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Austin and His Friends

by Frederic Henry Balfour · English · Gutenberg #16099 · 375,739 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Austin and His Friends

Author: Frederic Henry Balfour


        
Release date: June 21, 2005 [eBook #16099]
                Most recently updated: December 11, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTIN AND HIS FRIENDS ***


E-text prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse, and the
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AUSTIN AND HIS FRIENDS

by

FREDERIC H. BALFOUR

Author Of "The Expiation of Eugene," etc.

London
Greening & Co., Ltd.

1906







[Illustration: DAPHNIS AT THE FOUNTAIN]



       *       *       *       *       *

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The old-fashioned ghost-story was always terrifying and ghastly;
something that made people afraid to go to bed, or to look over their
shoulders, or to enter a room in the dark. It dealt with apparitions
in a white sheet, and clanking chains, and dreadful faces that peered
out from behind the window curtains in a haunted chamber. And the more
blood-curdling it was, the more keenly people enjoyed it--until they
were left alone, and then they were apt to wish that they had been
reading Robinson Crusoe or Alison's History of Europe instead. Now the
present book embodies an attempt to write a _cheerful_ ghost-story; a
story in which the ghostly element is of a friendly and pleasant
character, and sheds a sense of happiness and sunshine over the entire
life of the ghost-seer. Whether the author has succeeded in doing so
will be for his readers to decide. It is only necessary to add that he
has not introduced a single supernormal incident that has not occurred
and been authenticated in the recorded experiences of persons lately
or still alive.

       *       *       *       *       *




Austin and His Friends

Chapter the First


It was rather a beautiful old house--the house where Austin lived.
That is, it was old-fashioned, low-browed, solid, and built of that
peculiar sort of red brick which turns a rich rose-colour with age;
and this warm rosy tint was set off to advantage by the thick mantle
of dark green ivy in which it was partly encased, and by the row of
tall white and purple irises which ran along the whole length of the
sunniest side of the building. There was an ancient sun-dial just
above the door, and all the windows were made of small, square
panes--not a foot of plate-glass was there about the place; and if the
rooms were nor particularly large or stately, they had that
comfortable and settled look which tells of undisturbed occupancy by
the same inmates for many years. But the principal charm of the place
was the garden in which the house stood. In this case the frame was
really more beautiful than the picture. On one side, the grounds were
laid out in very formal style, with straight walks, clipped box
hedges, an old stone fountain, and a perfect bowling-green of a lawn;
while at right angles to this there was a plot of land in which all
regularity was set at naught, and sweet-peas, tulips, hollyhocks,
dahlias, gillyflowers, wall-flowers, sun-flowers, and a dozen others
equally sweet and friendly shared the soil with gooseberry bushes and
thriving apple-trees. Taking it all in all, it was a lovable and most
reposeful home, and Austin, who had lived there ever since he could
remember, was quite unable to imagine any lot in life that could be
compared to his.

Now this was curious, for Austin was a hopeless cripple. Up to the age
of sixteen, he had been the most active, restless, healthy boy in all
the countryside. He used to spend his days in boating, bicycling,
climbing hills, and wandering at large through the woods and leafy
lanes which stretched far and wide in all directions of the compass.
One of his chief diversions had been sheep-chasing; nothing delighted
him more than to start a whole flock of the astonished creatures
careering madly round some broad green meadow, their fat woolly backs
wobbling and jolting along in a compact mass of mild perplexity at
this sudden interruption of their never-ending meal, while Austin
scampered at their tails, as much excited with the sport as Don
Quixote himself when he dispersed the legions of Alifanfaron. Let
hare-coursers, otter-hunters, and pigeon-torturers blame him if they
choose; the exercise probably did the sheep a vast amount of good, and
Austin fully believed that they enjoyed it quite as much as he did.
Then suddenly a great calamity befell him. A weakness made itself
apparent in his right knee, accompanied by considerable pain. The
family doctor looked anxious and puzzled; a great surgeon was called
in, and the two shook their heads together in very portentous style.
It was a case of caries, they said, and Austin mustn't hunt sheep any
more. Soon he had to lie upon the sofa for several hours a day, and
what made Aunt Charlotte more anxious than anything else was that he
didn't seem to mind lying on the sofa, as he would have done if he had
felt strong and well; on the contrary, he grew thin and listless, and
instead of always jumping up and trying to evade the doctor's orders,
appeared quite content to lie there, quiet and resigned, from one
week's end to another. That, thought shrewd Aunt Charlotte, betokened
mischief. Another consultation followed, and then a very terrible
sentence was pronounced. It was necessary, in order to save his life,
that Austin should lose his leg.

What does a boy generally feel under such circumstances? What would
you and I feel? Austin's first impulse was to burst into a passionate
fit of weeping, and he yielded to it unreservedly. But, the fit once
past, he smiled brilliantly through his tears. True, he would never
again be able to enjoy those glorious ramps up hill and down dale that
up till then had sent the warm life coursing through his veins. Never
more would he go scorching along the level roads against the wind on
his cherished bicycle. The open-air athletic days of stress and effort
were gone, never to return. But there might be compensations; who
could tell? Happiness, all said and done, need not depend upon a
shin-bone more or less. He might lose a leg, but legs were, after all,
a mere concomitant to life--life did not consist in legs. There would
still be something left to live for, and who could tell whether that
something might not be infinitely grander and nobler and more
satisfying than even the rapture of flying ten miles an hour on his
wheel, or chevying a flock of agitated sheep from one pasture to
another?

Where this sudden inspiration came from, he then had no idea; but come
it did, in the very nick of time, and helped him to dry his tears. The
day of destiny also came, and his courage was put to the test. He knew
well enough, of course, that of the operation he would feel nothing.
But the sight of the hard, white, narrow pallet on which he had to
lie, the cold glint of the remorseless instruments, the neatly folded
packages of lint and cotton-wool, and the faint, horrible smell of
chloroform turned him rather sick for a minute. Then he glanced
downwards, with a sense of almost affectionate yearning, at the limb
he was about to lose. "Good-bye, dear old leg!" he murmured, with a
little laugh which smothered a rising sob. "We've had some lovely
ramps together, but the best of friends must part."

Afterwards, during the long days of dreary convalescence, he began to
feel an interest in what remained of it; and then he found himself
taking a sort of æsthetic pleasure in the smooth, beautifully-rounded
stump, which really was in its way quite an artistic piece of work. At
last, when the flesh was properly healed, and the white skin growing
healthily again around his abbreviated member, he grew eager to make
acquaintance with his new leg; for of course it was never intended
that he should perform the rest of his earthly pilgrimage with only a
leg and a half--let the added half be of what material it might. And
his excitement may be better imagined than described when, one
afternoon, the surgeon came in with a most wonderful object in his
arms--a lovely prop of bright, black, burnished wood, set off with
steel couplings and the most fascinating straps you ever saw. And the
best of all was the socket, in which his soft white stump fitted as
comfortably as though they had been made for one another--as, in fact,
one of them had been. It was a little difficult to walk just at first,
for Austin was accustomed to begin by throwing out his foot, whereas
now he had to begin by moving his thigh; this naturally made him
stagger, and for some time he could only get along with the aid of a
crutch. But to be able to walk again at all was a great achievement,
and then, if you only looked at it in the proper light, it really was
great fun.

There was, however, one person who, probably from a defective sense of
humour, was unable to see any fun in it at all. Aunt Charlotte would
have given her very ears for Austin, but her affection was of a
somewhat irritable sort, and generally took the form of scolding. She
was not a stupid woman by any means, but there was one thing in the
world she never could understand, and that was Austin himself. He
wasn't like other boys one bit, she always said. He had such a queer,
topsy-turvy way of looking at things; would express the most
outrageous opinions with an innocent unconsciousness that made her
long to box his ears, and support the most arrant absurdities by
arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect.
Look at him now, for instance; a cripple for life, and pretending to
see nothing in it but a joke, and expressing as much admiration for
his horrible wooden leg as though it had been a king's sceptre! In
Aunt Charlotte's view, Austin ought to have pitied himself immensely,
and expressed a hope that God would help him to bear his burden with
orthodox resignation to the Divine will; instead of which, he seemed
totally unconscious of having any burden at all--a state of mind that
was nothing less than impious. Austin was now seventeen, and it was
high time that he took more serious views of life. Ever since he was a
baby he had been her special charge; for his mother had died in giving
him birth, and his father had followed her about a twelvemonth later.
She had always done her duty to the boy, and loved him as though he
had been her own; but she reminded onlookers rather of a conscientious
elderly cat with limited views of natural history condemned by
circumstances to take care of a very irresponsible young eaglet. The
eaglet, on his side, was entirely devoted to his protectress, but it
was impossible for him not to feel a certain lenient and amused
contempt for her very limited horizon.

"Auntie," he said to her one day, "you're just like a frog at the
bottom of a well. You think the speck of blue you see above you is the
entire sky, and the water you paddle up and down in is the ocean. Why
can't you take a rather more cosmic view of things?"

This extraordinary remark occurred in the course of a wrangle between
the two, because Austin insisted on his pet cat--a plump, white,
matronly creature he had christened 'Gioconda,' because (so _he_ said)
she always smiled so sweetly--sitting up at the dinner-table and being
fed with tit-bits off his own fork; and Aunt Charlotte objected to
this proceeding on the ground that the proper place for cats was in
the kitchen. Austin, on his side, averred that cats were in many ways
much superior to human beings; that they had been worshipped as gods
by the philosophical Egyptians because they were so scornful and
mysterious; and that Gioconda herself was not only the divinest cat
alive, but entitled to respect, if only as an embodiment and
representative of cat-hood in the abstract, which was a most important
element in the economy of the universe. It was when Aunt Charlotte
stigmatised these philosophical reflections as a pack of impertinent
twaddle that Austin had had the audacity to say that she was like a
frog.

And now her eaglet had been maimed for life, and whatever he might
feel about it himself her own responsibilities were certainly much
increased. At this very moment, for instance, after having practised
stumping about the room for half-an-hour he insisted on going
downstairs. Of course the idea was ridiculous. Even the doctor shook
his head, while old Martha, who had tubbed Austin when he was two
years old, joined in the general protest. But Austin, disdaining to
argue the point with any one of them, had already hobbled out of the
room, and before they were well aware of it had begun to essay the
descent perilous. Ominous bumps were heard, and then a dull thud as of
a body falling. But a bend in the wall had caught the body, and the
explorer was none the worse. Then Aunt Charlotte, rushing back into
the bedroom, flung open the window wide.

"Lubin!" she shouted lustily.

A young gardener boy, tall, round-faced and curly-haired, glanced up
astonished from his work among the sweet-peas.

"Come up here directly and carry Master Austin downstairs. He's got a
wooden leg and hasn't learnt how to use it."

The consequence of which was that two minutes later Austin, panting
and enraged at the failure of his first attempt at independence, found
himself firmly encircled by a pair of strong young arms, lifted gently
from the ground, and carried swiftly and safely downstairs and out at
the garden door.

"Now you just keep quiet, Master Austin," murmured Lubin, chuckling as
Austin began to kick. "No use your starting to run before you know how
to walk. Wooden legs must be humoured a bit, Sir; 'twon't do to expect
too much of 'em just at first, you see. This one o' yours is mighty
handsome to look at, I don't deny, but it's not accustomed to
staircases and maybe it'll take some time before it is. Hold tight,
Sir; only a few yards more now. There! Here we are on the lawn at
last. Now you can try your paces at your leisure."

"You're awfully nice to me, Lubin," gasped Austin, red with
mortification, as he slipped from the lad's arms on to the grass, "but
I felt just now as if I could have killed you, all the same."

"Lor', Sir, I don't mind," said Lubin. "I doubt that was no more'n
natural. Can you stand steady? Here--lay hold o' my arm. Slow and
sure's the word. Look out for that flower-bed. Now, then, round you
go--that's it. Ah!"--as Austin fell sprawling on the grass. "Now how
are you going to get up again, I should like to know? Seems to me the
first thing you've got to learn is not to lose your balance, 'cause
once you're down 'tain't the easiest thing in creation to scramble up
again. You'll have to stick to the crutch at first, I reckon. Up we
come! Now let's see how you can fare along a bit all by yourself."

Austin was thankful for the support of his crutch, with the aid of
which he managed to stagger about for a few minutes at quite a
respectable speed. It reminded him almost of the far-off days when he
was learning to ride his bicycle. At last he thought he would like to
rest a bit, and was much surprised when, on flinging himself down
upon a garden seat, his leg flew up in the air.

"Lively sort o' limb, this new leg o' yours, Sir," commented Lubin, as
he bent it into a more decorous position. "You'll have to take care it
don't carry you off with it one o' these fine days. Seems to me it
wants taming, and learning how to behave itself in company. I heard
tell of a cork leg once upon a time as was that nimble it started off
running on its own account, and no earthly power could stop it.
Wouldn't have mattered so much if it'd had nobody but itself to
consider, but unluckily the gentleman it belonged to happened to be
screwed on to the top end of it, and of course he had to follow. They
do say as how he's following it still--poor beggar! Must be worn to a
shadow by this time, I should think. But p'raps it ain't true after
all. There are folks as'll say anything."

"I expect it's true enough," replied Austin cheerfully. "If you want a
thing to be true, all you've got to do is to believe it--believe it as
hard as you can. That makes it true, you see. At least, that's what
the new psychology teaches. Thought creates things, you
understand--though how it works I confess I can't explain. But never
mind. Oh, dear, how drunk I am!"

"Drunk, Sir? No, no, only a bit giddy," said Lubin, as he stood
watching Austin with his hands upon his hips. "You're not over strong
yet, and that new leg of yours has been giving you too much exercise
to begin with. You just keep quiet a few minutes, and you'll soon be
as right as ninepence."

Then Austin slid carefully off the seat, and stretched himself full
length upon the grass. "I _am_ drunk," he murmured, closing his eyes,
"drunk with the scent of the flowers. Don't you smell them, Lubin? The
air's heavy with it, and it has got into my brain. And how sweet the
grass smells too. I love it--it's like breathing the breath of Nature.
What do legs matter? It's much nicer to roll over the grass wherever
you want to go than to have the bother of walking. Don't worry about
me any more, nice Lubin. Go on tying up your sweet-peas. I'll come and
help you when I'm tired of rolling about. Just now I don't want
anything; I'm drunk--I'm happy--I'm satisfied--I'm happier than I ever
was before. Be kind to the flowers, Lubin; don't tie them too tight.
They're my friends and my lovers. Aren't you a little fond of them
too?"

Then, left to his own reflections, he lay perfectly peaceful and
content staring up into the sky. For months he had been fated to lead
an entirely new life, and now it had actually begun. His entrance upon
it was not bitter. He had flowers growing by his path, and books that
he loved, and one or two friends who loved him. It was all right! And
that was how he spent his first day of acknowledged cripplehood.




Chapter the Second


In a very short time Austin had overcome the initial difficulties of
locomotion, and now began to take regular exercise out of doors. It
would be too much to say that his gait was particularly elegant; but
there really was something triumphal about the way in which he learnt
to brandish his leg with every step he took, and the majestic swing
with which he brought it round to its place in advance of the other.
In fact, he soon found himself stumping along the highroads with
wonderful speed and safety; though to clamber over stiles, and work a
bicycle one-footed, of course took much more practice.

Hitherto I have said nothing about the neighbourhood of Austin's home.
Now when I say neighbourhood, I don't mean the topographical
surroundings--I use the word in its correcter sense of neighbours; and
these it is necessary to refer to in passing. Of course there were
several people living round about. There was the MacTavish family,
for instance, consisting of Mr and Mrs MacTavish, five daughters and
two sons. Mrs MacTavish had a brother who had been knighted, and on
the strength of such near relationship to Sir Titus and Lady
Clandougal, considered herself one of the county. But her claim was
not endorsed, even by the humbler gentry with whom she was forced to
associate, while as for the county proper it is not too much to say
that that august community had never even heard of her. The Miss
MacTavishes, ranging in age from fifteen to five-and-twenty, were
rather gawky young persons, with red hair and a perpetual giggle; in
fact they could not speak without giggling, even if it was to tell you
that somebody was dead. Every now and then Mrs MacTavish would
proclaim, with portentous complacency, that Florrie, or Lizzie, or
Aggie, was "out"--to the awe-struck admiration of her friends; which
meant that the young person referred to had begun to do up her hair in
a sort of bun at the back of her head, and had had her frock let down
a couple of tucks. Austin couldn't bear them, though he was always
scrupulously polite. And the boys were, if anything, less interesting
than the girls. The elder of the two--a freckled young giant named
Jock--was always asking him strange conundrums, such as whether he was
going to put the pot on for the Metropolitan--which conveyed no more
idea to Austin's mind than if he had said it in Chinese; while Sandy,
the younger, used to terrify him out of his wits by shouting out that
Yorkshire had got the hump, or that Jobson was 'not out' for a
century, or that wickets were cheap at the Oval. In fact, the entire
family bored him to extinction, though Aunt Charlotte, who had been an
old school-friend of the mamma, sang their praises perseveringly, and
said that the girls were dears.

Then there was the inevitable vicar, with a wife who piqued herself on
her smart bonnets; a curate, who preached Socialism, wore
knickerbockers, and belonged to the Fabian Society; a few unattached
elderly ladies who had long outlived the reproach of their virginity;
and just two or three other families with nothing particular to
distinguish them one way or another. It may readily be inferred,
therefore, that Austin had not many associates. There was really no
one in the place who interested him in the very least, and the
consequence was that he was generally regarded as unsociable. And so
he was--very unsociable. The companionship of his books, his bicycle,
his flowers and his thoughts was far more precious to him than that of
the silly people who bothered him to join in their vapid diversions
and unseasonable talk, and he rightly acted upon his preference. His
own resources were of such a nature that he never felt alone; and
having but few comrades in the flesh, he wisely courted the society of
those whom, though long since dead, he held in far higher esteem than
all the elderly ladies and curates and MacTavishes who ever lived. His
appetite in literature was keen, but fastidious. He devoured all the
books he could procure about the Renaissance of art in Italy. The
works of Mr Walter Pater were as a treasure-house of suggestion to
him, and did much to form and guide his gradually developing
mentality. He read Plato, being even more fascinated by the exquisite
technique of the dialectic than by the ethical value of the teaching.
And there was one small, slim book that he always carried about with
him, and kept for special reading in the fields and woods. This was
Virgil's Eclogues, the sylvan atmosphere of which penetrated the very
depths of his being, and created in him a moral or spiritual
atmosphere which was its counterpart. He seemed to live amid gracious
pastoral scenes, where beautiful youths and maidens passed a
perpetual springtime in a land of dewy lawns, and shady groves, and
pools, and rippling streams. Daphnis and Mopsus, Corydon, Alexis, and
Amyntas, were all to him real personages, who peopled his solitude,
inspired his poetic fancy, and fostered in his imagination the
elements of an ideal life where the beauty and purity and freshness of
untainted Nature reigned supreme. The accident of his lameness, by
incapacitating him for violent exercise out of doors, ministered to
the development of this spiritual tendency, and threw him back upon
the allurements of a refined idealism. Daphnis became to him the
embodiment, the concrete image, of eternal youthhood, of adolescence
in the abstract, the attribute of an idealised humanity. To lead the
pure Daphnis life of simplicity, stainlessness, communion with
beautiful souls, was to lead the highest life. To find one's bliss in
sunshine, flowers, and the winds of heaven--in both the physical and
moral spheres--was to find the highest bliss. Why should not he,
Austin Trevor, cripple as he was, so live the Daphnis life as to be
himself a Daphnis?

