"What"s the matter with them?" he demanded, getting his question out with a single breath.
"Your collars are much too high," Burton pointed out. "One can see how they cut into your neck. Then why wear a tie of that particular shade of vivid purple when your clothes themselves, with that blue and yellow stripe, are somewhat noticeable? There is a lack of symphony about the arrangement, an entire absence of taste, which is apt to depress one.
The whole effect which you produce upon one"s vision is abominable. You won"t think my mentioning this a liberty, I hope?"
"What about your own red tie and dirty collar?" young Clarkson asked, indignantly. "What price your eight and sixpenny trousers, eh, with the blue stripe and the grease stains? What about the sham diamond stud in your d.i.c.key, and your three inches of pinned on cuff? Fancy your appearance, perhaps! Why, I wouldn"t walk the streets in such a rig-out!"
Burton listened to his junior"s attack unresentingly but with increasing bewilderment. Then he slipped from his seat and walked hurriedly across to the looking-gla.s.s, which he took down from its nail. He gazed at himself long and steadily and from every possible angle. It is probable that for the first time in his life he saw himself then as he really was. He was plain, of insignificant appearance, he was ill and tastelessly dressed. He stood there before the sixpenny-ha"penny mirror and drank the cup of humiliation.
"Calling my tie, indeed!" the office-boy muttered, his smouldering resentment bringing him back to the attack. "Present from my best girl, that was, and she knows what"s what. Young lady with a place in a west-end milliner"s shop, too. If that doesn"t mean good taste, I should like to know what does. Look at your socks, too, all coming down over the tops of your boots! Nasty dirty pink and green stripes!
There"s another thing about my collar, too," he continued, speaking with renewed earnestness as he appreciated his senior"s stupefaction. "It was clean yesterday, and that"s more than yours was--or the day before!"
Burton shivered as he finally turned away from that looking-gla.s.s. The expression upon his face was indescribable.
"I am sorry I spoke, Clarkson," he apologized humbly. "It certainly seemed to have slipped my memory that I myself--I can"t think how I managed to make such hideous, unforgivable mistakes."
"While we are upon the subject," his subordinate continued, ruthlessly, "why don"t you give your fingernails a scrub sometimes, eh? You might give your coat a brush, too, now and then, while you are about it. All covered with scurf and dust about the shoulders! I"m all for cleanliness, I am."
Burton made no reply. He was down and his junior kicked him.
"I"d like to see the color of your shirt if you took those paper cuffs off!" the latter exclaimed. "Why don"t you chuck that rotten d.i.c.key away? Cave!"
The door leading into the private office was brusquely opened. Mr.
Waddington, the only existing member of the firm, entered---a large, untidy-looking man, also dressed in most uncomely fashion, and wearing an ill-brushed silk hat on the back of his head. He turned at once to his righthand man.
"Well, did you land him?" he demanded, with some eagerness.
Burton shook his head regretfully.
"It was quite impossible to interest him in the house at all, sir," he declared. "He seemed inclined to take it at first, but directly he understood the situation he would have nothing more to do with it."
Mr. Waddington"s face fell. He was disappointed. He was also puzzled.
"Understood the situation," he repeated. "What the d.i.c.kens do you mean, Burton? What situation?"
"I mean about the typhoid, sir, and Lady Idlemay"s refusal to have the drains put in order."
Mr. Waddington"s expression for a few moments was an interesting and instructive study. His jaw had fallen, but he was still too bewildered to realize the situation properly.
"But who told him?" he gasped.
"I did," Burton replied gently. "I could not possibly let him remain in ignorance of the facts."
"You couldn"t--what?"
"I could not let him the house without explaining all the circ.u.mstances, sir," Burton declared, watching his senior anxiously. "I am sure you would not have wished me to do anything of the sort, would you?"
What Mr. Waddington said was unimportant. There was very little that he forgot and he was an auctioneer with a low-cla.s.s clientele and a fine flow of language. When he had finished, the office-boy was dumb with admiration. Burton was looking a little pained and he had the shocked expression of a musician who has been listening to a series of discords.
Otherwise he was unmoved.
"Your duty was to let that house," Mr. Waddington wound up, striking the palm of one hand with the fist of the other. "What do I give you forty-four shillings a week for, I should like to know? To go and blab trade secrets to every customer that comes along? If you couldn"t get him to sign the lease, you ought to have worked a deposit, at any rate.
He"d have had to forfeit that, even if he"d found out afterwards."
"I am sorry," Burton said, speaking in a much lower tone than was usual with him, but with a curious amount of confidence. "It would have been a moral falsehood if I had attempted anything of the sort. I could not possibly offer the house to Mr. Lynn or anybody else, without disclosing its drawbacks."
The auctioneer"s face had become redder. His eyes seemed on the point of coming out of his head. He became almost incoherent.
"G.o.d bless my soul!" he spluttered. "Have you gone mad, Burton? What"s come to you since the morning? Have you changed into a blithering fool, or what?"
"I think not, sir," Burton replied, gravely. "I don"t--exactly remember for the moment," he went on with a slight frown. "My head seems a little confused, but I cannot believe that it has been our custom to conduct our business in the fashion you are suggesting."
