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.