No wonder a boy like this was voted unsociable. No wonder Sandy and
Jock despised him as a muff, and the young ladies deplored his
unaccountably elusive ways. The truth was that Austin simply had no
use for any of them; his life was complete without them, it contained
no niche into which they could ever fit. Lubin was a far more
congenial comrade. Lubin never bothered him about football, or
cricket, or horse-racing, never worried him with invitations to
horrible picnics, never outraged his sensibilities in any way. On the
contrary, Lubin rather contributed to his happiness by the care he
took of the flowers, and the intelligence he showed in carrying out
all Austin's elaborately conveyed instructions. Why, Lubin himself was
a sort of Daphnis--in a humble way. But Sandy! No, Austin was not
equal to putting up with Sandy.

There was, however, one gentleman in the neighbourhood whom Master
Austin was gracious enough to approve. This was a certain Mr Roger St
Aubyn, a man of taste and culture, who possessed a very rare
collection of fine pictures and old engravings which nobody had ever
seen. St Aubyn was, in fact, something of a recluse, a student who
seldom went beyond his park gates, and found his greatest pleasure in
reading Greek and cultivating orchids. It was by the purest accident
that the two came across each other. Austin was lying one afternoon on
a bank of wild hyacinths just outside Combe Spinney, lazily admiring
the effect of his bright black leg against the bright blue sky, and
thinking of nothing in particular. Mr St Aubyn, who happened to be
strolling in that direction, was attracted by the unwonted spectacle,
and ventured on some good-humoured quizzical remark. This led to a
conversation, in the course of which the scholar thought he discovered
certain original traits in the modest observations of the youth. One
topic drifted into another, and soon the two were engaged in an
animated discussion about pursuits in life. It was in the course of
this that Austin let drop the one word--Art.

"What is Art?" queried St Aubyn.

Austin hesitated for some moments. Then he said, very slowly:

"That is a question to which a dozen answers might be given. A whole
book would be required to deal with it."

St Aubyn was delighted, both at the reply and at the hesitation that
had preceded it.

"And are you an artist?" he enquired.

"I believe I am," replied Austin, very seriously. "Of course one
doesn't like to be too confident, and I can't draw a single line, but
still----"

"Good again," approved the other. "Here as in everything else all
depends upon the definition. What is an artist?"

"An artist," exclaimed Austin, kindling, "is one who can see the
beauty everywhere."

"_The_ beauty?" repeated St Aubyn.

"The beauty that exists everywhere, even in ugly things. The beauty
that ordinary people don't see," returned Austin. "Anybody can see
beauty in what are _called_ beautiful things--light, and colour, and
grace. But it takes an artist to see beauty in a muddy road, and
dripping branches, and drenching rain. How people cursed and grumbled
on that rainy day we had last week; it made me sick to hear them. Now
I saw the beauty _under_ the ugliness of it all--the wonderful soft
greys and browns, the tiny glints of silver between the leaves, the
flashes of pearl and orpiment behind the shifting clouds. Do you know,
I even see beauty in this wooden leg of mine, great beauty, though
everybody else thinks it perfectly hideous! So that is why I hope I am
not wrong in imagining that perhaps I may, really, be in some sense an
artist."

For a moment St Aubyn did not speak. "The boy's a great artist," he
muttered to himself. His interest was now excited in good earnest; here
was no common mind. Of art Austin knew practically nothing, but the
artistic instinct was evidently tingling in every vein of him. St Aubyn
himself lived for art and literature, and was amazed to have come
across so curiously exceptional a personality. He drew the boy out a
little more, and then, in a moment of impulse, did a most unaccustomed
thing: he invited Austin to lunch with him on the following Thursday,
promising, in addition, that they should spend the afternoon together
looking over his conservatories and picture-gallery.

So great an honour, so undreamt-of a privilege, sent Austin's blood to
the roots of his hair. He flourished his leg more proudly than ever as
he stumped victoriously home and announced the great news to Aunt
Charlotte. That estimable lady was fingering some notepaper on her
writing-table as her excited nephew came bursting in upon her with his
face radiant.

"Auntie," he cried, "what do you think? You'll never guess. I'm going
to lunch with Mr St Aubyn on Thursday!"

Aunt Charlotte turned round, looking slightly dazed.

"Going to lunch with whom?" she asked.

"With Mr St Aubyn. You know--he lives at Moorcombe Court. I met him in
the woods and had a long talk with him, and now he's going to show me
all his pictures--_and_ his engravings--_and_ his wonderful orchids
and things. I'm to spend all the afternoon with him. Isn't it
splendid! I could never have hoped for such an opportunity. And he's
so awfully nice--so cultured and clever, you know--"

"Really!" said Aunt Charlotte, drawing herself up. "Well, you're
vastly honoured, Austin, I must say. Mr St Aubyn is chary of his
civilities. It is very kind of him to ask you, I'm sure, but I think
it's rather a liberty all the same."

"A liberty!" repeated Austin, aghast.

"He has never called on me," returned Aunt Charlotte, statelily. "If
he had wished to cultivate our acquaintance, that would have been at
least the usual thing to do. However, of course I've no objection. On
Thursday, you say. Well, now just give me your attention to something
rather more important. I intend to invite some people here to tea next
week, and you may as well write the invitations for me now."

Austin's face lengthened. "Oh, why?" he sighed. "It isn't as though
there was anybody worth asking--and really, the horrid creatures that
infest this neighbourhood--. Whom do you want to ask?"

"I'm astonished at you, speaking of our friends like that," replied
his aunt, severely. "They're not horrid creatures; they're all very
nice and kind. Of course we must have the MacTavishes----"

"I knew it," groaned Austin, sinking into a chair. "Those dear
MacTavishes! There are nineteen of them, aren't there? Or is it only
nine?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Austin," said Aunt Charlotte. "Then there are
the Miss Minchins--that'll be eleven; the vicar and his wife, of
_course_; and old Mr and Mrs Cobbledick. Now just come and sit
here----"

"The Cobbledicks--those old murderers!" cried Austin. "Do you want us
to be all assassinated together?"

"Murderers!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, horrified. "I think you've gone
out of your mind. A dear kindly old couple like the Cobbledicks! Not
very handsome, perhaps, but--murderers! What in the world will you say
next?"

"The most sinister-looking old pair of cut-throats in the parish,"
returned Austin. "I should be sorry to meet them on a lonely road on a
dark night, I know that. But really, auntie, I do wish you'd think
better of all this. We're quite happy alone; what do we want of all
these horrible people coming to bore us for Heaven knows how many
hours? Of course _I_ shall be told off to amuse the MacTavishes; just
think of it! Seven red-haired, screaming, giggling monsters----"

"Hold your tongue, do, you abominable boy!" cried Aunt Charlotte. "I'm
inviting our friends for _my_ pleasure, not for yours, and I forbid
you to speak of them in that wicked, slanderous, disrespectful way.
Come now, sit down here and write me the invitations at once."

"For the last time, auntie, I entreat you----" began Austin.

"Not a word more!" replied his aunt. "Begin without more ado."

"Well, if you insist," consented Austin, as he dragged himself into
the seat. "Have you fixed upon a day?"

"No--any day will do. Just choose one yourself," said Aunt Charlotte,
as she dived after an errant ball of worsted. "What day will suit you
best?"

"Shall we say the 24th?" suggested Austin.

"By all means," replied his aunt briskly. "If you're sure that that
won't interfere with anything else. I've such a wretched memory for
dates. To-day is the 19th. Yes, I should say the 24th will do very
well indeed."

"It will suit me admirably," said Austin, sitting down and beginning
to write with great alacrity, while his aunt busied herself with her
knitting. As soon as the envelopes were addressed, he slipped them
into his coat pocket, and, rising, said he might as well go out and
post them there and then.

"Do," said Aunt Charlotte, well pleased at Austin's sudden
capitulation. "That is, unless you're too tired with your walk. Martha
can always give them to the milkman if you are."

"Not a bit of it," said Austin hastily, as he swung himself out of the
room. "I shall be back in time for dinner."

"He certainly is the very oddest boy," soliloquised Aunt Charlotte, as
she settled herself comfortably on the sofa and went on clicking her
knitting-needles. "Why he dislikes the MacTavishes so I can't imagine;
nice, cheerful young persons as anyone would wish to see. It really is
very queer. And then the way he suddenly gave in at last! It only
shows that I must be firm with him. As soon as he saw I was in earnest
he yielded at once. He's got a sweet nature, but he requires a firm
hand. He's different, too, since he lost his leg--more full of
fancies, it seems to me, and a great deal too much wrapped up in those
books of his. I suppose that when one's body is defective, one's mind
feels the effects of it. I shall have to keep him up to the mark, and
see that he has plenty of cheerful society. Nothing like nice
companions for maintaining the brain in order."

Thus did Aunt Charlotte decide to her own satisfaction what she
thought would be best for Austin.




Chapter the Third


He stood leaning against the old stone fountain on the straight lawn
under the noonday sun. The bees hummed slumberously around him,
sailing from flower to flower, and the hot air, laden with the scents
of the soil, seemed to penetrate his body at every pore, infusing a
sense of vitality into him which pulsed through all his veins. Austin
always said that high noon was the supreme moment of the day. To some
folks the most beautiful time was dawn, to others sunset, but at noon
Nature was like a flower at its full, a flower in the very zenith of
its strength and glory. He had always loved the noon.

"The world seems literally palpitating with life," he thought, as he
rested his arm on the rim of the time-worn fountain. "I'm sure it's
conscious, in some way or other. How it must enjoy itself! Look at the
trees; so strong, and calm, and splendid. They know well enough how
strong they are, and when there's a storm that tries to blow them
down, how they do revel in battling with it! And then the hot air,
embracing the earth so voluptuously--playing with the slender plants,
and caressing the upstanding flowers. They stand up because they want
to be caressed, the amorous creatures. How wonderful it is--the
different characters that flowers have. Some are shrill and fierce and
passionate, while others are meek and sly, and pretend to shrink when
they are even noticed. Some are wicked--shamelessly, insolently,
magnificently wicked--like those scarlet anthuriums, with their
curling yellow tongues. That flower is the very incarnation of sin;
no, not incarnation--what's the word? I can't think, but it doesn't
matter. Incarnation will do, for the thing is exactly like
recalcitrant human flesh. Lubin!"

"Yes, Sir?" responded Lubin, who was digging near.

"What are the wickedest flowers you know?" asked Austin.

"Well, Sir, I should say them as had most thorns," said Lubin
feelingly.

"I wonder," mused Austin. Then he relapsed into his meditations. "How
thick with life the air is. I'm sure it's populated, if we only had
eyes to see. I feel it throbbing all round me--full of beings as much
alive as I am, only invisible. People used to see them once upon a
time--why can't we now? Naiads, and dryads, and fauns, and the great
god Pan everywhere; oh, to think we may be actually surrounded by
these wonders of beauty, and yet unable to talk to any of them!
Nothing but wicked old women, and horrible young men in plaid
knickerbockers and bowler hats, who worry one about odds and
handicaps. It's all very sad and ugly."

"Aren't you rather hot, standing there in the sun, Sir, all this
time?" said Lubin, looking up.

"Very hot," replied Austin. "I wonder what time it is?"

Lubin glanced up at the sundial. "Just five minutes past the hour, or
thereabouts, I make it."

"Oh, Lubin, let's go and bathe!" cried Austin suddenly. "You must be
far hotter than I am. There's plenty of time--we don't lunch till
half-past one. How long would it take us to get to the bathing-pool
just at the bend of the river?"

"Well--not above ten minutes, I should say," was Lubin's answer. "I'd
like a dip myself more'n a little, but I'm not quite sure if I ought
to--you see the mistress wants all this finished up by the afternoon,
and then----"

"But you must!" insisted Austin. "You forget that I've only got one
leg, so I can't swim as I used, and you've got to come and take care I
don't get drowned. 'O weep for Adonais--he is dead!' How angry Aunt
Charlotte would be. And then she'd cry, poor dear, and go into hideous
mourning for her poor Austin. Come along, Lubin--but wait, I must just
go and get a couple of towels. Oh, I'm simply mad for the water. I'll
be back in less than a flash."

Lubin drove his spade into the earth, turned down his sleeves, and
rested--a fair-skinned, bronzed, wholesome object, good to look
at--while Austin stumped away. In less than five minutes the two
youths started off together, tramping through the long, lush
meadow-grass which lay between the end of the garden and the river.
The sun burned fiercely overhead, and the air quivered in the heat.

"Isn't it wonderful!" cried Austin, when they reached the edge of the
water, and were standing under the shade of some trees that overhung
the towing-path. "Come, Lubin, strip--I'm half undressed already. Look
at the white and purple lights in the water--aren't they marvellous?
Now we're going right down into them. Oh the freedom of air, and
colour, and body--how I do _hate_ clothes! I say, how funny my stump
looks, doesn't it? Just like a great white rolling-pin. You must go in
first, Lubin, and then you'll be prepared to catch me when I begin
drowning."

Lubin, standing nude and shapely, like a fair Greek statue, for a
moment on the bank, took a silent header and disappeared. Then Austin
prepared to follow. He tumbled rather than plunged into the water,
and, unable to attain an erect position owing to his imperfect
organism, would have fared badly if Lubin had not caught him in his
arms and turned him deftly over on his back.

"You just content yourself with floating face upwards, Sir," he said.
"There's no sort of use in trying to strike out, you'd only sink to
the bottom like a boat with a hole in it. There--let me hold you like
this; one hand'll do it. Look out for the river-weeds. Now try and
work your foot. Seems to be making you go round and round, somehow.
But that don't matter. A bathe's a bathe, all said and done. How jolly
cool it is!"

"Isn't it exquisite?" murmured Austin, with closed eyes. "I do think
that drowning must be a lovely death. We're like the minnows, Lubin,
'staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, to taste the luxury of
sunny beams tempered with coolness.' That's what _our_ wavy bodies are
doing now. Don't you like it? 'Now more than ever it seems rich to
die----'"

But the next moment, owing probably to Lubin having lost his
equilibrium, the young rhapsodist found himself, spluttering and
half-choked, nearer to the bed of the river than the surface, while
his leg was held in chancery by a network of clinging water-weeds.
Lubin had some slight difficulty in extricating him, and for the
moment, at least, his poetic fantasies came to an abrupt and
unromantic finish.

"Here, get on my back, and I'll swim you out as far as them
water-lilies," said Lubin, giving him a dexterous hoist. "I'm awfully
keen on the yellow sort, and they look wonderful fine ones. That's
better. Now, Sir, you can just imagine yourself any drownded heathen
as comes into your head, only hold tight and don't stir. If you do
you'll get drownded in good earnest, and I shall have to settle
accounts with your aunt afterwards. Are you ready? Right, then. And
now away we go."

He struck out strongly and slowly, with Austin crouching on his
shoulders. They arrived in safety at the point aimed at, and managed
to tear away a grand cluster of the great, beautiful yellow flowers;
but the process was a very ticklish one, and the struggle resulted,
not unnaturally, in Austin becoming dislodged from his not very secure
position, and floundering head foremost into the depths. Lubin caught
him as he rose again, and, taking him firmly by one hand, helped him
to swim alongside of him back to the shore. It was a difficult feat,
and by the time they had accomplished the distance they were both
pretty well exhausted.

"You _have_ been good to me, Lubin," gasped Austin, as he flung
himself sprawling on the grass. "I've had a lovely time--haven't you
too? Was I very heavy? Perhaps it is rather a bore to have only one
leg when one wants to swim. But now you can always say you've saved me
from drowning, can't you. I should have gone under a dozen times if
you hadn't held me up and lugged me about. Oh, dear, now we must put
on our clothes again--what a barbarism clothes are! I do hate them so,
don't you? But I suppose there's no help for it.

          "Rise, Lubin, rise, and twitch thy mantle blue;
          To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

"Oh, do help me to screw on my leg. That's it. I say, it's a
quarter-past one! We must hurry up, or Aunt Charlotte will be cursing.
What _does_ it matter if one eats at half-past one or at a quarter to
two? I really am very fond of Aunt Charlotte, you know, though I find
it awfully difficult to educate her. I sometimes despair of ever being
able to bring her up properly at all, she is so hopelessly Early
Victorian, poor thing. But, then, so many people are, aren't they? Now
animals are never Early Victorian; that's why I respect them so. If
you weren't a human being, Lubin--and a very nice one, as you
are--what sort of an animal would you like to be?"

"Well, I don't rightly know as I ever considered the point," said
Lubin, passing his fingers through his drenched curls. "Perhaps I'd as
lief be a squirrel as anything. I'm awfully fond o' nuts, and when I
was a kid I used to spend half my time a-climbing trees. A squirrel
must have rather a jolly life of it, when one comes to think."

"What a splendid idea!" cried Austin, as they prepared to start. "You
_are_ clever, Lubin. It would be lovely to live in a tree, curtained
all round with thousands of quivering green leaves. I wish I knew what
animals think about all day. It must be very dull for them never to
have any thoughts, poor dears, and yet they seem happy enough
somehow. Perhaps they have something else instead to make up for
it--something that we've no idea of. I _say_--it's half-past one!"

So Austin was late for lunch after all, and got a scolding from Aunt
Charlotte, who told him that it was exceedingly ill-bred to
inconvenience other people by habitual unpunctuality. Austin was very
penitent, and promised he'd never be unpunctual again if he lived to
be a hundred. Then Aunt Charlotte was mollified, and regaled him with
an improving account of a most excellent book she had just been
reading, upon the importance of instilling sound principles of
political economy into the mind of the agricultural labourer. It was
so essential, she explained, that people in that position should
understand something about the laws which govern prices, the relations
of capital and labour, the _metayer_ system, and the ratio which
should exist between an increase of population and the exhaustion of
the soil by too frequent crops of wheat; and she wound up by
propounding a series of hypothetical problems based on the doctrines
she had set forth, for Austin to solve offhand.

Austin listened very dutifully for some time, but the subject bored
him atrociously, and his attention began to wander. At last he made
some rather vague and irrelevant replies, and then announced boldly
that he thought all politicians were very silly old gentlemen,
particularly economists; for his own part, he hated economy,
especially when he wanted to buy something beautiful to look at; he
further considered that political economists would be much better
employed if they sat contemplating tulips instead of writing horrid
books, and that Lubin was a great deal wiser than the whole pack of
them put together. Then Aunt Charlotte got extremely angry, and a
great wrangle ensued, in the course of which she said he was a
foolish, ignorant boy, who talked nonsense for the sake of talking it.
Austin replied by asking if she knew what a quincunx was, or what
Virgil was really driving at when he composed the First Eclogue, and
whether she had ever heard of Lycidas; and when she said that she had
something better to do than stuff her head with quidnunxes and all
such pagan rubbish, he remarked very politely that ignorance was
evidently not all of the same sort. Which sent Aunt Charlotte bustling
away in a huff to look after her household duties.