Mr. Waddington walked round the office, holding his head between his hands.
"I don"t suppose either of us has been drinking at this hour in the morning," he muttered, when he came to a standstill once more. "Look here, Burton, I don"t want to do anything rash. Go home--never mind the time--go home this minute before I break out again. Come to-morrow morning, as usual. We"ll talk it out then. G.o.d bless my soul!" he added, as Burton picked up his hat with a little sigh of relief and turned toward the door. "Either I"m drunk or the fellow"s got religion or something! I never heard such infernal rubbish in my life!"
"Made a nasty remark about my tie just now, sir," Clarkson said, with dignity, as his senior disappeared. "Quite uncalled for. I don"t fancy he can be well."
"Ever known him like it before?" Mr. Waddington inquired.
"Never, sir. I thought he seemed chippier than ever this morning when he went out. His last words were that he"d bet me a packet of Woodbines that he landed the old fool."
"He"s gone dotty!" the auctioneer decided, as he turned back towards his sanctum. "He"s either gone dotty or he"s been drinking. The last chap in the world I should have thought it of!"
The mental att.i.tude of Alfred Burton, as he emerged into the street, was in some respects curious. He was not in the least sorry for what had happened. On the contrary, he found himself wishing that the day"s respite had not been granted to him, and that his departure from the place of his employment was final. He was very much in the position of a man who has been transferred without warning or notice from the streets of London to the streets of Pekin. Every object which he saw he looked upon with different eyes. Every face which he pa.s.sed produced a different impression upon him. He looked about him with all the avidity of one suddenly conscious of a great store of unused impressions. It was like a second birth. He neither understood the situation nor attempted to a.n.a.lyze it. He was simply conscious of a most delightful and inexplicable light-heartedness, and of a host of sensations which seemed to produce at every moment some new pleasure. His first and most pressing anxiety was a singular one. He loathed himself from head to foot. He shuddered as he pa.s.sed the shop-windows for fear he should see his own reflection. He made his way unfalteringly to an outfitter"s shop, and from there, with a bundle under his arm, to the baths. It was a very different Alfred Burton indeed who, an hour or two later, issued forth into the streets. Gone was the c.o.c.kney young man with the sandy moustache, the cheap silk hat worn at various angles to give himself a rakish air, the flashy clothes, cheap and pretentious, the a.s.sured, not to say b.u.mptious air so sedulously copied from the deportment of his employer. Enter a new and completely transformed Alfred Burton, an inoffensive-looking young man in a neat gray suit, a lilac-colored tie of delicate shade, a flannel shirt with no pretence at cuffs, but with a spotless turned down collar, a soft Homburg hat, a clean-shaven lip.
With a new sense of self-respect and an immense feeling of relief, Burton, after a few moments" hesitation, directed his footsteps towards the National Gallery. He had once been there years ago on a wet Bank Holiday, and some faint instinct of memory which somehow or other had survived the burden of his sordid days suddenly rea.s.serted itself. He climbed the steps and pa.s.sed through the portals with the beating heart of the explorer who climbs his last hill. It was his entrance, this, into the new world whose call was tearing at his heartstrings. He bought no catalogue, he asked no questions. From room to room he pa.s.sed with untiring footsteps. His whole being was filled with the immeasurable relief, the almost pa.s.sionate joy, of one who for the first time is able to gratify a new and marvelous appet.i.te. With his eyes, his soul, all these late-born, strange, appreciative powers, he ministered to an appet.i.te which seemed unquenchable. It was dusk when he came out, his cheeks burning, his eyes bright. He carried a new music, a whole world of new joys with him, but his most vital sensation was one of glowing and pa.s.sionate sympathy. They were splendid, these heroes who had seen the truth and had struggled to give life to it with pencil or brush or chisel, that others, too, might see and understand.
If only one could do one"s little share!
He walked slowly along, absorbed in his thoughts, unconscious even of the direction in which his footsteps were taking him. When at last he paused, he was outside a theatre. The name of Ibsen occupied a prominent place upon the boards. From somewhere among the hidden cells of his memory came a glimmering recollection--a word or two read at random, an impression, only half understood, yet the germ of which had survived. Ibsen! A prophet of truth, surely! He looked eagerly down the placard for the announcements and the prices of admission. And then a sudden cold douche of memory descended upon his new enthusiasms.
There was Ellen!
CHAPTER III
MR. ALFRED BURTON"S FAMILY
There certainly was Ellen! Like a man on his way to prison, Alfred Burton took his place in a third-cla.s.s carriage in his customary train to Garden Green. Ned Miles, who travelled in the oil trade, came up and smote him upon the shoulder.
"Say, c.o.c.ky, what have you been doing to yourself?" he demanded in amazement. "Have you robbed a bank and going about in disguise, eh?
Why, the missis won"t know you!"
Burton shrank a little back in his place. His eyes seemed filled with some nameless distaste as he returned the other"s gaze.
"I have taken a dislike to my former style of dress," he replied simply, "also to my moustache."
"Taken a dislike--Lord love a duck!" his quondam friend exclaimed.
"Strike me blind if I should have known you! Taken a dislike to the--here, Alf, is this a game?"