with Edith here. We will
try and give you a pleasant time. You must collect your work now and
go and put your things together. We are not in the least hurry. We
will wait."
Burton rose a little unsteadily to his feet. He was weary with much
labor, carried a little away by this wonderful prospect of living in the
same house, of having her by his side continually. It was too amazing
to realize. His heart gave a great leap as she moved towards him and
looked a little shyly into his face.
"May I not help you to pick up these sheets? I see that you have
numbered them all. I will keep them in their proper order. Perhaps you
could trust me to do that while you went and packed your bag?"
"Quite right, my dear--quite right," the professor remarked,
approvingly. "You will find my daughter most careful in such matters,
Mr. Burton. She is used to being associated with work of importance."
"You are very kind," Burton murmured. "If you will excuse me, then, for
a few moments?"
"By all means," the professor declared. "And pray suit yourself
entirely, Mr. Burton, as to the clothes you bring and the preparations
you make for your visit. If you prefer not to change for the evening, I
will do the same. I am renowned in the neighborhood chiefly for my
shabbiness and my carpet slippers."
Burton paused on the threshold and looked back. Edith was bending over
the table, collecting the loose sheets of manuscript. The sunlight had
turned her hair almost to the color of flame. Against the background of
the open window, her slim, delicate figure, clad in a fashionable mist
of lace and muslin, seemed to him like some wonderful piece of intensely
modern statuary. Between them the professor sat, with his arms still
folded, a benevolent yet pensive smile upon his lips.