"It's all very sad and very ugly, isn't it, Gioconda?" sighed Austin,
as he lifted the large, white, fluffy animal upon his lap. "You're a
great philosopher, my dear; I wish I were as wise as you. You're so
scornful, so dignified, so divinely egoistic. But you don't mind being
worshipped, do you, Gioconda? Because you know it's your right, of
course. There--she's actually condescending to purr! Now we'll come
and disport ourselves under the trees, and you shall watch the birds
from a safe distance. I know your wicked ways, and I must teach you
how to treat your inferiors with proper benignity and toleration."

But Gioconda had plans of her own for the afternoon, and declined the
proposed discipline; so Austin strolled off by himself, and lay down
under the trees with a large book on Italian gardens to console him.
His improvised exertions in the water had produced a certain fatigue,
and he felt lazy and inert. Gradually he dropped off into a doze,
which lasted more than an hour. And he had a curious dream. He thought
he was in some strange land--a land like a garden seen through yellow
glass--where everything was transparent, and people glided about as
though they were skating, without any conscious effort. Then Aunt
Charlotte appeared upon the scene, and he saw by her eyes that she was
very angry because Lycidas had been drowned while bathing; but Austin
assured her that it was Lubin who was drowned, and that it really was
of no consequence, because Lubin was only a squirrel after all. At
this point things got extremely mixed, and the sound of voices broke
in upon his slumbers. He opened his eyes, and saw Aunt Charlotte
herself in the act of walking away with a toss of her head that
betokened a ruffled temper.

Austin's interest was immediately aroused. "Lubin!" he called softly,
motioning the lad to come nearer. "What was she rowing you about? Was
she blowing you up about this morning?"

"Well," confessed Lubin with a broad smile, "she didn't seem
over-pleased. Said you might have lost your life, going out o' your
depth with only one leg to stand on, and that if you'd been drownded I
should have had to answer for it before a judge and jury."

"What a wicked, abandoned old woman!" cried Austin. "Only one leg to
stand on, indeed!--she hasn't a single leg to stand on when she says
such things. She ought to have gone down on her knees and thanked you
for taking such care of me. But I shall never make anything of her,
I'm afraid. The more I try to educate her the worse she gets."

"I shouldn't wonder," replied Lubin sagely. "The old hen feels herself
badly off when the egg teaches her to cackle. That's human nature,
that is. And then she was riled because she was afraid I shouldn't
have time to get the garden-things in order by to-morrow, when it
seems there's some sort o' company expected. I told her 'twould be all
right."

"Oh, those brutes! Of course, they're coming to-morrow. I'd nearly
forgotten all about it. It's just like Aunt Charlotte to be so fond of
all those hideous people. You hate the MacTavishes, don't you, Lubin?
_Do_ hate the MacTavishes! Fancy--nine of them, no less, counting the
old ones, and all of them coming together. What a family! I despise
people who breed like rabbits, as though they thought they were so
superlative that the rest of the world could never have enough of
them."

"Ay, fools grow without watering," assented Lubin. "Can't say I ever
took to 'em myself--though it's not my place to say so. The young
gents make a bit too free with one, and when they opens their mouths
no one else may so much as sneeze. Think they know everything, they
do. There's a saying as I've heard, that asses sing badly 'cause they
pitch their voices too high. Maybe it's the same wi' them."

"Well, I hope Aunt Charlotte will enjoy their conversation," said
Austin comfortably. "I say, Lubin, do you know anything about a Mr St
Aubyn, who lives not far from here?"

"What, him at the Court?" replied Lubin. "I don't know him myself, but
they say as _he's_ a gentleman, and no mistake. Keeps himself to
himself, he does, and has always got a civil word for everybody. Fine
old place, too, that of his."

"Have you ever been inside?" asked Austin.

"Lor' no, Sir," answered Lubin. "Don't know as I'm over anxious to,
either. The garden's a sight, it's true--but it seems there's
something queer about the house. Can't make out what it can be, unless
the drains are a bit out of order. But it ain't that neither. Sort o'
frightening--so folks say. But lor', some folks'll say anything. I
never knew anybody as ever _saw_ anything there. It's only some old
woman's yarn, I reckon."

"Oh, is it haunted? Are there any ghosts?" cried Austin, in great
excitement. "I'd give anything in this world to see a ghost!"

"I don't know as I'd care to sleep in a haunted house myself," said
Lubin, beginning to sweep the lawn. "Some folks don't mind that sort
o' thing, I s'pose; must have got accustomed to it somehow. Then
there's those as is born ghost-seers, and others as couldn't see one,
not if it was to walk arm-in-arm with 'em to church. Let's hope Mr St
Aubyn's one o' that sort, seeing as he's got to live there. It's poor
work being a baker if your head's made of butter, I've heard say."

"Then it _is_ haunted!" exclaimed Austin. "What a bit of luck. You
see, Lubin, I know Mr St Aubyn just a little, and soon I'm going to
lunch with him. How I shall be on the look-out! I wonder how it feels
to see a ghost. You've never seen one, have you?"

"Oh no, Sir," replied Lubin, shaking his head. "I doubt I'm not put
together that way. A blind man may shoot a crow by mistake, but he
ain't no judge o' colours. Though ghosts are mostly white, they say.
Well, it may be different with you, and when you go to lunch at the
Court, I'm sure I hope you'll see all the ghosts on the premises if
you've a fancy for that kind of wild fowl. Let ghosts leave me alone
and I'll leave them alone--that's all I've got to say. I never had no
hankering after gentry as go flopping around without their bodies.
'Tain't commonly decent, to my thinking. Don't hold with such goings
on myself."

"Oh, but you must make allowances for their circumstances," answered
Austin. "If they've got no bodies of course they can't put them on,
you know. Besides, there are ghosts and ghosts. Some are mischievous,
and some are very, very unhappy, and others come to do us good and
help us to find wills, and treasures, and all sorts of pleasant
things. I'd love to talk with one, and have it out with him. What
wonderful things one might learn!"

"Ay, there's more in the world than what's taught in the catechism,"
said Lubin. "Let's hope you'll have picked up a few crumbs when you've
been to lunch at the Court. Every little helps, as the sow said when
she swallowed the gnat. I confess I'm not curious myself."

"Well, I'm awfully curious," replied Austin, as he began to get up.
"But now I must stir about a bit. You know my wooden leg gets horribly
lazy sometimes, and I've got to exercise it every now and then for its
own good. I know Aunt Charlotte wants me to go into the town with her
to buy provender for this bun-trouble of hers to-morrow. It's very
curious what different ideas of pleasure different people have."

"He's a rare sort o' boy, the young master," soliloquised Lubin as
Austin went pegging along towards the house. "Game for no end of
mischief when the fit takes him, for all he's only got one leg. One'd
think he was half daft to hear him talk sometimes, too. Seems like as
if it galled him a bit to rub along with the old auntie, and I
shouldn't wonder if the old auntie herself felt about as snug as a
bell-wether tied to a frisky colt. However, I s'pose the A'mighty
knows what He's about, and it's always the old cow's notion as she
never was a calf herself."

With which philosophical reflection Lubin slipped on his green
corduroy jacket, shouldered his broom, and trudged cheerfully home
to tea.




Chapter the Fourth


The next day the great heat had moderated, and the sky was covered
with a thin pearly veil of gossamer greyness which afforded a
delightful relief after the glare of the past week. A smart shower had
fallen during the night, and the parched earth, refreshed after its
bath, appeared more fragrant and more beautiful than ever. Aunt
Charlotte busied herself all the morning with various household
diversions, while Austin, swaying lazily to and fro in a hammock under
an old apple tree, read 'Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight.' At last he
looked at his watch, and found that it was about time to go and dress.

"Well, you _have_ made yourself smart," commented Aunt Charlotte
complacently, as Austin, sprucely attired in a pale flannel suit, with
a lilac tie and a dark-red rose in his button-hole, came into the
morning-room to say good-bye. "But why need you have dressed so early?
Our friends aren't coming till three o'clock at the very earliest,
and it's not much more than twelve--at least, so says my watch. You
needn't have changed till after lunch, at any rate."

"My dear auntie, have you forgotten?" asked Austin, in innocent
surprise. "To-day's Thursday, and I'm engaged to lunch and spend the
afternoon with Mr St Aubyn. You know I told you all about it the very
day he asked me."

"Mr St Aubyn?--I don't understand," said Aunt Charlotte, with a
bewildered air. "I have a recollection of your telling me a few days
ago that you were lunching out some day or other, but----"

"On Thursday, you know, I said."

"Did you? Well, but--but our friends are coming _here_ to-day! You
must have been dreaming, Austin," cried Aunt Charlotte, sitting bolt
upright. "How can you have made such a blunder? Of course you can't
possibly go!"

"Do you really propose, auntie, that I should break my engagement with
Mr St Aubyn for the sake of entertaining people like the MacTavishes
and the Cobbledicks?" replied Austin, quite unmoved.

"But why did you fix on the same day?" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte
desperately. "I cannot understand it. I left the date to you, you know
I did--I told you I didn't care what day it was, and said you might
choose whichever suited yourself best. What on earth induced you to
pitch on the very day when you were invited out?"

"For the very reason you yourself assign--that you let me choose any
day that suited me best. For the very reason that I _was_ invited out.
You see, my dear auntie----"

"Oh, you false, cunning boy!" cried Aunt Charlotte, who now saw how
she had been trapped. "So you let me agree to the 24th, and took care
not to tell me that the 24th was Thursday because you knew quite well
I should never have consented if you had. What abominable deception!
But you shall suffer for it, Austin. Of course you'll remain at home
now, if only as a punishment for your deceit. I shouldn't dream of
letting you go, after such disgraceful conduct. To think you could
have tricked me so!"

"My dear auntie, of course I shall go," said Austin, drawing on his
gloves. "Why you should wish me to stay, I cannot imagine. What on
earth makes you so insistent that I should meet these friends of
yours?"

"It's for your own good, you ungrateful little creature," replied Aunt
Charlotte, quivering. "You know what I've always said. You require
more companionship of your own age, you want to mix with other young
people instead of wasting and dreaming your time away as you do, and
it was for your sake, for your sake only, that I asked our
friends----"

"Oh, no, auntie, it wasn't. You told me so yourself," Austin reminded
her. "You told me distinctly that it was for your own pleasure and not
for mine that you were going to invite them. So that argument won't
do. And you were perfectly right. If you find intellectual joy in the
society of Mrs Cobbledick and Shock-headed Peter----"

"Shock-headed Peter? Who in the name of fortune is that?" interrupted
Aunt Charlotte, amazed.

"One of the MacTavish enchantresses--Florrie, I think, or perhaps
Aggie. How am I to know? Everybody calls her Shock-headed Peter. But
as I was saying, if you find happiness in the society of such people,
invite them by all means. I only ask you not to cram them down my
throat. I wouldn't mind the others so much, but the MacTavishes I
_bar_. I will not have them forced upon me. I detest them, and I've
no doubt they despise me. We simply bore each other out of our lives.
There! Let that suffice. I'm very fond of _you_, auntie, and I don't
want anyone else. Do you perfectly understand?"

"I shall evidently never understand _you_, Austin," replied Aunt
Charlotte. "You have treated me shockingly, shockingly. And now you
leave me in the most heartless way with all these people on my
hands----"

"Then why did you insist on inviting them?" put in Austin. "I
entreated you not to. I'd have gone down on my knees to you, only
unfortunately I've only one. And when I entreated you for the last
time, you said you wouldn't listen to another word. I saw that further
appeal was useless, so I was compelled by you yourself to play for my
own safety. So now good-bye, dear auntie. It's time I was off. Cheer
up--you'll all enjoy yourselves much more without an awkward
unsympathetic creature like me among you, see if you don't. And you
can make any excuse for me you like," he added with a smile as he left
the room. Aunt Charlotte remained transfixed.

"I suppose he must go his own gait," she muttered, as she picked up
her knitting again. "There's no use in trying to force him this way
or that; if he doesn't want to do a thing he won't do it. Of course
what he says is true enough--I did let him choose the date, and I did
ask these people because I thought it would be good for him, and I did
insist on doing so when he begged me not to. Well, I'm hoist with my
own petard this time, though I wouldn't confess as much to him if my
life depended on it. But the trickery of the little wretch! It's that
I can't get over."

Meanwhile Austin meditated on the little episode on his side, as he
made his way along the road. "I daresay dear old auntie was a bit put
out," he thought, "but she brought it all upon herself. She doesn't
see that everybody must live his own life, that it's a duty one owes
to oneself to realise one's own individuality. Now it's _bad_ for me
to associate with people I detest--bad for my soul's development; just
as bad as it is for anyone's body to eat food that doesn't agree with
him. Those MacTavishes poison my soul just as arsenic poisons the
body, and I won't have my soul poisoned if I can help it. It's very
sad to see how blind she is to the art and philosophy of life. But
she'll have to learn it, and the sooner she begins the better."

Here he left the high road, and turned into a long, narrow lane
enclosed between high banks, which led into a pleasant meadow by the
river side. This shortened the way considerably, and when he reached
the stile at the further end of the meadow he found himself only some
ten minutes' walk from the park gates. Then a subdued excitement fell
upon him. He was going to see the beautiful picture-gallery and the
great collection of engravings, and the gardens with conservatories
full of lovely orchids. He was going to hold delightful converse with
the cultured and agreeable man to whom all these things belonged.
And--well, he might possibly even see a ghost! But now, in the genial
daylight, with the prospect of luncheon immediately before him, the
idea of ghosts seemed rather to retire into the background. Ghosts did
not appear so attractive as they had done yesterday afternoon, when he
had talked about them with Lubin. However--here he was.

Mr St Aubyn, tall and middle-aged, with a refined face set in a short,
pointed beard, received him with exquisite cordiality. How seldom does
a man realise the positive idolatry he can inspire by treating a
well-bred youth on equal terms, instead of assuming airs of patronage
and condescension! The boy accepts such an attitude as natural,
perhaps, but he resents it nevertheless, and never gives the man his
confidence. The perfect manners of St Aubyn won Austin's heart at
once, and he responded with a modest ardour that touched and gratified
his host. The Court, too, exceeded his expectations. It was a grand
old mansion dating from the reign of Elizabeth, with mullioned
casements, and carved doorways, and cool, dim rooms oak-panelled, and
broad fireplaces; and around it lay a shining garden enclosed by old
monastic walls of red brick, with shaped beds of carnations glowing
redly in the sunlight, and, beyond the straight lines of lawn, a
wilderness of nut-trees, with a pool of yellow water-lilies, where
wild hyacinths and pale jonquils rioted when it was spring. On one
side of the garden, at right angles to the house, the wall shelved
into a great grass terrace, and here stood a sort of wing, flanked by
two glorious old towers, crumbling and ivy-draped, forming entrances
to a vast room, tapestried, which had been a banqueting hall in the
picturesque Tudor days. Meanwhile, Austin was ushered by his host into
the library--a moderate-sized apartment, lined with countless books
and adorned with etchings of great choiceness; whence, after a few
minutes' chat on indifferent subjects, they adjourned to the
dining-room, where a luncheon, equally choice and good, awaited them.

At first they played a little at cross-purposes. St Aubyn, with the tact
of an accomplished man entertaining a clever youth, tried to draw Austin
out; while Austin, modest in the presence of one whom he recognised as
infinitely his superior in everything he most valued, was far more
anxious to hear St Aubyn talk than to talk himself. The result was that
Austin won, and St Aubyn soon launched forth delightfully upon art, and
books, and travel. He had been a great traveller in his day, and the boy
listened with enraptured ears to his description of the magnificent
gardens in the vicinity of Rome--the Lante, the Torlonia, the
Aldobrandini, the Falconieri, and the Muti--architectural wonders that
Austin had often read of, but of course had never seen; and then he
talked of Viterbo and its fountains, Vicenza the city of Palladian
palaces, every house a gem, and Sicily, with its hidden wonders, hidden
from the track of tourists because far in the depths of the interior. He
had travelled in Burma too, and inflamed the boy's imagination by
telling him of the gorgeous temples of Rangoon and Mandalay; he had
been--like everybody else--to Japan; and he had lived for six weeks up
country in China, in a secluded Buddhist monastery perched on the edge
of a precipice, like an eagle's nest, where his only associates were
bonzes in yellow robes, and the stillness was only broken by the
deep-toned temple bell, booming for vespers. Then, somehow, his thoughts
turned back to Europe, and he began a disquisition upon the great old
masters--Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Tiziano, and Peter Paul--with
whose immortal works he seemed as familiar as he subsequently showed
himself with the pictures in his own house. He described the Memlings at
Bruges, the Botticellis at Florence and the Velasquezes in
Spain--averring in humorous exaggeration that beside a Velasquez most
other paintings were little better than chromolithographs. Austin put in
a word now and then, asked a question or two as occasion served, and so
suggested fresh and still more fascinating reminiscences; but he had no
desire whatever to interrupt the illuminating stream of words by airing
any opinions of his own. It was not until the meal was drawing to a
close that the conversation took a more personal turn, and Austin was
induced to say something about himself, his tastes, and his
surroundings. Then St Aubyn began deftly and diplomatically to elicit
something in the way of self-disclosure; and before long he was able to
see exactly how things stood--the boy of ideals, of visionary and
artistic tastes, of crude fresh theories and a queer philosophy of life,
full of a passion for Nature and a contempt for facts, on one hand; and
the excellent, commonplace, uncomprehending aunt, with her philistine
friends and blundering notions as to what was good for him, upon the
other. It was an amusing situation, and psychologically very
interesting. St Aubyn listened attentively with a sympathetic smile as
Austin stated his case.

"I see, I see," he said nodding. "You feel it imperative to lead your
own life and try to live up to your own ideals. That is good--quite
good. And you are not in sympathy with your aunt's friends. Nothing
more natural. Of course it is important to be sure that your ideals
are the highest possible. Do you think they are?"

"They seem so. They are the highest possible for _me_," replied Austin
earnestly.

"That implies a limitation," observed St Aubyn, emitting a stream of
blue smoke from his lips. "Well, we all have our limitations. You
appear to have a very strong sense that every man should realise his
own individuality to the full; that that is his first duty to
himself. Tell me then--does it never occur to you that we may also
have duties to others?"

"Why, yes--certainly," said Austin. "I only mean that we have _no
right_ to sacrifice our own individualities to other people's ideas.
For instance, my aunt, who has always been the best of friends to me,
is for ever worrying me to associate with people who rasp every nerve
in my body, because she thinks that it would do me good. Then I rebel.
I simply will not do it."

"What friends have you?" asked St Aubyn quietly.

"I don't think I have any," said Austin, with great simplicity.
"Except Lubin. My best companionship I find in books."

"The best in the world--so long as the books are good," replied St
Aubyn. "But who is Lubin?"

"He's a gardener," said Austin. "About two years older than I am. But
he's a gentleman, you understand. And if you could only see the sort
of people my poor aunt tries to force upon me!"

"I think you may add me to Lubin--as your friend," observed St Aubyn;
at which Austin flushed with pleasure. "But now, one other word. You
say you want to realise your highest self. Well, the way to do it is
not to live for yourself alone; it is to live for others. To save
oneself one must first lose oneself--forget oneself, when occasion
arises--for the sake of other people. It is only by self-sacrifice for
the sake of others that the supreme heights are to be attained."

