"No!" she whispered, faintly.
"There isn"t anything so beautiful to me upon G.o.d"s earth," he continued, "as the love in my heart for you. I wanted to tell you so this evening. I have brought you here to tell you so--to this particular spot. Something tells me that it may be almost our last chance. I left those two whispering upon the lawn. What is it they are planning, I wonder? That man Bomford is no companion for your father.
He has given him an idea about me and my story. What is it, I wonder?
To rob me, to throw me out, to take my treasure from me by force?"
"You are my father"s guest," she reminded him softly. "He will not forget it."
"There are greater things in the world," he went on, "than the obligations of hospitality. There are tides which sweep away the landmarks of nature herself. Your father is thirsty for knowledge.
This man Bomford is his friend. There have been more crimes committed in the world for lofty motives than one hears of."
He leaned a little forward. They could see the smoke curling up from the house below, its gardens laid out like patchwork, the low house itself covered with creepers.
"It was an idyll, that," he went on. "Bomford"s trail is about the place now, the trail of some poisonous creature. Nothing will ever be the same. I want to remember this last evening. I have looked upon life from the hill tops and I have looked at it along the level ways, but I have seen nothing in it so beautiful, I have felt nothing in it so wonderful, as my love for you. You were a dream to me before, half hidden, only partly realized. Soon you will be a dream to me again.
But never, never, dear, since the magic brush painted the blue into the skies, the purple on to the heather, the green on to the gra.s.s, the yellow into the gorse, the blue into your eyes, was there any love like mine!"
She leaned towards him. Her fingers were cold and her voice trembled.
"You must not!" she begged.
He smiled as he pa.s.sed his arm around her.
"Are we not on the hill top, dear?" he said. "You need have no fear.
Only to-night I felt that I must say these things to you, even though the pa.s.sion which they represent remains as ineffective forever as the words themselves. I have a feeling, you know, that after to-day things will be different."
"Why should they be?" she asked. "In any case, your time cannot come yet."
Once more he looked downward into the valley. Like a little speck along the road a motor-car was crawling along.
"It is Mr. Bomford," he said. "He is coming to look for you."
She rose to her feet. Together they stood, for a moment, hand in hand, looking down upon the flaming landscape. The fields at their feet were brilliant with color; in the far distance the haze of the sea. Their fingers were locked.
"Mr. Bomford," he sighed, "is coming up the hill."
"Then I think," she said quietly, "that we had better go down!"
CHAPTER XVIII
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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulations 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 h.o.a.rding, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts."
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 gla.s.s of claret, started afresh.
"My idea, in short," he went on, "is this. Let us three join forces.
Let us a.n.a.lyze this marvelous product, into the possession of which you, Mr. Burton, have so mysteriously come. Let us, blending its const.i.tuents 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 a.s.sociate 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 pa.s.sed.