The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton Part 39

"You are a dear, Mr. Burton," she declared. "I wonder what your wife would say, though?" she added, a little coyly.

"Not seeing much of Ellen just lately," Burton replied. "I'm living up in town alone."

"Oh!" she remarked. "Mr. Burton, I'm ashamed of you! What does that mean, I wonder? You men!" she went on, with a sigh. "One has to be so careful. You are such deceivers, you know! What's the attraction?"

"You!" he whispered.

"What a caution you are!" she exclaimed. "I like that, too, after not coming near me for months! What are you looking so scared about, all of a sudden?"

Burton was looking through the garishly papered walls of the public-house sitting-room, out into the world. He was certainly a little paler.

"Haven't I been in for months?" he asked softly.

She stared at him.

"Well, I suppose you know!" she retorted. "Pretty shabby I thought it of you, too, after coming in and making such a fuss as you used to pretty well every afternoon. I don't like friends that treat you like that. Makes you careful when they come round again. I'd like to know what you've been doing?"

"Ah!" he said, "you will never know that. Perhaps I myself shall never know that really again. Get me a whiskey and soda, Maud. I want a drink."

"I should say you did!" the young woman declared, pertly. "Sitting there, looking struck all of a heap! Some woman, I expect, you've been gone on. You men are all the same. I've no patience with you--not a bit. If it wasn't," she added, taking down the whiskey bottle from the shelf, "that life's so precious dull without you, I wouldn't have a thing to say to you--no, not me nor Milly either! We were both talking about you and Mr. Waddington only a few nights ago, and of the two I'm not sure that he's not the worst. A man at his age ought to know his mind. Special Scotch--there you are, Mr. Burton. Hope it will do you good."

Burton drank his whiskey and soda as though he needed it. He was suddenly pale, and his fingers were idle upon the keys of the pianoforte. The girl looked at him curiously.

"Not quite yourself, are you?" she inquired. "Don't get chippy before this evening. I don't think I'll give you anything else to drink. When a gentleman takes me out, I like him to be at his best."

Burton came back. It was a long journey from the little corner of the world into which his thoughts had strayed, to the ornate, artificial-looking parlor, with the Turkey-carpet upon the floor and framed advertis.e.m.e.nts upon the walls.

"I am sorry," he said. "I had forgotten. I can't take you out to-night--I've got an engagement. How I shall keep it I don't know," he went on, half reminiscently, "but I've got to."

The young woman looked at him with rising color. "Well, I declare!" she exclaimed. "You're a nice one, you are! You come in for the first time for Lord knows how long, you agree to take me out this evening, and then, all of a sudden, back out of it! I've had enough of you, Mr.

Burton. You can hook it as soon as you like."

Burton rose slowly to his feet.

"I am sorry," he said simply. "I suppose I am not quite myself to-day.

I was just thinking how jolly it would be to take you out and have a little supper afterwards, when I remembered--I remembered--that engagement. I've got to go through with it."

"Another girl, I suppose?" she demanded, turning away to look at herself in the mirror.

He s.h.i.+vered. He was in a curious state of mind but there seemed to him something heretical in placing Edith among the same s.e.x.

"It is an engagement I can't very well break," he confessed. "I'll come in again."

"You needn't," she declared, curtly. "When I say a thing, I mean it.

I've done with you."

Burton crossed the threshold into the smaller room, where Mr.

Waddington appeared to be deriving a certain amount of beatific satisfaction from sitting in an easy-chair and having his hand held by Miss Milly. They both looked at him, as he entered, in some surprise.

"What have you two been going on about?" the young lady asked. "I heard Maud speaking up at you. Some lovers' quarrel, I suppose?"

The moment was pa.s.sing. Burton laughed--a little hardly, perhaps, but boisterously.

"Maud's mad with me," he explained. "I thought I could take her out to-night. Remembered afterwards I couldn't. Say, old man, you're going it a bit, aren't you?" he continued, shaking his head at his late employer.

Mr. Waddington held his companion's hand more tenderly than ever.

"At your age," he remarked, severely, "you shouldn't notice such things.

Milly and I are old friends, aren't we?" he added, drawing her to him.

"Well, it's taken a bit of making up my mind to forgive you," the young lady admitted. "What a pity you can't bring Maud along to-night!" she went on, addressing Burton. "We're going to Frascati's to dinner and into the Oxford afterwards. Get along back and make it up with her.

You can easily break your other engagement."

Burton swaggered back to the threshold of the other room.

"Hi! Come along, Maudie!" he said. "I can't take you out to-night but I'll take you to-morrow night, and I'll stand a bottle of champagne now to make up for it."

"Don't want your champagne," the young lady began;--"leastways," she added, remembering that, after all, business was supposed to be her first concern, "I won't say 'no' to a gla.s.s of wine with you, but you mustn't take it that you can come in here and do just as you please. I may go out with you some other evening, and I may not. I don't think I shall. To-night just happens to suit me."

With a last admiring glance at herself in the mirror, she came into the room. Burton patted her on the arm and waved the wine list away.

"The best is good enough," he declared,--"the best in the house. Just what you like yourself. Price don't matter just now."

He counted a roll of notes which he drew from his trousers pocket. The two girls looked at him in amazement. He threw one upon the table.

"Backed a horse?" Maud asked. "Legacy?" Milly inquired. Burton, with some difficulty, relit the stump of his cigar.

"Bit of an advance I've just received from a company I'm connected with," he explained. "Would insist on my being a director. I'm trying to get Waddington here into it," he added, condescendingly. "Jolly good thing for him if I succeed, I can tell you."

Miss Maud moved away in a chastened manner. She took the opportunity to slip upstairs and powder her face and put on clean white cuffs.

Presently she returned, carrying the wine on a silver tray, with the best gla.s.ses that could be procured.

"Here's luck!" Burton exclaimed, jauntily. "Can't drink much myself.

This bubbly stuff never did agree with me and I had a good go at it last night."

Maud filled up his gla.s.s, nevertheless, touched it with her own, and drank, looking at him all the time with an expression in her eyes upon which she was wont to rely.

"Take me out to-night, dear," she whispered. "I feel just like having a good time to-night. Do!"

Burton suddenly threw his gla.s.s upon the floor. The wine ran across the carpet in a little stream. Splinters of the gla.s.s lay about in all directions. They all three looked at him, transfixed.

"I am sorry," he said.

He turned and walked out of the room. They were all too astonished to stop him. They heard him cross the bar-room and they heard the door close as he pa.s.sed into the street.

"Of all the extraordinary things!" Maud declared.

"Well, I never!" Milly gasped.