For the first time Austin's face fell. He tossed his long hair off his
forehead, and toyed silently with his cigarette.

"Is that a hard saying?" resumed St Aubyn, smiling. "It has high
authority, however. Think it over at your leisure. Have you finished?
Come, then, and let me show you the pictures. We have the whole
afternoon before us."

They explored the fine old house well-nigh from roof to basement,
while St Aubyn recounted all the associations connected with the
different rooms. Then they went into the picture-gallery. Austin,
breathless with interest, hung upon St Aubyn's lips as he pointed out
the peculiarities of each great master represented, and explained how,
for instance, by a fold of the drapery or the crook of a finger, the
characteristic mannerisms of the painter could be detected, and the
school to which a given work belonged could approximately be
determined; drew attention to the unifying and grouping of the
different features of a composition; spoke learnedly of textures,
qualities, and tactile values; and laid stress on the importance of
colour, light, atmosphere, and the sense of motion, as contrasted with
the undue preponderance too often attached by critics to mere outline.
All this was new to Austin, who had really never seen any good
pictures before, and his enthusiasm grew with what it fed on. St Aubyn
was an admirable cicerone; he loved his pictures, and he knew
them--knew everything that could be known about them--and, inspired by
the intelligent appreciation of his guest, spared no pains to do them
justice. A good half-hour was then spent over the engravings, which
were kept in a quaint old room by themselves; and afterwards they
adjourned to the garden. St Aubyn's conservatories were famous, and
his orchids of great variety and beauty. Austin seemed transported
into a world where everything was so arranged as to gratify his
craving for harmony and fitness, and he moved almost silently beside
his host in a dream of satisfaction and delight.

"By the way, there's still one room you haven't seen," remarked St
Aubyn, as they were strolling at their leisure through the grounds.
"We call it the Banqueting Hall--in that wing between the two old
towers. Queen Elizabeth was entertained there once, and it contains
some rather beautiful tapestries. I should like to have them moved
into the main building, only there's really no place where they'd fit,
and perhaps it's better they should remain where they were originally
intended for. Are you fond of tapestry?"

"I've never seen any," said Austin, "but of course I've read about
it--Gobelin, Bayeux, and so on. I should love to see what it looks
like in reality."

"Come, then," said St Aubyn, crossing the lawn. "I have the key in my
pocket."

He flung open the door. Austin found himself in the vast apartment,
groined and vaulted, measuring about a hundred and twenty feet by
fifty, and lighted by exquisite pointed windows enriched with
coats-of-arms and other heraldic devices in jewel-like stained glass.
The walls were completely hidden by tapestries of rare beauty, woven
into the semblance of gardens, palaces, arcades and bowers of clipped
hedges and pleached trees with slender fountains set meetly in green
shade; while some again were crowded with swaying Gothic figures of
saints and kings and warriors and angels, all far too beautiful,
thought Austin, to have ever lived. Yet surely there must be some
prototypes of all these wonderful conceptions somewhere. There must be
a world--if we could only find it--where loveliness that we only know
as pictured exists in actual reality. What a dream-like hall it was,
on that still summer afternoon. Yet there was something uncanny about
it too. St Aubyn had stepped out of sight, and Austin left by himself
began to experience a very extraordinary sensation. He felt that he
was not alone. The immense chamber seemed _full of presences_. He
could see nothing, but he felt them all about him. The place was
thickly populated, but the population was invisible. Everything looked
as empty as it had looked when the door was first thrown open, and yet
it was really full of ghostly palpitating life, crowded with the
spirits of bygone men and women who had held stately revels there
three hundred years before. He was not frightened, but a sense of awe
crept over him, rooting him to the spot and imparting a rapt
expression to his face. Did he hear anything? Wasn't there a faint
rustling sound somewhere in the air behind him? No. It must have been
his fancy. Everything was as silent as the grave.

He turned and saw St Aubyn close beside him. "The place is haunted!"
he exclaimed in a husky voice.

"What makes you think so?" asked St Aubyn, without any intonation of
surprise.

"I feel it," he replied.

"Come out," said the other abruptly. "It's curious you should say
that. Other people seem to have felt the same. I'm not so sensitive
myself. You're looking pale. Let's go into the library and have a cup
of tea."

The hot stimulant revived him, and he was soon talking at his ease
again. But the curious impression remained. It seemed to him as if he
had had an experience whose effects would not be easily shaken off. He
had seen no ghosts, but he had felt them, and that was quite enough.
The sensation he had undergone was unmistakable; the hall was full of
ghosts, and he had been conscious of their presence. This, then, was
apparently what Lubin had alluded to. Oh, it was all real
enough--there was no room left for any doubt whatever.

It was a quarter to five when he took leave of his entertainer,
responding warmly to an injunction to look in again whenever he felt
disposed. He walked very thoughtfully homewards, revolving many
questions in his busy brain. How much he had seen and learnt since he
left home that morning! Worlds of beauty, of art, of intellect had
dawned upon his consciousness; a world of mystery too. Even now,
tramping along the road, he felt a different being. Even now he
imagined the presence of unseen entities--walking by his side, it
might be, but anyhow close to him. Was it so? Could it be that he
really was surrounded by intelligences that eluded his physical senses
and yet in some mysterious fashion made their existence _known_?

At last he arrived at the stile leading into the meadow, and prepared
to clamber over. Then he hesitated. Why? He could not tell. A queer,
invincible repugnance to cross that stile suddenly came over him. The
meadow looked fresh and green, and the road--hot, dusty, and
white--was certainly not alluring; besides, he longed to saunter along
the grass by the river and think over his experiences. But something
prevented him. With a sense of irritation he took a few steps along
the road; then the thought of the cool field reasserted itself, and
with a determined effort he retraced his steps and threw one leg over
the top bar of the stile. It was no use. Gently, but unmistakably,
something pushed him back. He _could_ not cross. He wanted to, and he
was in full possession of both his physical and mental faculties, but
he simply could not do it.

In great perplexity, not unmixed with some natural sense of umbrage,
Austin set off again along the ugly road. The sun had come out once
more, and it was very hot. What could be the matter with him? Why had
he been so silly as to take the highway, with its horrid dust and
glare, when the field and the lane would have been so much more
pleasant? He felt puzzled and annoyed. How Mr St Aubyn would have
laughed at him could he but have known. This long tramp along the
disagreeable road was the only jarring incident that had befallen him
that day. Well, it would soon be over. And what a day it had been,
after all. How marvellous the pictures were, and the gardens; what an
acquisition to his life was the friendship--not only the
acquaintanceship--of St Aubyn; and then the tapestries, the great
mysterious hall, and the strange revelations that had come upon him in
the hall itself! At last his thoughts reverted, half in
self-reproach, to Aunt Charlotte. How had she fared, meanwhile? Had
she enjoyed her Cobbledicks and her MacTavishes as much as he had
enjoyed his experiences at the Court?

For all his theories about living his own life and developing his own
individuality, Austin was not a selfish boy. Egoistic he might be, but
selfish he was not. His impulses were always generous and kindly, and
he was full of thought for others. He was for ever contriving delicate
little gifts for those in want, planning pleasant little surprises for
people whom he loved. And now he hoped most ardently that dear Aunt
Charlotte had not been very dull, and for the moment felt quite kindly
towards the Cobbledicks and the MacTavishes as he reflected that, no
doubt, they had helped to make his auntie happy on that afternoon.

At last he came to the entrance of the lane through which he had
passed in the morning. At that moment a crowd of men and boys, most of
them armed with heavy sticks and all looking terribly excited, rushed
past him, and precipitated themselves into the narrow opening. He
asked one of them what was the matter, but the man took no notice and
ran panting after the others. So Austin pursued his way, and in a few
minutes arrived at the garden gate, where to his great surprise he
found Aunt Charlotte waiting for him--the picture of anxiety and
terror.

"Well, auntie!--why, what's the matter?" he exclaimed, as Aunt
Charlotte with a cry of relief threw herself into his arms.

"Oh, my dear boy!" she uttered in trembling agitation. "How thankful I
am to see you! Which way did you come back?"

"Which way? Along the road," said Austin, much astonished. "Why?"

"Thank God!" ejaculated Aunt Charlotte. "Then you're really safe. I've
been out of my mind with fear. A most dreadful thing has happened. Let
us sit down a minute till I get my breath, and I'll tell you all about
it."

Austin led her to a garden seat which stood near, and sat down beside
her. "Well, what is it all about?" he asked.

"My dear, it was like this," began Aunt Charlotte, as she gradually
recovered her composure. "Our friends were just going away--oh, I
forgot to tell you that of course they came; we had a most delightful
time, and dear Lottie--no, Lizzie--I always do forget which is
which--I can't remember, but it doesn't matter--was the life and soul
of the party; however, as I was saying, they were just going away, and
I was there at the gate seeing them off, when the butcher's boy came
running up and warned them on no account to venture into the road, as
Hunt's dog--that's the butcher, you know--I mean Hunt is--had gone
raving mad, and was loose upon the streets. Of course we were all most
horribly alarmed, and wanted to know whether anybody had been bitten;
but the boy was off like a shot, and two minutes afterwards the
wretched dog itself came tearing past, as mad as a dog could be, its
jaws a mass of foam, and snapping right and left. As soon as ever it
was safe our friends took the opportunity of escaping--of course in
the opposite direction; and then a crowd of villagers came along in
pursuit, but not knowing which turning to take till some man or other
told them that the dog had gone up the lane. Then imagine my terror!
For I felt perfectly convinced that you'd be coming home that way, as
the road was hot and dusty, and I know how fond you are of lanes and
fields. Oh, my dear, I can't get over it even now. How was it you
chose the road?"

For a moment Austin did not speak. Then he said very slowly:

"I don't know how to tell you. Of course I _could_ tell you easily
enough, but I don't think you'd understand. Auntie, I intended to come
home by the lane. Twice or three times I tried to cross the stile into
the meadows, and each time I was prevented. Something stopped me.
Something pushed me back. Naturally I wanted to come by the
meadow--the road was horrid--and I wanted to stroll along on the grass
and enjoy myself by the river. But there it was--I couldn't do it. So
I gave up trying, and came by the road after all."

"What _do_ you mean, Austin?" asked Aunt Charlotte. "I never heard
such a thing in my life. What was it that pushed you back?"

"I don't know," replied the boy deliberately. "I only know that
something did. And as the lane is very narrow, and enclosed by
excessively steep banks, the chances are that I should have met the
dog in it, and that the dog would have bitten me and given me
hydrophobia. And now you know as much as I do myself."

"I can't tell what to think, I'm sure," said Aunt Charlotte. "Anyhow,
it's most providential that you escaped, but as for your being
prevented, as you say--as for anything pushing you back--why, my dear,
of course that was only your fancy. What else could it have been? I'm
far too practical to believe in presentiments, and warnings, and
nonsense of that sort. I'd as soon believe in table-rapping. No, my
dear; I thank God you've come back safe and sound, but don't go
hinting at anything supernatural, because I simply don't believe in
it."

"Then why do you thank God?" asked Austin, "Isn't He supernatural?
Why, He's the only really supernatural Being possible, it seems to
me."

That was a poser. Aunt Charlotte, having recovered her equanimity,
began to feel argumentative. It was incumbent on her to prove that she
was not inconsistent in attributing Austin's preservation to the
intervention of God, while disclaiming any belief in what she called
the supernatural. And for the moment she did not know how to do it.

"By the supernatural, Austin," she said at last, in a very oracular
tone, "I mean superstition. And I call that story of yours a piece of
superstition and nothing else."

"Auntie, you do talk the most delightful nonsense of any elderly lady
of my acquaintance," cried Austin, as he laughingly patted her on the
back. "It's no use arguing with you, because you never can see that
two and two make four. It's very sad, isn't it? However, the thing to
be thankful for is that I've got back safe and sound, and that we've
both had a delightful afternoon. And now tell me all your adventures.
I'm dying to hear about the vicar, and the Cobbledicks, and the
ingenious Jock and Sandy. Did all your friends turn up?"

"Indeed they did, and a most charming time we had," replied Aunt
Charlotte briskly. "Of course they were astonished to find that you
weren't here to welcome them, and I was obliged to say how unfortunate
it was, but a most stupid mistake had arisen, and that you were
dreadfully sorry, and all the rest of it. Ah, you don't know what you
missed, Austin. The boys were full of fun as usual, and dear
Lizzie--or was it Florrie? well, it doesn't matter--said she was sure
you'd gone to the Court in preference because you were expecting to
meet a lot of girls there who were much prettier than she was. Of
course she was joking, but----"

"The vulgar, disgusting brute!" cried Austin, in sudden anger. "And
these are the creatures you torment me to associate with. Well----"

"Austin, you've no right to call a young lady a brute; it's abominably
rude of you," said Aunt Charlotte severely. "There was nothing vulgar
in what she said; it was just a playful sally, such as any sprightly
girl might indulge in. I assured her you were going to meet nobody but
Mr St Aubyn himself, and then she said it was a shame that you should
have been inveigled away to be bored by----"

"I don't want to hear what the woman said," interrupted Austin, with a
gesture of contempt. "Such people have no right to exist. They're not
worthy for a man like St Aubyn to tread upon. It's a pity you know
nothing of him yourself, auntie. You wouldn't appreciate your Lotties
and your Florries quite so much as you do now, if you did."

"Then you enjoyed yourself?" returned Aunt Charlotte, waiving the
point. "Oh, I've no doubt he's an agreeable person in his way. And the
gardens are quite pretty, I'm told. Hasn't he got a few rather nice
pictures in his rooms? I'm very fond of pictures myself. Well, now,
tell me all about it. How did you amuse yourself all the afternoon,
and what did you talk to him about?"

But before Austin could frame a fitting answer the butcher's boy
looked over the gate to tell them that the rabid dog had been found in
the lane and killed.




Chapter the Fifth


It will readily be understood that Austin was in no hurry to confide
anything about his experiences in the Banqueting Hall to his Aunt
Charlotte. The way in which she had received his straightforward,
simple account of the curious impressions which had determined his
choice of a route in coming home was enough, and more than enough, to
seal his tongue. He was sensitive in the extreme, and any lack of
sympathy or comprehension made him retire immediately into his shell.
His aunt's demeanour imparted an air of reserve even to the
description he gave her of the attractions of Moorcombe Court. Perhaps
the good lady was a trifle sore at never having been invited there
herself. One never knows. At any rate, her attitude was chilling. So
as regarded the incident in the Banqueting Hall he preserved entire
silence. Her scepticism was too complacent to be attacked.

He was aroused next morning by the sweetest of country sounds--the
sound of a scythe upon the lawn. Then there came the distant call of
the street flower-seller, "All a-growing, all a-blowing," which he
remembered as long as he could remember anything. The world was waking
up, but it was yet early--not more than half-past six at the very
latest. So he lay quietly and contentedly in his white bed, lazily
wondering how it would feel in the Banqueting Hall at that early hour,
and what it would be like there in the dead of night, and how soon it
would be proper for him to go and leave a card on Mr St Aubyn, and
what Lubin would think of it all, and how it was he had never before
noticed that great crack in the ceiling just above his head. At last
he slipped carefully out of bed without waiting for Martha to bring
him his hot water, and hopped as best he could to the open window and
looked out. There was Lubin, mowing vigorously away, and the air was
full of sweet garden scents and the early twittering of birds. He
could not go back to bed after that, but proceeded forthwith to dress.

After a hurried toilet, he bumped his way downstairs; intercepted the
dairyman, from whom he extorted a great draught of milk, and then
went into the garden. How sweet it was, that breath of morning air!
Lubin had just finished mowing the lawn, and the perfume of the cool
grass, damp with the night's dew, seemed to pervade the world. No one
else was stirring; there was nothing to jar his nerves; everything was
harmonious, fresh, beautiful, and young. And the harmony of it all
consisted in this, that Austin was fresh, and beautiful, and young
himself.

"Well, and how did ye fare at the Court?" asked Lubin, as Austin
joined him. "Was it as fine a place as you reckoned it would be?"

"Oh, Lubin, it was lovely!" cried Austin, enthusiastically. "I do wish
you could see it. And the garden! Of course this one's lovely too, and
I love it, but the garden at the Court is simply divine. It's on a
great scale, you know, and there are huge orchid-houses, and flaming
carnations, and stained tulips, and gilded lilies, and a wonderful
grass terrace, and--"

"Ay, ay, I've heard tell of all that," interrupted Lubin. "But how
about the ghosts? Did you see any o' them, as you was so anxious
about?"

"No--I didn't see any; but they're there all the same," returned
Austin. "I felt them, you know. But only in one place; that great
room, they say, was a Banqueting Hall once upon a time. You know,
Lubin, I'm going back there before long. Mr St Aubyn asked me to come
again, and I intend to go into that room again to see if I feel
anything more. It was the very queerest thing! I never felt so strange
in my life. The place seemed actually full of them. I could feel them
all round me, though I couldn't see a thing. And the strangest part of
it is that I've never felt quite the same since."

"How d'ye mean?" asked Lubin, looking up.

"I don't know--but I fancy I may still be surrounded by them in some
sort of way," replied Austin. "It's possibly nothing but imagination
after all. However, we shall see. Now this morning I want to go a long
ramp into the country--as far as the Beacon, if I can. It's going to
be a splendid day, I'm sure."

"I'm not," said Lubin. "The old goose was dancing for rain on the
green last night, and that's a sure sign of a change."

"Dancing for rain! What old goose?" asked Austin, astonished.

"The geese always dance when they want rain," replied Lubin, "and what
the goose asks for God sends. Did you never hear that before? It's a
sure fact, that is. It'll rain within four-and-twenty hours, you mark
my words."

"I hope it won't," said Austin. "And so your mother keeps geese?"

"Ay, that she does, and breeds 'em, and fattens 'em up against
Michaelmas. And we've a fine noise o' ducks on the pond, too. They
pays their way too, I reckon."

"A noise o' ducks? What, do they quack so loud?"

"Lor' bless you, Master Austin, where was you brought up? Everybody
hereabouts know what a noise o' ducks is. Same as a flock o' geese,
only one quacks and the other cackles. Well, now I'm off home, for its
peckish work mowing on an empty belly, and the mother'll be looking
out for me. Geese for me, ghosts for you, and in the end we'll see
which pans out the best."

So Lubin trudged away to his breakfast and left Austin to his
reflections. The predicted rain held off in spite of the terpsichorean
importunity of Lubin's geese, and Austin passed a lovely morning on
the moors; but next day it came down with a vengeance, and for six
hours there was a regular deluge. However, Austin didn't mind. When it
was fine he spent his days in the fields and woods; if it rained, he
sat at a window where he could watch the grey mists, and the driving
clouds, and the straight arrows of water falling wonderfully through
the air. His books, too, were a resource that never failed, and if he
was unable personally to participate in beautiful scenes, he could
always read about them, which was the next best thing after all.

The weather continued unsettled for some days, and then it cleared up
gloriously, so that Austin was able to lead what he called his Daphnis
life once more. The rains had had rather a depressing effect upon his
general health, and once or twice he had fancied that something was
troubling him in his stump; but with the return of the sun all such
symptoms disappeared as though by magic, and he felt younger and
lighter than ever as he stepped forth again into the glittering air.
More than a week had elapsed since his day at the Court, and he began
to think that now he really might venture to go and call. So off he
set one sunny afternoon, and with rather a beating heart presented
himself at the park gates.

