A MAN'S SOUL
The half-yearly directors' meeting of the Menatogen Company had just
been held. One by one, those who had attended it were taking their
leave. The auditor, with a bundle of papers under his arm, shook hands
cordially with the chairman--Alfred Burton, Esquire--and Mr.
Waddington, and Mr. Bomford, who, during the absence of the professor
in Assyria, represented the financial interests of the company.
"A most wonderful report, gentlemen," the auditor pronounced,--"a
business, I should consider, without its equal in the world."
"And still developing," Mr. Waddington remarked, impressively.
"And still developing," the auditor agreed. "Another three years like
the last and I shall have the pleasure of numbering at least three
millionaires among my acquaintances."
"Shall we--?" Mr. Burton suggested, glancing towards Waddington.
Mr. Waddington nodded, but Mr. Bomford took up his hat. He was
dressed in the height of subdued fashion. His clothes and manners would
have graced a Cabinet Minister. He had, as a matter of fact, just
entered Parliament.
"You will excuse me, gentlemen," he said. "I make it a rule never to
take anything at all in the middle of the day."
He took his leave with the auditor.
"Pompous old ass!" Mr. Waddington murmured. "A snob!" Mr. Alfred
Burton declared,--"that's what I call him! Got his eye on a place in
Society. Saw his name in the paper the other day a guest at Lady
Somebody's reception. Here goes, old chap--success to Menatogen!"
Waddington drained his glass.
"They say it's his wife who pushes him on so," he remarked.
Mr. Burton's wine went suddenly flat. He drank it but without
enjoyment. Then he rose to his feet.
"Well, so long, Waddington, old chap," he said. "I expect the missis is
waiting for me."
Mrs. Burton was certainly waiting for her husband. She was sitting
back among the cushions of her Sixty horse-power Daimler, wrapped in a
motoring coat of the latest fashion, her somewhat brilliant coloring
only partially obscured by the silver-gray veil which drooped from her
motor bonnet. Burton took his place beside her almost in silence, and
they glided off. She looked at him curiously.
"Meeting go off all right?" she asked, a little sharply.
"Top hole," Mr. Burton replied.
"Then what are you so glum about?" she demanded, suspiciously. "You've
got nothing to worry about that I can see."
"Nothing at all," Mr. Burton admitted.
"Very good report of Alfred came second post," Mrs. Burton continued.
"They say he'll be fit to enter Harrow next year. And an invitation to
dine, too, with Lady Goldstein. We're getting on, Alfred. The only
thing now is that country house. I wish we could find something to suit
us."
"If we keep on looking," Burton remarked, "we are bound to come across
something sooner or later. If not, I must build."
"I'm all for building," Mrs. Burton declared. "I don't care for mouldy
old ruins, with ivy and damp places upon the walls. I like something
fine and spick and span and handsome, with a tower to it, and a long
straight drive that you can see down to the road; plenty of stone work
about the windows, and good square rooms. As for the garden, well, let
that come. We can plant a lot of small trees about, and lay down a
lawn. I don't care about other folks' leavings in houses, and a lot of
trees around a place always did put me off. Have you told him where to
go to?"
Burton shook his head.
"I just told him to drive about thirty or forty miles into the
country," he said. "It doesn't matter in what direction, does it? We
may see something that will suit us."
The car, with its splendid easy motion, sped noiselessly through the
suburbs and out into the country. It seemed to Mr. Burton that he must
have dozed. He had been up late the night before, and for several
nights before that. He was a little puffy about the cheeks and his eyes
were not so bright as they had been. He had developed a habit of dozing
off in odd places. When he awoke, he sat up with a start. He had been
dreaming. Surely this was a part of the dream! The car was going very
slowly indeed. On one side of him was a common, with bushes of flaming
gorse and clumps of heather, and little ragged plantations of pine
trees; and on his right, a low, old-fashioned house, a lawn of velvet,
and a great cedar tree; a walled garden with straight, box-bordered
paths, a garden full of old-fashioned flowers whose perfume seemed
suddenly to be tearing at some newly-awakened part of the man. He sat
up. He stared at the little seat among the rose bushes. Surely he was
back again, back again in that strange world, where the flavor of
existence was a different thing, where his head had touched the clouds,
where all the gross cares and pleasures of his everyday life had fallen
away! Was it the perfume of the roses, of the stocks, which had
suddenly appealed to some dormant sense of beauty? Or had he indeed
passed back for a moment into that world concerning which he had
sometimes strange, half doubtful thoughts? He leaned forward, and his
eyes wandered feverishly among the hidden places of the garden. The
seat was empty. Propped up against the hedge was a notice board: "This
House to Let."
"What on earth are you staring at?" Mrs. Burton demanded, with some
acerbity. "A silly little place like that would be no use to us. I
don't know what the people who've been living there could have been
thinking about, to let the garden get into such a state. Fancy a nasty
dark tree like that, too, keeping all the sun away from the house! I'd
have it cut down if it were mine. What on earth are you looking at,
Alfred Burton?"
He turned towards her, heavy-eyed.
"Somewhere under that cedar tree," he said, "a man's soul was buried. I
was wondering if its ghost ever walked!"
Mrs. Burton lifted the speaking-tube to her lips.
"You can take the next turning home, John," she ordered.
The man's hand was mechanically raised to his hat. Mrs. Burton leaned
back once more among the cushions.
"You and your ghosts!" she exclaimed. "If you want to sit there,
thinking like an owl, you'd better try and think of some of your funny
stories for to-night. You'll have to sit next that stuck-up Mrs.
Bomford, and she takes a bit of amusing."
THE END.