Here, however, a disappointment awaited him. The lodge-keeper shook
his head, and announced that Mr St Aubyn was away and wouldn't be back
till night. Austin could do nothing but leave a card, and hope that he
might be lucky enough to meet him by accident before long.

So he turned back and made for the meadow by the river side, feeling
sure that he would be safe from rabid dogs that time at any rate. And
certainly no mysterious influences intervened to prevent him sitting
on the stile for a rest, and indulging in pleasant thoughts. Then he
pulled out his pocket-volume of the beloved Eclogues, and read the
musical contest between Menalcas and Damætas with great enjoyment.
Why, he wondered, were there no delightful shepherd-boys now-a-days,
who spent their time in lying under trees and singing one against the
other? Lubin was much nicer than most country lads, but even Lubin was
not equal to improvising songs about Phyllis, and Delia, and the
Muses. Then he looked up, and saw a stranger approaching him across
the field.

He was a big, stoutish man, with a fat face, a frock-coat tightly
buttoned up, a large umbrella, and a rather shabby hat of the shape
called chimney-pot. A somewhat incongruous object, amid that rural
scene, and not a very prepossessing one; but apparently a gentleman,
though scarcely of the stamp of St Aubyn. At last he came quite near,
and Austin moved as though to let him pass.

"Don't trouble yourself, young gentleman," said the newcomer, in a
good-humoured, offhand way. "Can you tell me whether I'm anywhere near
a place called Moorcombe Court?"

"Yes--it's not far off," replied Austin, immediately interested. "I've
just come from there myself."

"Really, now!" was the gentleman's rejoinder. "And how's me friend St
Aubyn?"

So he was Mr St Aubyn's friend--or claimed to be. "I really
suspected," said Austin to himself, "that he must be a bailiff." From
which it may be inferred that the youth's acquaintance with bailiffs
was somewhat limited. Then he said, aloud:

"I believe he's quite well, thank you, but I'm afraid you'll not be
able to see him. He's gone out somewhere for the day."

"Dear me, now, that's a pity!" exclaimed the stranger, taking off his
hat and wiping his hot, bald head. "Dear old Roger--it's years since
we met, and I was quite looking forward to enjoying a chat with him
about old times. Well, well, another day will do, no doubt. You don't
live at the Court, do you?"

"I? Oh, no," said Austin. "I only visit there. It is such a charming
place!"

"Shouldn't wonder," remarked the other, nodding. "Our friend's a rich
man, and can afford to gratify his tastes--which are rather expensive
ones, or used to be when I knew him years ago. I must squeeze an hour
to go and see him some time or other while I'm here, if I can only
manage it."

"Then you are not here for long?" asked Austin, wondering who the man
could be.

"Depends upon business, young gentleman," replied the stranger.
"Depends upon how we draw. We shall have a week for certain, but after
that----"

"How you draw?" repeated Austin, politely mystified.

"Yes, draw--what houses we draw, to be sure," explained the stranger.
"What, haven't you seen the bills? I'm on tour with 'Sardanapalus'!"

A ray of light flashed upon Austin's memory. "Oh! I think I
understand," he ventured hesitatingly. "Are you--can you perhaps
be--er--Mr Buckskin?"

"For Buckskin read Buskin, and you may boast of having hazarded a
particularly shrewd guess," replied the gentleman. "Bucephalus Buskin,
at your service; and, of course, the public's."

"Ah, now I know," exclaimed Austin. "The greatest actor in Europe, on
or off the stage."

"Oh come, now, come; spare my blushes, young gentleman, draw it a
_little_ milder!" cried the delighted manager, almost bursting with
mock modesty. "Greatest actor in Europe--oh, very funny, very good
indeed! Off the stage, too! Oh dear, dear, dear, what wags there are
in the world! And pray, young gentleman, from whom did you pick up
that?"

"I think it must have been the milkman," replied Austin simply.

"The milkman, eh? A most discriminating milkman, 'pon my word. Well,
it's always encouraging to find appreciation of high art, even among
milkmen," observed Mr Buskin. "Only shows how much we owe the growing
education of the masses to the drama. Talk of the press, the pulpit,
the schoolroom----"

"I believe he was quoting an advertisement," interpolated Austin.

"An ad., eh?" said the mummer, somewhat disconcerted. "Oh, well, I
shouldn't be surprised. Of course _I_ have nothing to do with such
things. That's the business of the advance-agent. And did he really
put in that? I positively must speak to him about it. A good fellow,
you know, but rather inclined to let his zeal outrun his discretion.
It's not good business to raise too great expectations, is it, now?"

Austin, in his innocence, scarcely took in the meaning of all this.
But it was clear enough that Mr Buskin was a great personage in his
way, and extremely modest into the bargain. His interest was now very
much excited, and he awaited eagerly what the communicative gentleman
would say next.

"I should think it would take," continued Mr Buskin, warming to his
subject. "It's a most magnificent spectacle when it's properly done--as
we do it. There's a scene in the third act--the Banquet in the Royal
Palace--that's something you won't forget as long as you live. A
gorgeous hall, brilliantly illuminated--the whole Court in glittering
costumes--the tables covered with gold and silver plate. Peals of
thunder, and a frightful tempest raging outside. In the midst of the
revels a conspiracy breaks out--enter Pania, bloody--Sardanapalus
assumes a suit of armour, and admires himself in a looking-glass--and
then the rival armies burst in, and a terrific battle ensues----"

"What, in the dining-room?" asked the astonished Austin.

"Well, well, the poet allows himself a bit of licence there, I admit;
but that only gives us an opportunity of showing what fine
stage-management can do," said Mr Buskin complacently. "It's a
magnificent situation. You'll say you never saw anything like it since
you were born, you just mark my words."

"It certainly must be very wonderful," remarked Austin. "But I'm
afraid I'm rather ignorant of such matters. What _is_ 'Sardanapalus,'
may I ask?"

"What, never heard of Byron's 'Sardanapalus'?" exclaimed the actor,
throwing up his hands. "Why, it's one of the finest things ever put
upon the boards. Full of telling effects, and not too many bothering
lengths, you know. The Poet Laureate, dear good man, worried my life
out a year ago to let him write a play upon the subject especially for
me. The part of Sardanapalus was to be devised so as to bring out all
my particular--er--capabilities, and any little hints that might occur
to me were to be acted upon and embodied in the text. But I wouldn't
hear of it. 'Me dear Alfred,' I said, 'it isn't that I underrate your
very well-known talents, but Byron's good enough for _me_. Hang it
all, you know, an artist owes something to the classics of his
country.' So now, if that uneasy spirit ever looks this way from the
land of the eternal shades, he'll see something at least to comfort
him. He'll see that one actor, at least, not unknown to Europe, has
vindicated his reputation as a playwright in the face of the British
public."

Austin felt immensely flattered at such confidences being vouchsafed
to him by the eminent exponent of Lord Byron, and said he was certain
that the theatre would be crammed. Mr Buskin shrugged his shoulders,
and replied he was sure he hoped so.

"And now," he added, "I think I'll be walking back. And look you here,
young gentleman. We've had a pleasant meeting, and I'd like to see
you again. Just take this card"--scribbling a few words on it in
pencil--"and the night you favour us with your presence in the house,
come round and see me in me dressing-room between the acts. You've
only to show that, and they'll let you in at once. I'd like your
impressions of the thing while it's going on."

Austin accepted the card with becoming courtesy, and offered his own
in exchange. Mr Buskin shook hands in a very cordial manner, and the
next moment was making his way rapidly in the direction of the town.

"What a very singular gentleman," thought Austin, when he was once
more alone. "I wonder whether all actors are like that. Scarcely, I
suppose. Well, now I'm to have a glimpse of another new world. Mr St
Aubyn has shown me one or two; what will Mr Buskin's be like? It's all
extremely interesting, anyhow."

Then he stumped along to the river side, giving a majestic twirl to
his wooden leg with every step he took through the long grass. How he
would have loved a bathe! The pool where he had so enjoyed himself
with Lubin was not far off--the pool of Daphnis, as he had christened
it; but he hesitated to venture in alone. So he lay down on the bank
and watched the yellow water-lilies from afar, dreaming of many
things. How clever Lubin was, and what a lot he knew! Why geese should
dance for rain he couldn't even imagine; but the rain had actually
come, and it was all a most suggestive mystery. How many other curious
connections there must be among natural occurrences that nobody ever
dreamt of! It was in the country one learnt about such things; in the
fields and woods, and by the side of rivers. Nature was the great
school, after all. History and geography were all very well in their
way, but what food for the soul was there in knowing whether Norway
was an island or a peninsula, or on what date some silly king had had
his crown put on? What did it matter, after all? Those were the facts
he despised; facts that had no significance for him whatever, that
left him exactly as they found him first. The sky and the birds and
the flowers taught him lessons that were worth more than all the
histories and geographies that were ever written. The schoolroom was a
desert, arid and unsatisfying; whereas the garden, the enclosed space
which held stained cups of beauty and purple gold-eyed bells, that was
a jewelled sanctuary. Lubin was nearer the heart of things than
Freeman and Macaulay, though they would have disdained him as a clod.
Virgil and Theocritus were greater philosophers than either Comte or
Hegel. Daphnis and Corydon represented the finest flower, the purest
type of human evolution, and Herbert Spencer was nothing better than a
particularly silly old man.

Having disposed of the education question thus conclusively, it
occurred to Austin that it must be about time for tea; so he struggled
to his legs and turned his footsteps homeward. Just as he arrived at
the house he met Lubin outside the gate with a wheelbarrow.

"Off already?" he asked.

"Ay," said Lubin. "I say, Master Austin, there's something I want to
tell you. I see a magpie not an hour ago!"

"A magpie? I don't think I ever saw one in my life. What was it like?"
enquired Austin.

"Don't matter what it was like," replied Lubin, sententiously. "But it
was just outside your bedroom window. You'd better be on the
look-out."

"What for?" asked Austin. "Did it say it was coming back?"

"'Tain't nothing to laugh at," said Lubin, nodding his head. "A magpie
bodes ill-luck. That's well known, that is. So you just keep your eye
open, that's all I've got to say. It's a warning, you see. Did ye
never hear that before?"

Austin's first impulse was to laugh; then he remembered the dancing
goose, and the rain which followed in due course. "All right, Lubin,"
he said cheerfully. "I'm not afraid of magpies; I don't think they're
very dangerous. But I _have_ heard that they've a fancy for silver
spoons, so I'll tell Aunt Charlotte to lock the plate up safely before
she goes to bed."

As he had expected, Aunt Charlotte was much pleased at hearing of his
encounter with Mr Buskin, who, she thought, must be a most delightful
person. It would be so good, too, for Austin to see something of the
gay world instead of always mooning about alone; and then he would be
sure to meet other young people at the performance, friends from the
neighbouring town, with whom he could talk and be sociable. Austin, on
his side, was quite willing to go and be amused, though he felt,
perhaps, more interested in what promised to be an entirely new
experience than excited at the prospect of a treat. He wanted to see
and to study, and then he would be able to judge.

"By the way, Austin," said his aunt, as they were separating for the
night a few hours later, "I want you to go into the town to-morrow and
tell Snewin to send a man up at once to look at the roof. I'm afraid
it's been in rather a bad state for some time past, and those heavy
rains we had last week seem to have damaged it still more. Be sure you
don't forget. It won't do to have a leaky roof over our heads; it
might come tumbling down, and cost a mint of money to put right
again."

Austin gave the required promise, and thought no more about it. He
also forgot entirely to tell his aunt she had better lock up the
spoons with particular care that night because Lubin had seen a magpie
in suspicious proximity to his window. He went straight up to his
room, feeling rather sleepy, and bent on getting between the sheets as
soon as possible. But just as he was putting on his nightgown, a light
pattering sound attracted his attention, and he immediately became all
ears.

"Rain?" he exclaimed. "Why, there wasn't a sign of it an hour ago!"

He drew up the blind and looked out. The sky was perfectly clear, and
a brilliant moon was shining.

"That's queer!" he murmured. "I could have sworn I heard it raining.
What in the world could it have been?"

He turned away and put out the candle. As he approached the bed a
curious disinclination to get into it came over him. Then he heard the
same pattering noise again. He stopped short, and listened more
attentively. It seemed to come from the walls.

A shower of raps, rather like tiny explosions, now sounded all around
him. He leant his head against the wall, and the sound became
distincter. This time there was no mistake about it. He had never
heard anything like it in his life. He was quite cool, not in the
least frightened, and very much on the alert. The raps continued at
intervals for about five minutes. Then, seeing that it was impossible
to solve the mystery, he suddenly jumped into bed. At that moment the
raps ceased.

For nearly an hour he lay awake, wondering. Certainly he had not been
the victim of hallucination. He was in perfect health, and in full
possession of all his faculties. Indeed his faculties were
particularly alive; he had been thinking of something else altogether
when the raps first forced themselves upon his consciousness, and
afterwards he had listened to them for several minutes with close and
critical attention. No explanation of the strange phenomenon suggested
itself in spite of endless theories and speculations. Could it be
mice? But mice only gnawed and scuttled about; they did not rap. It
was more like crackling than anything else; the noise produced by
thousands of faint discharges. No, it was inexplicable, and he
wondered more and more.

Gradually he fell asleep. How long he slept he didn't know, but he
awoke with a sensation of cold. Instinctively he put out his hand to
pull the coverings closer over him, and found that they seemed to have
slipped down somehow, leaving his chest exposed. Then, warm again, he
dozed off once more and dreamt that he was at the pool of Daphnis with
Lubin. How cool and blue the water looked, and how lovely the plunge
would be! But when he was stripped the weather suddenly changed; a
chill wind sprang up which made his teeth chatter; and then Lubin--who
somehow wasn't Lubin but had unaccountably turned into Mr
Buskin--insisted on throwing him into the water, which now looked cold
and black. He struggled furiously, and awoke shivering.

There was not a rag upon him. Again he stretched out his hand to feel
for the clothes, but they had disappeared. Instinctively he threw
himself out of bed and flung open the shutters. The moon had set, and
the first faint gleams of approaching dawn filtered into the room,
showing, to his amazement, the bedclothes drawn completely away from
the mattress and hanging over the rail at the foot, so as to be quite
out of the reach of his hand as he had lain there. What on earth was
the matter with the bed? Was it bewitched? Who had uncovered him in
that unceremonious way, leaving him perished with cold? No wonder he
had dreamt of that chilly wind, numbing his body as he stood naked by
the pool. Had he by any chance kicked the coverlet off in his sleep,
as he engaged in that dream-struggle with the absurdly impossible
Buskin-Lubin who had attempted to pitch him into the dark water?
Clearly not; for that would not account for the sheet and blanket
being dragged so carefully out of the range of his hands, and hung
over the foot-rail so that they touched the floor.

Such were the thoughts that flashed through his mind as he stood
motionless by the window, with wide open eyes, in the chill morning
light. Suddenly a rending, bursting noise was heard in the ceiling.
The crack widened into a chasm, and then, with a heavy thud, down fell
a confused mass of old bricks, crumbling mortar, and rotten,
worm-eaten wood full on the mattress he had just relinquished,
scattering pulverised rubble in all directions, and covering the bed
with a layer of horrible dust and _débris_.




Chapter the Sixth


Had her very life depended on it, old Martha would have been totally
unable to give any coherent account of what she felt, said, or did,
when she came into Master Austin's room that morning at half-past
seven with his hot water. She thought she must have screamed, but such
was her bewilderment and terror she really could not remember whether
she did or no. But she never had any doubt as to what she saw. Instead
of a fair white bed with Austin lying in it, she was confronted by the
sight of a gaping hole in the roof, something that looked like a
rubbish heap in a brickfield immediately underneath, and the long
slender form of Austin himself wrapped in a comfortable wadded
dressing-gown fast asleep upon the sofa. "Bless us and save us!" she
ejaculated under her breath. "And to think that the boy's lived
through it!"

Austin, roused by her entrance, yawned, stretched himself, and lazily
opened his eyes. "Is that you already, Martha?" he said. "Oh, how
sleepy I am. Is it really half-past seven?"

"But what does it all mean--how it is you're not killed?" cried
Martha, putting down the jug, and finding her voice at last. "The good
Lord preserve us--here's the house tumbling down about our ears and
never a one of us the wiser. And the man was to 'ave come this very
day to see to that blessed roof. Come, wake up, do, Master Austin, and
tell me how it happened."

"Is Aunt Charlotte up yet?" asked Austin turning over on his side.

"Ay, that she be, and making it lively for the maids downstairs.
Whatever will she say when she hears about this to-do?" exclaimed
Martha, with her hands upon her hips as she gazed at the desolation
round her.

"Well, please go down and ask her to come up here at once," said
Austin. "I see I shall have to say something, and it really will be
too much bother to go over it to everybody in turn. I've had rather a
disturbed night, and feel most awfully tired. So just run down and
bring her up as soon as ever you can, and then we'll get it over."

"A pretty business--and me with forty-eleven things to do already
to-day," muttered the old servant as she hurried out. "True it is that
except the Lord builds the house they labour in vain as builds it. He
didn't have no hand in building this one, that's as plain as I am--as
never was a beauty at my best. Well, the child's safe, that's one
mercy. Though what he was doing out of his bed when the roof came
down's a mystery to _me_. Talking to the moon, I shouldn't wonder. The
good Lord's got 'is own ways o' doing things, and it ain't for the
likes of us to pick holes when they turn out better than the worst."

Meanwhile Austin lay quietly and drowsily on his couch piecing things
together. Seen from the distance of a few hours, now that he had
leisure to reflect, how wonderfully they fitted in! First of all,
there had been that sudden outburst of raps just as he was stepping
into bed. That, evidently, was intended as a warning. It was as much
as to say, "Don't! don't!" But of course he couldn't be expected to
know this, and so he could only wonder where the raps came from, and
get into bed as usual. Then, the instant he did so the raps ceased.
That was because it wasn't any use to go on. The rappers, he
supposed, had benevolently tried to frighten him away, and induce him
to go and sleep on the sofa at the other end of the room where he was
now; but the attempt had failed. So there was nothing for them to do,
as he was actually in bed, but to get him out again; and this they had
succeeded in doing by dragging all his clothes off. Now he saw it all.
Nothing, it seemed to him, could possibly be clearer. But who were the
unseen friends who had thus interposed to save his life? Ah, that was
a secret still.

Then footsteps were heard outside, and in bustled Aunt Charlotte, with
Martha chattering in her wake. Austin raised himself upon his
cushions, and then sank back again. "Lord save us!" cried Aunt
Charlotte, coming to a dead stop, as she surveyed the ruins.

"It's rather a mess, isn't it?" remarked Austin, folding a red
table-cover round his single leg by way of counterpane.

"A mess!" repeated Aunt Charlotte. "I should think it _was_ a mess.
How in the world, Austin, did you manage to escape?"

"Well--I happened to get out of bed a minute or two before the ceiling
broke," said Austin, "and it's just as well I did. Otherwise my
artless countenance would have got rather disfigured, and I might
even have been hurt. You see all that raw material isn't composed of
gossamer----"

"What time did it occur?" asked Aunt Charlotte, shortly.

"The dawn was just breaking. I suppose it must have been about four
o'clock, but I didn't look at my watch," replied Austin. "I was too
cold and sleepy."

"Cold and sleepy!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte. "And the house collapsing
over your head. You seem to have had time to pull the bedclothes away,
though. That's very curious. What did you do that for?"

"I didn't," replied Austin.

"Then who did?" asked Aunt Charlotte, getting more and more excited.
"I do wish you'd be a little more communicative, Austin; I have to
drag every word out of you as though you were trying to hide
something. Who hung the bedclothes over the footrail if you didn't?"

"I can't tell you. I don't know. All I know is that I found them where
they are now when I woke up, and I woke up because I was so cold. Then
I got out of bed, and a minute afterwards down came all the bricks."

"Do you mean to tell me----" began Aunt Charlotte, in her most
scathing tones.

"Certainly I do. Exactly what I _have_ told you. Why?"

"Do you expect me to believe," resumed his aunt, "that somebody came
into the room when you were asleep, and deliberately pulled off all
your bedclothes for the fun of doing it? Am I to understand----"

"My dear auntie, I am not an idiot, nor am I in the habit of perjuring
myself," interrupted Austin. "I saw nobody come into the room, and I
saw nobody pull off the clothes. If you really want to know what I
'expect you to believe,' I've already told you. I might tell you a
little more, but then I shouldn't expect you to believe it, so what
would be the good? It seems to me the best thing to do now is to send
for Snewin to take away all this mess, move the furniture, and mend
the hole in the ceiling. If once it begins to rain----"

"Oh! You might tell me a little more, might you?" said Aunt Charlotte,
bristling. "So you haven't told me everything after all. Now, then,
never mind whether I believe it or not, that's my affair. What is
there more to tell?"

"Nothing," replied Austin. "Because it isn't only your affair whether
you believe me or not; it's my affair as well. Why, you don't even
believe what I've told you already! So I won't tax your credulity any
further."

Aunt Charlotte now began to get rather angry, "Look here, Austin," she
said, "I intend to get to the bottom of this business, so it's not the
slightest use trying to beat about the bush. I insist on your telling
me how it was you happened to get out of bed just before the accident
occurred, and how the bedclothes came to be pulled away and hung where
they are now. There's a mystery about the whole thing, and I hate
mysteries, so you'd better make a clean breast of it at once."

"Had I?" said Austin, pretending to reflect. "I wonder whether it
would be wise. You see, dear auntie, you're such a sensitive creature;
your nerves are so highly strung, you're so easily frightened out of
your dear old wits--"

"Be done with all this nonsense!" snapped Aunt Charlotte brusquely.
"Come, I can't stand here all day. Just tell me exactly what took
place--why you woke up, and what you saw, and everything about it you
remember."

"Dear auntie, I don't want you to stand there all day; in fact I'd
much rather you didn't stand there a minute longer, because I want to
get up," Austin assured her earnestly. "I awoke because I had a horrid
dream, caused by the cold which in its turn was produced by my being
left with nothing on. And I didn't see anything, for the simple reason
that the room was as dark as pitch. Is there anything else you want to
know?"

"Yes, there is. Everything that you haven't told me," said the
uncompromising aunt.

"Very well, then," said Austin, leaning upon his elbow and looking her
full in the face. "But on one condition only--that you believe every
word I say."

"Of course, Austin, I should never dream of doubting your good faith,"
replied Aunt Charlotte. "But don't romance. Now then."

"It's very simple, after all," began Austin. "Just as I was getting
into bed a strange noise, like a shower of little raps, broke out all
around me. It went on for nearly five minutes, and I was listening all
the time and trying to find out what it was and where it came from. At
the moment I had no clue, but now I fancy I can guess. Those raps
were warnings. They--the rappers--were trying to prevent me getting
into bed. They didn't succeed, of course, and so, just as the ceiling
was on the point of giving way, they compelled me to get out of bed by
pulling all the clothes off. If they hadn't, I should have been half
killed. Now, what do you make of that?"

"I knew it must be some nonsense of the sort!" exclaimed Aunt
Charlotte, in her most vigorous tones. "Raps, indeed! I never heard
such twaddle. Of course I don't doubt your word, but it's clear enough
that you dreamt the whole thing. You always were a dreamer, Austin,
and you're getting worse than ever. I don't believe you know half the
time whether you're asleep or awake."

"Did I dream _that_?" asked Austin, pointing to the bedclothes as they
hung.

"You dragged them there in your sleep, of course," retorted Aunt
Charlotte triumphantly. "I see the whole thing now. You had a dream,
you kicked the clothes off in your sleep, and then you got out of bed,
still in your sleep----"

"I didn't do anything of the sort," interrupted Austin. "I was wide
awake the whole time. You see, auntie, I was here and you weren't, so
I ought to know something about it."

"It's no use arguing with you," replied Aunt Charlotte, loftily. "It's
a clear case of sleep-walking--as clear as any case I ever heard of.
And then all that nonsense about raps! Of course, if you heard
anything at all--which I only half believe--it was something beginning
to give way in the roof. There! It only requires a little
common-sense, you see, to explain the whole affair. And now, my
dear----"

"Hush!" whispered Austin suddenly.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, not liking to be
interrupted.

"Listen!" said Austin, under his breath.

A torrent of raps burst out in the wall immediately behind him,
plainly audible in the silence. Then they stopped, as suddenly as they
had begun.

"Did you hear them?" said Austin. "Those were the raps I told you of.
Hark! There they are again. I wish they would sound a little louder."
A distinct increase in the sound was noticeable. "Oh, isn't it
perfectly wonderful? Now, what have you to say?"

Aunt Charlotte stood agape. It was no use pretending she didn't hear
them. They were as unmistakable as knocks at a front door.

"What jugglery is this?" she demanded, in an angry tone.

"Really, dear auntie, I am not a conjurer," replied Austin, as he sank
back upon his cushions. "That was what I heard last night. But of
course _you_ don't believe in such absurdities. It's only your fancy
after all, you know."

"'Tain't _my_ fancy, anyhow," put in old Martha, speaking for the
first time. "I heard 'em plain enough. 'Tis the 'good people,' for
sure."

"Hold your tongue, do!" cried Aunt Charlotte in sore perplexity. "Good
people, indeed!--the devil himself, more likely. I tell you what it
is, Austin----"

"Why, I thought you weren't superstitious!" observed Austin, in a tone
of most exasperating surprise. Three gentle knocks, running off into a
ripple of pattering explosions, were then heard in a farther corner of
the room. "There, don't you hear them laughing at you? Thank you, dear
people, whoever you are, that was very kind. And it was awfully sweet
of you to save me from those bricks last night. It _was_ good of them,
wasn't it, auntie dear?"

"If all this devilry goes on I shall take serious measures to stop
it," gasped Aunt Charlotte, who was almost frightened to death. "I
cannot and will not live in a haunted house. It's you who are haunted,
Austin, and I shall go and see the vicar about it this very day. It's
an awful state of things, positively awful. To think that you are
actually holding communication with familiar spirits! The vicar shall
come here at once, and I'll get him to hold a service of exorcism. I
believe there is such a service, and----"

"Oh, do, do, _do_!" screamed Austin, clapping his hands with delight.
"What fun it would be! Fancy dear Mr Sheepshanks, in all his tippets
and toggery, ambling and capering round poor me, and trying to drive
the devil out of me with a broomful of holy water! That's a lovely
idea of yours, auntie. Lubin shall come and be an acolyte, and we'll
get Mr Buskin to be stage-manager, and you shall be the pew-opener.
And then I'll empty the holy-water pot over dear Mr Sheepshanks' head
when he's looking the other way. You _are_ a genius, auntie, though
you're too modest to be conscious of it. But you're very ungrateful
all the same, for if it hadn't been for----"

"There, stop your ribaldry, Austin, and get up," said Aunt Charlotte,
impatiently. "The sooner we're all out of this dreadful room the
better. And let me tell you that you'd be better employed in thanking
God for your deliverance than in turning sacred subjects into
ridicule."

"Thanking God? Why, not a moment ago you said it was the devil!"
exclaimed Austin. "How you do chop and change about, auntie. You can't
possibly expect me to be orthodox when you go on contradicting
yourself at such a rate. However, if you really must go, I think I
_will_ get up. It must be long past eight, and I want my breakfast
awfully."

The day so excitingly ushered in turned out a busy one. As soon as he
had finished his meal, Austin pounded off to invoke the immediate
presence of Mr Snewin the builder, and before long there was a mighty
bustle in the house. The furniture had all to be removed from the
scene of the disaster, the bed cleared of the _débris_, preparations
made for the erection of light scaffolding for repairing the roof, and
Austin himself installed, with all his books and treasures, in another
bedroom overlooking a different part of the garden. It was all a most
enjoyable adventure, and even Aunt Charlotte forgot her terrors in
the more practical necessities of the occasion. Just before lunch
Austin snatched a few minutes to run out and gossip with Lubin on the
lawn. Lubin listened with keen interest to the boy's picturesque
account of his experiences, and then remarked, sagely nodding his
head:

"I told you to be on the look-out, you know, Master Austin. Magpies
don't perch on folks' window-sills for nothing. You'll believe me a
little quicker next time, maybe."

For once in his life Austin could think of nothing to say in reply. To
ask Lubin to explain the connection between magpies and misadventures
would have been useless; it evidently sufficed for him that such was
the order of Nature, and only a magpie would have been able to clear
up the mystery. Besides, there are many such mysteries in the world.
Why do cats occasionally wash their heads behind the ear? Clearly, to
tell us that we may expect bad weather; for the bad weather invariably
follows. These are all providential arrangements intended for our
personal convenience, and are not to be accounted for on any
cut-and-dried scientific theory. Lubin's erudition was certainly very
great, but there was something exasperating about it too.

So Austin went in to lunch thoughtful and dispirited, wondering why
there were so many absurdities in life that he could neither elucidate
nor controvert. He decided not to say anything to Aunt Charlotte about
Lubin's magpie sciolisms, lest he should provoke a further outburst of
the discussion they had held in the morning; he had had the best of
that, anyhow, and did not care to compromise his victory by dragging
in extraneous considerations in which he did not feel sure of his
ground. Aunt Charlotte, on her side, was inclined to be talkative,
taking refuge in the excitement of having work-men in the house from
the uneasy feelings which still oppressed her in consequence of those
frightening raps. But now that the haunted room was to be invaded by
friendly, commonplace artisans from the village, and turned inside
out, and almost pulled to pieces, there was a chance that the ghosts
would be got rid of without invoking the aid of Mr Sheepshanks; a
reflection that inspired her with hope, and comforted her greatly.

"You know you're a great anxiety to me, Austin," she said, as,
refreshed by food and wine, she took up her knitting after lunch. "I
wish you were more like other boys, indeed I do. I never could
understand you, and I suppose I never shall."

"But what does that matter, auntie?" asked Austin. "I don't understand
_you_ sometimes, but that doesn't make me anxious in the very least.
Why you should worry yourself about me I can't conceive. What do I do
to make you anxious? I don't get tipsy, I don't gamble away vast
fortunes at a sitting, and although I'm getting on for eighteen I
haven't had a single action for breach of promise brought against me
by anybody. Now _I_ think that's rather a creditable record. It isn't
everybody who can say as much."

"I want you to be more _serious_, Austin," replied his aunt, "and not
to talk such nonsense as you're talking now. I want you to be
sensible, practical, and alive to the sober facts of life. You're too
dreamy a great deal. Soon you won't know the difference between dreams
and realities----"

"I don't even now. No more do you. No more does anybody," interrupted
Austin, lighting a cigarette.

"There you are again!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, clicking her needles
energetically. "Did one ever hear such rubbish? It all comes from
those outlandish books you're always poring over. If you'd only take
_my_ advice, you'd read something solid, and sensible, and improving,
like 'Self Help,' by Dr Smiles. That would be of some use to you, but
these others----"

"I read a whole chapter of it once," said Austin. "I can scarcely
believe it myself, but I did. It's the most immoral, sordid, selfish
book that was ever printed. It deifies Success--success in
money-making--success of the coarsest and most materialistic kind. It
is absolutely unspiritual and degrading. It nearly made me sick."

"Be silent!" cried Aunt Charlotte, horrified. "How dare you talk like
that? I will not sit still and hear you say such things. Few books
have had a greater influence upon the age. Degrading? Why, it's been
the making of thousands!"

"Thousands of soulless money-grubbers," retorted Austin. "That's what
it has made. Men without an idea or an aspiration above their horrible
spinning-jennies and account-books. I hate your successful
stockbrokers and shipowners and manufacturers. They are an odious
race. Wasn't it a stockjobber who thought Botticelli was a cheese?
Everyone knows the story, and I believe the hero of it was either a
stockjobber or a man who made screws in Birmingham."

Aunt Charlotte let her knitting fall on her lap in despair. "Austin,"
she said, in her most solemn tones, "I never regretted your poor
mother's death as I regret it at this moment."

"Why, auntie?" he asked, surprised.

"Perhaps she would have understood you better; perhaps she might even
have been able to manage you," replied the poor lady. "I confess that
you're beyond me altogether. Do you know what it was she said to me
upon her death-bed? 'Charlotte,' she said, 'my only sorrow in dying is
that I shall never be able to bring up my boy. Who will ever take such
care of him as I should?' You were then two days old, and the very
next day she died. I've never forgotten it. She passed away with that
sorrow, that terrible anxiety, tearing at her heart. I took her place,
as you know, but of course I was only a makeshift. I often wonder
whether she is still as anxious about you as she was then."

"My dearest auntie, you've been an angel in a lace cap to me all my
life, and I'm sure my mother isn't worrying herself about me one bit.
Why should she?" argued Austin. "I'm leading a lovely life, I'm as
happy as the days are long, and if my tastes don't run in the
direction of selling screws or posting ledgers, nothing that anybody
can say will change them. And I tell you candidly that if they were so
changed they would certainly be changed for the worse. I hate ugly
things as intensely as I love beautiful ones, and I'm very thankful
that I'm not ugly myself. Now don't look at me like that; it's so
conventional! Of course I know I'm not ugly, but rather the reverse
(that's a modest way of putting it), and I pray to beloved Pan that he
will give me beauty in the inward soul so that the inward and the
outward man may be at one. That's out of the 'Phædrus,' you know--a
very much superior composition to 'Self Help.' So cheer up, auntie,
and don't look on me as a doomed soul because we're not both turned
out of the same melting-pot. Now I'm just going upstairs to see to the
arrangement of my new room, and then I shall go and help Lubin in the
garden."

So saying, he strolled out. But poor Aunt Charlotte only shook her
head. She could not forget how Austin's mother had grieved at not
living to bring up her boy, and wished more earnestly than ever that
the responsibility had fallen into other hands than hers. There was
something so dreadfully uncanny about Austin. His ignorance about the
common facts of life was as extraordinary as his perfect familiarity
with matters known only to great scholars. His views and tastes were
strange to her, so strange as to be beyond her comprehension
altogether. She found herself unable to argue with him because their
minds were set on different planes, and her representations did not
seem to touch him in the very least. And yet, after all, he was a very
good boy, full of pure thoughts and kindly impulses and spiritual
intuitions and intellectual proclivities which certainly no moralist
would condemn. If only he were more practical, even more commonplace,
and wouldn't talk such nonsense! Then there would not be such a gulf
between them as there was at present; then she might have some
influence over him for good, at any rate. Her thoughts recurred,
uneasily, to the strange experiences of that morning. The mystery of
the raps distracted her, puzzled her, frightened her; whereas Austin
was not frightened at all--on the contrary, he accepted the whole
thing with the serenest cheerfulness and _sang-froid_, finding it
apparently quite natural that these unseen agencies, coming from
nobody knew where, should take him under their protection and make
friends with him. What could it all portend?

Of course it was very foolish of the good lady to fret like this
because Austin was so different from what she thought he should be.
She did not see that his nature was infinitely finer and subtler than
her own, and that it was no use in the world attempting to stifle his
intellectual growth and drag him down to her own level. A burly,
muscular boy, who played football and read 'Tom Brown,' would have
been far more to her taste, for such a one she would at least have
understood. But Austin, with his queer notions and audacious
paradoxes, was utterly beyond her. Unluckily, too, she had no sense of
humour, and instead of laughing at his occasionally preposterous
sallies, she allowed them to irritate and worry her. A person with no
sense of humour is handicapped from start to finish, and is as much to
be pitied as one born blind or deaf.

But Austin had his limitations too, and among them was a most
deplorable want of tact. Otherwise he would never have said, as he
was going to bed that night:

"By the way, auntie, what day have you arranged for the vicar to come
and cast all those devils out of me?"

He might as well have let sleeping dogs lie. Aunt Charlotte turned
round upon him in almost a rage, and solemnly forbade him, in any
circumstances and under whatsoever provocation, ever to mention the
subject in her presence again.




Chapter the Seventh


But by one of those curious coincidences that occur every now and
then, who should happen to drop in the very next afternoon but the
vicar himself, just as Austin and his aunt were having tea upon the
lawn. Now Aunt Charlotte and the vicar were great friends. They had
many interests in common--the same theological opinions, for example;
and then Aunt Charlotte was indefatigable in all sorts of parish work,
such as district-visiting, and the organisation of school teas,
village clubs, and those rather formidable entertainments known as
"treats"; so that the two had always something to talk about, and were
very fond of meeting. Besides all this, there was another bond of
union between them which scarcely anybody would have guessed. Mr
Sheepshanks, though as unworldly a man as any in the county,
considered himself unusually shrewd in business matters; and Aunt
Charlotte, like many middle-aged ladies in her position, found it a
great comfort to have a gentleman at her beck and call with whom she
could talk confidentially about her investments, and who could be
relied upon to give her much disinterested advice that he often acted
on himself. On this particular afternoon the vicar hinted that he had
something of special importance to communicate, and Aunt Charlotte was
unusually gracious. He was a short gentleman, with a sloping forehead,
a prominent nose, a clean-shaven, High-Church face, narrow, dogmatic
views, and small, twinkling eyes; not the sort of person whom one
would naturally associate with financial acumen, but endowed with an
air of self-confidence, and a pretension to private information, which
would have done credit to any stockbroker on 'Change.

"I've been thinking over that little matter of yours that you
mentioned to me the other day," he began, when he had finished his
third cup, and Austin had strolled away. "You say your mortgage at
Southport has just been paid off, and you want a new investment for
your money. Well, I think I know the very thing to suit you."

"Do you really? How kind of you!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte. "What is
it--shares or bonds?"

"Shares," replied Mr Sheepshanks; "shares. Of course I know that very
prudent people will tell you that bonds are safer. And no doubt, as a
rule they are. If a concern fails, the bond-holder is a creditor,
while the shareholder is a debtor--besides having lost his capital.
But in this case there is no fear of failure."

"Dear me," said Aunt Charlotte, beginning to feel impressed. "Is it an
industrial undertaking?"

"I suppose it might be so described," answered her adviser,
cautiously. "But it is mainly scientific. It is the outcome of a great
chemical analysis."

"Oh, pray tell me all about it; I am so interested!" urged Aunt
Charlotte, eagerly. "You know what confidence I have in your judgment.
Has it anything to do with raw material? It isn't a plantation
anywhere, is it?"

"It's gold!" said Mr Sheepshanks.

"Gold?" repeated Aunt Charlotte, rather taken aback. "A gold mine, I
suppose you mean?"

"The hugest gold-mine in the world," replied the vicar, enjoying her
evident perplexity. "An inexhaustible gold mine. A gold mine without
limits."

"But where--whereabouts is it?" cried Aunt Charlotte.

"All around you," said the vicar, waving his hands vaguely in the air.
"Not in any country at all, but everywhere else. In the ocean."

"Gold in the ocean!" ejaculated the puzzled lady, dropping her
knitting on her lap, and gazing helplessly at her financial mentor.

"Gold in the ocean--precisely," affirmed that gentleman in an
impressive voice. "It has been discovered that sea-water holds a large
quantity of gold in solution, and that by some most interesting
process of precipitation any amount of it can be procured ready for
coining. I got a prospectus of the scheme this morning from Shark,
Picaroon & Co., Fleece Court, London, and I've brought it for you to
read. A most enterprising firm they seem to be. You'll see that it's
full of very elaborate scientific details--the results of the analyses
that have been made, the cost of production, estimates for machinery,
and I don't know what all. I can't say I follow it very clearly
myself, for the clerical mind, as everybody knows, is not very well
adapted to grasping scientific terminology, but I can understand the
general tenor of it well enough. It seems to me that the enterprise is
promising in a very high degree."

"How very remarkable!" observed Aunt Charlotte, as she gazed at the
tabulated figures and enumeration of chemical properties in bewildered
awe. "And you think it a safe investment?"

"_I_ do," replied Mr Sheepshanks, "but don't act on my opinion--judge
for yourself. What's the amount you have to invest--two thousand
pounds, isn't it? Well, I believe that you'd stand to get an income to
that very amount by investing just that sum in the undertaking. Look
what they say overleaf about the cost of working and the estimated
returns. It all sounds fabulous, I admit, but there are the figures,
my dear lady, in black and white, and figures cannot lie."

"I'll write to my bankers about it this very night," said Aunt
Charlotte, folding up the prospectus and putting it carefully into her
pocket. "It's evidently not a chance to be missed, and I'm most
grateful to you, dear Mr Sheepshanks, for putting it in my way."

"Always delighted to be of service to you--as far as my poor judgment
can avail," the vicar assured her with becoming modesty. "Ah, it's
wonderful when one thinks of the teeming riches that lie around us,
only waiting to be utilised. There _was_ another scheme I thought of
for you--a scheme for raising the sunken galleons in the Spanish main,
and recovering the immense treasures that are now lying, safe and
sound, at the bottom of the sea. Curious that both enterprises should
be connected with salt water, eh? And the prospectus was headed with a
most appropriate text--'The Sea shall give up her Dead.' That rather
appealed to me, do you know. It cast an air of solemnity over the
undertaking, and seemed to sanctify it somehow. However, I think the
other will be the best. Well, Austin, and what are you reading now?"

"Aunt Charlotte's face," laughed Austin, sauntering up. "She looks as
though you had been giving her absolution, Mr Sheepshanks--so beaming
and refreshed. Why, what's it all about?"

"I expect you want more absolution than your aunt," said the vicar,
humorously. "A sad useless fellow you are, I'm afraid. You and I must
have a little serious talk together some day, Austin. I really want
you to do something--for your own sake, you know. Now, how would you
like to take a class in the Sunday-school, for instance? I shall have
a vacancy in a week or two."

"Austin teach in the Sunday-school! He'd be more in his place if he
went there as a scholar than as a teacher," said Aunt Charlotte,
derisively.

"I don't know why you should say that," remarked Austin, with perfect
gravity. "I think it would be delightful. I should make a beautiful
Sunday-school teacher, I'm convinced."

"There, now!" exclaimed the vicar, approvingly.

Austin was standing under an apple-tree, and over him stretched a
horizontal branch laden with ripening fruit. He raised his hands on
either side of his head and clasped it, and then began swinging his
wooden leg round and round in a way that bade fair to get on Aunt
Charlotte's nerves. He was so proud of that leg of his, while his aunt
abhorred the very sight of it.

"No doubt they're all very charming boys, and I should love to tell
them things," he went on. "I think I'd begin with 'The Gods of
Greece'--Louis Dyer, you know--and then I'd read them a few
carefully-selected passages from the 'Phædrus.' Then, by way of
something lighter, and more appropriate to their circumstances, I'd
give them a course of Virgil--the 'Georgics', because, I suppose,
most of them are connected with farming, and the 'Eclogues,' to
initiate them into the poetical side of country life. When once I'd
brought out all their latent sense of the Beautiful--for I'm afraid it
_is_ latent----"

"But it's a _Sunday_-school!" interrupted the vicar, horrified.
"Virgil and the Phædrus indeed! My dear boy, have you taken leave of
your senses? What in the world can you be thinking of?"

"Then what would you suggest?" enquired Austin, mildly.

"You'd have to teach them the Bible and the Catechism, of course,"
said Mr Sheepshanks, with an air of slight bewilderment.

"H'm--that seems to me rather a limited curriculum," replied Austin,
dubiously. "I only remember one passage in the Catechism, beginning,
'My good child, know this.' I forget what it was he had to know, but
it was something very dull. The Bible, of course, has more
possibilities. There is some ravishing poetry in the Bible. Well, I
can begin with the Bible, if you really prefer it, of course. The Song
of Solomon, for instance. Oh, yes, that would be lovely! I'll divide
it up into characters, and make each boy learn his part--the
shepherd, the Shulamite, King Solomon, and all the rest of them. The
Spring Song might even be set to music. And then all those lovely
metaphors, about the two roes that were twins, and something else that
was like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Though, to be sure, I
never could see any very striking resemblance between the objects
typified and----"

"Hold your tongue, do, Austin!" cried Aunt Charlotte, scandalised.
"And for mercy's sake, keep that leg of yours quiet, if you can. You
are fidgeting me out of my wits."

Mr Sheepshanks, his mouth pursed up in a deprecating and uneasy smile,
sat gazing vaguely in front of him. "I think it might be wise to defer
the Song of Solomon," he suggested. "A few simple stories from the
Book of Genesis, perhaps, would be better suited to the minds of your
young pupils. And then the sublime opening chapters----"

"Oh, dear Mr Sheepshanks! Those stories in Genesis are some of them
too _risqués_ altogether," protested Austin. "One must draw the line
somewhere, you see. We should be sure to come upon something improper,
and just think how I should blush. Really, you can't expect me to read
such things to boys actually younger than myself, and probably be
asked to explain them into the bargain. There's the Creation part,
it's true, but surely when one considers how occult all that is one
wants to be familiar with the Kabbala and all sorts of mystical works
to discover the hidden meaning. Now I should propose 'The Art of
Creation'--do you know it? It shows that the only possible creator is
Thought, and explains how everything exists in idea before it takes
tangible shape. This applies to the universe at large, as well as to
everything we make ourselves. I'd tell the boys that whenever they
_think_, they are really _creating_, so that----"

"I should vastly like to know where you pick up all these
extraordinary notions!" interrupted the vicar, who could not for the
life of him make out whether Austin was in jest or earnest. "They're
most dangerous notions, let me tell you, and entirely opposed to sound
orthodox Church teaching. It's clear to me that your reading wants to
be supervised, Austin, by some judicious friend. There's an excellent
little work I got a few days ago that I think you would like to see.
It's called 'The Mission-field in Africa.' There you'll find a most
remarkable account of all those heathen superstitions----"

"Where is Africa?" asked Austin, munching a leaf.

"There!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte. "That's Austin all over. He'll talk
by the hour together about a lot of outlandish nonsense that no
sensible person ever heard of, and all the time he doesn't even know
where Africa is upon the map. What is to be done with such a boy?"

"Well, I think we'll postpone the question of his teaching in the
Sunday-school, at all events," remarked the vicar, who began to feel
rather sorry that he had ever suggested it. "It's more than probable
that his ideas would be over the children's heads, and come into
collision with what they heard in church. Well, now I must be going.
You'll think over that little matter we were speaking of?" he said, as
he took a neighbourly leave of his parishioner and ally.

"Indeed I will, and I'll write to my bankers to-night," replied that
lady cordially.

Then the vicar ambled across the lawn, and Austin accompanied him, as
in duty bound, to the garden gate. Meanwhile, Aunt Charlotte leant
comfortably back in her wicker chair, absorbed in pleasant meditation.
The repairs to the roof would, no doubt, run into a little money, but
the vicar's tip about this wonderful company for extracting gold from
sea-water made up for any anxiety she might otherwise have experienced
upon that score. What a kind, good man he was--and _so_ clever in
business matters, which, of course, were out of her range altogether.
She took the prospectus out of her pocket, and ran her eyes over it
again. Capital, £500,000, in shares of £100 each. Solicitors, Messrs
Somebody Something & Co., Fetter Lane, E.C. Bankers, The Shoreditch &
Houndsditch Amalgamated Banking Corporation, St Mary Axe. Acquisition
of machinery, so much. Cost of working, so much. Estimated
returns--something perfectly enormous. It all looked wonderful, quite
wonderful. She again determined to write to her bankers that very
evening before dinner.

"You're going to the theatre to-night, aren't you, Austin?" she said,
as he returned from seeing Mr Sheepshanks courteously off the
premises. "I want you to post a letter for me on your way. Post it at
the Central Office, so as to be sure it catches the night mail. It's a
business letter of importance."

"All right, auntie," he replied, arranging his trouser so that it
should fall gracefully over his wooden leg.

"And I do wish, Austin, that you'd behave rather more like other
people when Mr Sheepshanks comes to see us. There really is no
necessity for talking to him in the way you do. Of course it was a
great compliment, his asking you to take a class in the Sunday-school,
though I could have told him that he couldn't possibly have made an
absurder choice, and you might very well have contented yourself with
regretting your utter unfitness for such a post without exposing your
ignorance in the way you did. The idea of telling a clergyman, too,
that the Book of Genesis was too improper for boys to read, when he
had just been recommending it! I thought you'd have had more respect
for his position, whatever silly notions you may have yourself."

"I do respect the vicar; he's quite a nice little thing," replied
Austin, in a conciliatory tone. "And of course he thinks just what a
vicar ought to think, and I suppose what all vicars do think. But as
I'm not a vicar myself I don't see that I am bound to think as they
do."

"You a vicar, indeed!" sniffed Aunt Charlotte. "A remarkable sort of
vicar you'd make, and pretty sermons you'd preach if you had the
chance. What time does this performance of yours begin to-night?"

"At eight, I believe."

"Well, then, I'll just go in and tell cook to let us have dinner a
quarter of an hour earlier than usual," said Aunt Charlotte, as she
folded up her work. "The omnibus from the 'Peacock' will get you into
town in plenty of time, and the walk back afterwards will do you
good."

       *       *       *       *       *

The town in question was about a couple of miles from the village
where Austin lived--a clean, cheerful, prosperous little borough, with
plenty of good shops, a commodious theatre, several churches and
chapels, and a fine market. Dinner was soon disposed of, and as the
omnibus which plied between the two places clattered and rattled along
at a good speed--having to meet the seven-fifty down-train at the
railway station--he was able to post his aunt's precious letter and
slip into his stall in the dress-circle before the curtain rose. The
orchestra was rioting through a composition called 'The Clang o' the
Wooden Shoon,' as an appropriate introduction to a tragedy the scene
of which was laid in Nineveh; the house seemed fairly full, and the
air was heavy with that peculiar smell, a sort of doubtfully aromatic
stuffiness, which is so grateful to the nostrils of playgoers. Austin
gazed around him with keen interest. He had not been inside a theatre
for years, and the vivid description that Mr Buskin had given him of
the show he was about to witness filled him with pleasurable
anticipation. To all intents and purposes, the experience that awaited
him was something entirely new; how, he wondered, would it fit into
his scheme of life? What room would there be, in his idealistic
philosophy, for the stage?

Then the music came to an end in a series of defiant bangs, the
curtain rolled itself out of sight, and a brilliant spectacle
appeared. The only occupant of the scene at first was a gentleman in a
thick black beard and fantastic garb who seemed to have acquired the
habit of talking very loudly to himself. In this way the audience
discovered that the gentleman, who was no less a personage than the
Queen's brother, was seriously dissatisfied with his royal
brother-in-law, whose habits were of a nature which did not make for
the harmony of his domestic circle. Then soft music was heard, and in
lounged Sardanapalus himself--a glittering figure in flowing robes of
silver and pale blue, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by a
crowd of slaves and women all very elegantly dressed; and it really
was quite wonderful to notice how his Majesty lolled and languished
about the stage, how beautifully affected all his gestures were, and
with what a high-bred supercilious drawl he rolled out his behests
that a supper should be served at midnight in the pavilion that
commanded a view of the Euphrates. And this magnificent, absurd
creature--this mouthing, grimacing, attitudinising popinjay, thought
Austin, was no other than Mr Bucephalus Buskin, with whom he had
chatted on easy terms in a common field only a few days previously!
The memory of the umbrella, the tight frock-coat, the bald head, the
fat, reddish face, and the rather rusty "chimney-pot" here recurred to
him, and he nearly giggled out loud in thinking how irresistibly funny
Mr Buskin would look if he were now going through all these fanciful
gesticulations in his walking dress. The fact was that the man himself
was perfectly unrecognisable, and Austin was mightily impressed by
what was really a signal triumph in the art of making up.

The play went on, and Sardanapalus showed no signs of moral
improvement. In fact, it soon became evident that his code of ethics
was deplorable, and Austin could only console himself with the
thought that the real Mr Buskin was, no doubt, a most virtuous and
respectable person who never gave Mrs Buskin--if there was one--any
grounds for jealousy. Then the first act came to an end, the lights
went up, and a subdued buzz of conversation broke out all over the
theatre. The second act was even more exciting, as Sardanapalus,
having previously confessed himself unable to go on multiplying
empires, was forced to interfere in a scuffle between his
brother-in-law and Arbaces--who was by way of being a traitor; but the
most sensational scene of all was the banquet in act the third, of
which so glowing an account had been given to Austin by the great
tragedian himself. That, indeed, was something to remember.

                      "Guests, to my pledge!
    Down on your knees, and drink a measure to
    The safety of the King--the monarch, say I?
    The god Sardanapalus! mightier than
    His father Baal, the god Sardanapalus!"
                             [_Thunder. Confusion._]

Ah, that was thrilling, if you like, in spite of the halting rhythm.
And yet, even at that supreme moment, the vision of the umbrella and
the rather shabby hat would crop up again, and Austin didn't quite
know whether to let himself be thrilled or to lean back and roar. The
conspiracy burst out a few minutes afterwards, and then there ensued
a most terrifying and portentous battle, rioters and loyalists
furiously attempting to kill each other by the singular expedient of
clattering their swords together so as to make as much noise as
possible, and then passing them under their antagonists' armpits, till
the stage was heaped with corpses; and all this bloody work entirely
irrespective of the valuable glass and china on the supper-table, and
the costly hearthrugs strewn about the floor. Even Sardanapalus,
having first looked in the glass to make sure that his helmet was
straight, performed prodigies of valour, and the curtain descended to
his insatiable shouting for fresh weapons and a torrent of tumultuous
applause from the gallery.

"Now for it!" said Austin to himself, when another act had been got
through, in the course of which Sardanapalus had suffered from a
distressing nightmare. He took Mr Buskin's card out of his pocket,
and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to
the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin
flourished his card in passing, and enquired of the first
civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was
piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the
foot of a steep and very dirty flight of steps--luckily there were
only seven--at the top of which was dimly visible a door; and at this,
having screwed his courage to the sticking-place, he knocked.

"Come in!" cried a voice inside.

He found himself on the threshold of a room such as he had never seen
before. There was no carpet, and the little furniture it contained was
heaped with masses of heterogeneous clothes. Two looking-glasses were
fixed against the walls, and in front of one of them was a sort of
shelf, or dresser, covered with small pots of some ungodly looking
materials of a pasty appearance--rouge, grease-paint, cocoa-butter,
and heaven knows what beside--with black stuff, white stuff, yellow
stuff, paint-brushes, gum-pots, powder-puffs, and discoloured rags
spread about in not very picturesque confusion. In a corner of this
engaging boudoir, sitting in an armchair with a glass of liquor beside
him and smoking a strong cigar, was the most extraordinary and
repulsive object he had ever clapped his eyes on. The face, daubed and
glistening with an unsightly coating of red, white, and yellow-ochre
paint, and adorned with protuberant bristles by way of eyebrows,
appeared twice its natural dimensions. The throat was bare to the
collar-bones. A huge wig covered the head, falling over the shoulders;
while the whole was encircled by a great wreath of pink calico roses,
the back of which, just under the nape of the neck, was fastened by a
glittering pinchbeck tassel. The arms were nude, their natural growth
of dark hair being plastered over with white chalk, which had a
singularly ghastly effect; a short-skirted, low-necked gold frock, cut
like a little girl's, partly covered the body, and over this were
draped coarse folds of scarlet, purple, and white, with tinsel stars
along the seams, and so disposed as to display to fullest advantage
the brawny calves of the tragedian.

"Great Scott, if it isn't young Dot-and-carry-One!" exclaimed Mr
Sardanapalus Buskin, as the slim figure of Austin, in his simple
evening-dress, appeared at the entrance. "Come in, young gentleman,
come in. So you've come to beard the lion in his den, have you? Well,
it's kind of you not to have forgotten. You're welcome, very welcome.
That was a very pleasant little meeting we had the other day, over
there in the fields. And what do you think of the performance? Been in
front?"

"Oh, yes--thank you so very much," said Austin, hesitatingly. "It is
awfully kind of you to let me come and see you like this. I've never
seen anything of the sort in all my life."

"Ah, I daresay it's a sort of revelation to you," said Sardanapalus,
with good-humoured condescension. "Have a drop of whiskey-and-water?
Well, well, I won't press you. And so you've enjoyed the play?"

"The whole thing has interested me enormously," replied Austin. "It
has given me any amount to think of."

"Ah, that's good; that's very good, indeed," said the actor, nodding
sagely. "Do you remember what I was saying to you the other day about
the educative power of the stage? That's what it is, you see; the
greatest educative power in the land. How did that last scene go? Made
the people in the stalls sit up a bit, I reckon. Ah, it's a great
life, this. Talk of art! I tell you, young gentleman, acting's the
only art worthy of the name. The actor's all the artists in creation
rolled into one. Every art that exists conspires to produce him and to
perfect him. Painting, for instance; did you ever see anything to
compare with that Banqueting Scene in the Palace? Why, it's a triumph
of pictorial art, and, by Jove, of architecture too. And the actor
doesn't only paint scenes--or get them painted for him, it comes to
the same thing--he paints himself. Look at me, for instance. Why, I
could paint you, young gentleman, so that your own mother wouldn't
know you. With a few strokes of the brush I could transform you into a
beautiful young girl, or a wrinkled old Jew, or an Artful Dodger, or
anything else you had a fancy for. Music, again--think of the effect
of that slow music in the first act. There was pathos for you, if you
like. Oratory--talk of Demosthenes or Cicero, Mr Gladstone or John
Bright! Why, they're nowhere, my dear young friend, literally nowhere.
Didn't my description of the dream just _fetch_ you? Be honest now; by
George, Sir, it thrilled the house. Look here, young man"--and
Sardanapalus began to speak very slowly, with tremendous emphasis and
solemnity--"and remember what I'm going to say until your dying day.
If I were to drink too much of this, I should be intoxicated; but what
is the intoxication produced by whiskey compared with the intoxication
of applause? Just think of it, as soberly and calmly as you
can--hundreds of people, all in their right minds, stamping and
shouting and yelling for you to come and show yourself before the
curtain; the entire house at your feet. Why, it's worship, Sir, sheer
worship; and worship is a very sacred thing. Show me the man who's
superior to _that_, and I'll show you a man who's either above or
below the level of human nature. Whatever he may be, I don't envy him.
To-morrow morning I shall be an ordinary citizen in a frock-coat and a
tall hat. To-night I'm a king, a god. What other artist can say as
much?"

So saying, Sardanapalus puffed up his cigar and swallowed another
half-glass of liquor. The pungent smoke made Austin cough and blink.
"It must indeed be an exciting life," he ventured; "quite delirious,
to judge from what you say."

"It requires a cool head," replied Sardanapalus, with a stoical shrug.
"Ah! there's the bell," he added, as a loud ting was heard outside.
"The curtain's going up. Now hurry away to the front, and see the last
act. The scene where I'm burnt on the top of all my treasures isn't to
be missed. It's the grandest and most moving scene in any play upon
the stage. And watch the expression of my face," said Mr Buskin, as he
applied the powder-puff to his cheeks and nose. "Gestures are all very
well--any fool can be taught to act with his arms and legs. But
expression! That's where the heaven-born genius comes in. However, I
must be off. Good-night, young gentleman, good-night."

He shook Austin warmly by the hand, and precipitated himself down the
wooden steps. Austin followed, regained the stage-door, and was soon
back in the dress-circle. But he felt that really he had seen almost
enough. The last act seemed to drag, and it was only for the sake of
witnessing the holocaust at the end that he sat it out. Even the
varying "expressions" assumed by Sardanapalus failed to arouse his
enthusiasm. He reproached himself for this, for poor Buskin rolled his
eyes and twisted his mouth and pulled such lugubrious faces that
Austin felt how pathetic it all was, and how hard the man was trying
to work upon the feelings of the audience. But the flare-up at the end
was really very creditable. Blue fire, red fire, and clouds of smoke
filled the entire stage, and when Myrrha clambered up the burning pile
to share the fate of her paramour the enthusiasm of the spectators
knew no bounds. Calls for Sardanapalus and all his company resounded
from every part of the house, and it was a tremendous moment when the
curtain was drawn aside, and the great actor, apparently not a penny
the worse for having just been burnt alive, advanced majestically to
the footlights. Then all the other performers were generously
permitted to approach and share in the ovation, bowing again and again
in acknowledgment of the approbation of their patrons, and looking,
thought Austin rather cruelly, exactly like a row of lacqueys in
masquerade. This marked the close of the proceedings, and Austin, with
a sigh of relief, soon found himself once more in the cool streets,
walking briskly in the direction of the country.

Well, he had had his experience, and now his curiosity was satisfied.
What was the net result? He began sifting his sensations, and trying
to discover what effect the things he had seen and heard had really
had upon him. It was all very brilliant, very interesting; in a
certain way, very exciting. He began to understand what it was that
made so many people fond of theatre-going. But he felt at the same
time that he himself was not one of them. For some reason or other he
had escaped the spell. He was more inclined to criticise than to
enjoy. There was something wanting in it all. What could that
something be?

The sound of footsteps behind him, echoing in the quiet street, just
then reached his ears. The steps came nearer, and the next moment a
well-known voice exclaimed:

"Well, Austin! I hoped I should catch you up!"

"Oh, Mr St Aubyn, is that you? How glad I am to see you!" cried the
boy, grasping the other's hand. "This is a delightful surprise. Have
you been to the theatre, too?"

"I have," replied St Aubyn. "You didn't notice me, I daresay, but I
was watching you most of the time. It amused me to speculate what
impression the thing was making on you. Were you very much carried
away?"

"I certainly was not," said Austin, "though I was immensely
interested. It gave me a lot to think about, as I told Mr Buskin
himself when I went to see him for a few minutes behind the scenes.
You know I happened to meet him a few days ago, and he asked me to--it
really was most kind of him. By the way, he was just on his way to
call upon you at the Court."

"Well--and now tell me what you thought of it all. What impressed you
most about the whole affair?"

"I think," said Austin, speaking very slowly, as though weighing every
word, "that the general impression made upon me was that of utter
unreality. I cannot conceive of anything more essentially artificial.
The music was pretty, the scenery was very fine, and the costumes were
dazzling enough--from a distance; but when you've said that you've
said everything. The situations were impossible and absurd. The
speeches were bombast. The sentiment was silly and untrue. And
Sardanapalus himself was none so distraught by his unpleasant dream
and all his other troubles but that he was looking forward to his
glass of whiskey-and-water between the acts. No, he didn't impose on
me one bit. I didn't believe in Sardanapalus for a moment, even before
I had the privilege of seeing and hearing him as Mr Buskin in his
dressing-room. The entire business was a sham."

"But surely it doesn't pretend to be anything else?" suggested St
Aubyn, surprised.

"Be it so. I don't like shams, I suppose," returned the boy.

"Still, you shouldn't generalise too widely," urged the other. "There
are plays where one's sensibilities are really touched, where the
situations are not forced, where the performers move and speak like
living, ordinary human beings, and, in the case of great actors, work
upon the feelings of the audience to such an extent----"

"And there the artificiality is all the greater!" chipped in Austin,
tersely. "The more perfect the illusion, the hollower the
artificiality. Of course, no one could take Sardanapalus seriously,
any more than if he were a marionette pulled by strings instead of the
sort of live marionette he really is. But where the acting and the
situations are so perfect, as you say, as to cause real emotion, the
unreality of the whole business is more flagrantly conspicuous than
ever. The emotions pourtrayed are not real, and nobody pretends they
are. The art, therefore, of making them appear real, and even
communicating them to the audience, must of necessity involve greater
artificiality than where the acting is bad and the situations
ridiculous. There's a person I know, near where I live--you never
heard of him, of course, but he's called Jock MacTavish--and he told
me he once went to see a really very great actress do some part or
other in which she had to die a most pathetic death. It was said to be
simply heart-rending, and everybody used to cry. Well, the night Jock
MacTavish was there something went wrong--a sofa was out of its place,
or a bolster had been forgotten, or a rope wouldn't work, I don't know
what it was--and the language that woman indulged in while she was in
the act of dying would have disgraced a bargee. Jock was in a
stage-box and heard every filthy word of it. Of course _he_ told me
the story as a joke, and I was rather disgusted, but I'm glad he did
so now. That was an extreme case, I know--such things don't occur one
time in ten thousand, no doubt--but it's an illustration of what I
mean when I say that the finer the illusion produced the hollower the
sham that produces it."

"You're a mighty subtle-minded young person for your age," exclaimed
St Aubyn, with a good-humoured laugh. "I confess that your theory is
new to me; it had never occurred to me before. For one who has only
been inside a theatre two or three times in his life you seem to have
elaborated your conclusions pretty quickly. I may infer, then, that
you're not exactly hankering to go on the stage yourself?"

"_I_?" said Austin, drawing himself up. "I, disguise myself in paint
and feathers to be a public gazing-stock? Of course you mean it as a
joke."

"And yet there _are_ gentlemen upon the stage," observed St Aubyn, in
order to draw him on.

"So much the better for the stage, perhaps; so much the worse for the
gentlemen," replied Austin haughtily.

A pause. They were now well out in the open country, with the moonlit
road stretching far in front of them. Then St Aubyn said, in a
different tone altogether:

"You surprise me beyond measure by what you say. I should have thought
that a boy of your poetical and artistic temperament would have had
his imagination somewhat fired, even by the efforts of the poor
showman whom we've seen to-night. Now I will make you a confession. At
the bottom of my heart I agree with every word you've said. I may be
one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a
public performer as I look upon no other human being. And I pity the
performer, too; he takes himself so seriously, he fails so completely
to realise what he really is. And the danger of going on the stage is
that, once an actor, always an actor. Let a man once get bitten by the
craze, and there's no hope for him. Only the very finest natures can
escape. The fascination is too strong. He's ruined for any other
career, however honourable and brilliant."

"Is that so, really?" asked Austin. "I cannot see where all this
wonderful fascination comes in. I should think it must be a dreadful
trade myself."

"So it is. Because they don't know it. Because of the very fascination
which exists, although you can't understand it. Let me tell you a
story. I knew a man once upon a time--he was a great friend of
mine--in the navy. Although he was quite young, not more than
twenty-six, he was already a distinguished officer; he had seen active
service, been mentioned in despatches, and all the rest of it. He was
also, curiously enough, a most accomplished botanist, and had written
papers on the flora of Cambodia and Yucatan that had been accepted
with marked appreciation by the Linnæan Society. Well--that man, who
had a brilliant career before him, and would probably have been an
admiral and a K.C.B. if he had stuck to it, got attacked by the
theatrical microbe. He chucked everything, and devoted his whole life
to acting. He is acting still. He cares for nothing else. It is the
one and only thing in the universe he lives for. The service of his
country, the pure fame of scientific research and authorship, are as
nothing to him, the merest dust in the balance, as compared with the
cheap notoriety of the footlights."

"He must be mad. And is he a success?" asked Austin.

"Judge for yourself--you've just been seeing him," replied St Aubyn.
"Though, of course, his name is no more Buskin than yours or mine."

"Good Heavens!" cried the boy. "And Mr Buskin was--all that?"

"He was all that," responded the other. "It was rather painful for me
to see him this evening in his present state, as you may imagine. As
to his being successful in a monetary sense, I really cannot tell you.
But, to do him justice, I don't think he cares for money in the very
least. So long as he makes two ends meet he's quite satisfied. All he
cares about is painting his face, and dressing himself up, and
ranting, and getting rounds of applause. And, so far, he certainly has
his reward. His highest ambition, it is true, he has not yet attained.
If he could only get his portrait published in a halfpenny paper
wearing some new-shaped stock or collar that the hosiers were anxious
to bring into fashion, he would feel that there was little left to
live for. But that is a distinction reserved for actors who stand at
the tip-top of their profession, and I'm afraid that poor Buskin has
but little chance of ever realising his aspiration."

"Are you serious?" said Austin, open-eyed.

"Absolutely," replied St Aubyn. "I know it for a fact."

"Well," exclaimed Austin, fetching a deep breath, "of course if a man
has to do this sort of thing for a living--if it's his only way of
making money--I don't think I despise him so much. But if he does it
because he loves it, loves it better than any other earthly thing,
then I despise him with all my heart and soul. I cannot conceive a
more utterly unworthy existence."

"And to such an existence our friend Buskin has sacrificed his whole
career," replied St Aubyn, gravely.

"What a tragedy," observed the boy.

"Yes; a tragedy," agreed the other. "A truer tragedy than the
imitation one that he's been acting in, if he could only see it. Well,
here is my turning. Good-night! I'm very glad we met. Come and see me
soon. I'm not going away again."

Then Austin, left alone, stumped thoughtfully along the country road.
The sweet smell of the flowery hedges pervaded the night air, and from
the fields on either side was heard ever and anon the bleating of some
wakeful sheep. How peaceful, how reposeful, everything was! How strong
and solemn the great trees looked, standing here and there in the wide
meadows under the moonlight and the stars! And what a contrast--oh,
_what_ a contrast--was the beauty of these calm pastoral scenes to
the tawdry gorgeousness of those other "scenes" he had been witnessing,
with their false effects, and coloured fires, and painted, spouting
occupants! There was no need for him to argue the question any more,
even with himself. It was as clear as the moon in the steel-blue sky
above him that the associations of the theatre were totally, hopelessly,
and radically incompatible with the ideals of the Daphnis life.




Chapter the Eighth


It is scarcely necessary to say that Austin knew nothing whatever
about his aunt's preoccupation, and that even if she had taken him
into her confidence, he would have paid little or no attention to the
matter. I am afraid that his ideas about finance were crude in the
extreme, being limited to a sort of vague impression that capital was
what you put into a bank, and interest was what you took out; while
the difference between the par value of a security and the price you
could get for it on the market, would have been to him a hopelessly
unfathomable mystery. Aunt Charlotte, therefore, was very wise in
abstaining from any reference, in conversation, to the great
enterprise for extracting gold from sea-water, in which she hoped to
purchase shares; for one could never have told what foolish remark he
might have made, though it was quite certain that he would have said
something foolish, and probably very exasperating. So she kept her
secret locked up in her own breast, and silently counted the hours
till she could get a reply from her bankers.

Of course Austin had to give his aunt an account, at breakfast-time
next morning, of the pageant of the previous night; and as he confined
himself to saying that the scenery and dresses were very fine, and
that Mr Buskin was quite unrecognisable, and that all the performers
knew their parts, and that he had walked part of the way home with
Roger St Aubyn afterwards, the impression left on the good lady's mind
was that he had enjoyed himself very much. This inevitable duty
accomplished, Austin straightway banished the whole subject from his
memory and gave himself up more unreservedly than ever to his garden
and his thoughts. How fresh and sweet and welcoming the garden looked
on that calm, lovely summer day! How brightly the morning dewdrops
twinkled on the leaves, like a sprinkling of liquid diamonds! Every
flower seemed to greet him with silent laughter: "Aha, you've been
playing truant, have you? Straying into alien precincts, roving in
search of something newer and gaudier than anything you have here?
Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the
fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet
for a cultured nostril!" Of course Austin made all this nonsense up
himself, but he felt so happy that it amused him to attribute the
words to the dear flower-friends who were all around him, and to whom
he could never be really faithless. Faugh! that playhouse! He would
never enter one again. Be an actor! Lubin was a cleaner gentleman than
any painted Buskin on the stage. Here, in the clear, pure splendour of
the sunlit air, the place where he had been last night loomed up in
his consciousness as something meretricious and unwholesome. Yet he
was glad he had been, for it made everything so much purer and sweeter
by contrast. Never had the garden looked more meetly set, never had
the sun shone more genially, and the air impelled the blood and sent
it coursing more joyously through his veins, than on that morning of
the rejuvenescence of all his high ideals.

Then he drew a small blue volume out of his pocket, and lay down on
the grass with his back against the trunk of an apple-tree. Austin's
theory--or one of his theories, for he had hundreds--was that one's
literature should always be in harmony with one's surroundings; and
so, intending to pass his morning in the garden, he had chosen 'The
Garden of Cyrus' as an appropriate study. He opened it reverently, for
it was compact of jewelled thoughts that had been set to words by one
of the princes of prose. He, the young garden-lover, sat at the feet
of the great garden-mystic, and began to pore wonderingly over the
inscrutable secrets of the quincunx. His fine ear was charmed by the
rhythm of the sumptuous and stately sentences, and his pulses throbbed
in response to every measured phrase in which the lore of garden
symmetry and the principles of garden science were set forth. He read
of the hanging gardens of Babylon, first made by Queen Semiramis,
third or fourth from Nimrod, and magnificently renewed by
Nabuchodonosor, according to Josephus: "_from whence, overlooking
Babylon, and all the region about it, he found no circumscription to
the eye of his ambition; till, over-delighted with the bravery of this
Paradise, in his melancholy metamorphosis he found the folly of that
delight, and a proper punishment in the contrary habitation--in wild
plantations and wanderings of the fields_." Austin shook his head over
this; he did not think it possible to love a garden too much, and
demurred to the idea that such a love deserved any punishment at all.
But that was theology, and he had no taste for theological
dissertations. So he dipped into the pages where the quincunx is
"naturally" considered, and here he admired the encyclopædic learning
of the author, which appeared to have been as wide as that attributed
to Solomon; then glanced at the "mystic" part, which he reserved for
later study. But one paragraph riveted his attention, as he turned
over the leaves. Here was a mine of gold, a treasure-house of
suggestiveness and wisdom.

_"Light, that makes things seen, makes some things invisible; were it
not for darkness and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of the
creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as
on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the
sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of
religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of
Jewish types, we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life
itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows
of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but
the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God."_

Austin delighted in symbolism, and these apparent paradoxes fascinated
him. But was it all true? He loved to think that life was the shadow,
and death--what we call death--the substance; he had always felt that
the reality of everything was to be sought for on the other side. But
he could not see why departed souls should be regarded as the shadows
of living men. Rather it was we who lived in a vain show, and would
continue to do so until the spirit, the true substance of us, should
be set free. Well, whatever the truth of it might be, it was all a
charming puzzle, and we should learn all about it some day, and
meantime he had been furnished with an entirely new idea--the
revealing power of darkness. He loved the light because it was
beautiful, and now he loved the darkness because it was mysterious,
and held such wondrous secrets in its folds. He had never been afraid
of the dark even when a child. It had always been associated in his
mind with sleep and dreams, and he was very fond of both.

Of course it would have been no use attempting to instruct Lubin in
the cryptic properties of the quincunx, or any other theories of
garden arrangement propounded by Sir Thomas Browne. And Aunt Charlotte
would have proved a still more hopeless subject. She had no head for
mysticism, poor dear, and Austin often told her she was one of the
greatest sceptics he had ever known. "You believe in nothing but your
dinner, your bank-book, and your Bible, auntie; I declare it's
perfectly shocking," he said to her one day. "And a very good creed
too," she replied; "it wouldn't be a bad thing for you either, if you
had a little more sound religion and practical common-sense." Just now
it was the bank-book phase that was uppermost, and when a letter was
brought in to her at breakfast-time next morning bearing the London
postmark, she clutched it eagerly and opened it with evident
anticipation. But as she read the contents her brow clouded and her
face fell. Clearly she was disappointed and surprised, but made no
remark to Austin.

A couple of days passed without anything of importance happening,
except that she wrote again to her bankers and looked out anxiously
for their reply. But none came, and she grew irritable and disturbed.
It really was most extraordinary; she had always thought that bankers
were so shrewd, and prompt, and business-like, and yet here they were,
treating her as though she were of no account whatever, and actually
leaving her second letter without an answer. The affair was pressing,
too. There was certain to be a perfect rush for shares in so
exceptional an undertaking, and when once they were all allotted, of
course up they'd go to an enormous premium, and all her chances of
investing would be lost. It was too exasperating for words. What were
the men thinking of? Why were they so neglectful of her interests? She
had always been an excellent customer, and had never overdrawn her
account--never. And now they were leaving her in the lurch. However,
she determined she would not submit. She fumed in silence for yet
another day, and then, at dinner in the evening, came out with a most
unexpected declaration.

"Austin," she said suddenly, after a long pause, "I'm going to town
to-morrow by the 10.27 train."

Austin was peeling an apple, intent on seeing how long a strip he
could pare off without breaking it. "Won't it be very hot?" he asked
absently.

"Hot? Well, perhaps it will," said Aunt Charlotte, rather nettled at
his indifference. "But I can't help that. The fact is that my bankers
are giving me a great deal of annoyance just now, and I'm going up to
London to have it out with them."

"Really?" replied Austin, politely interested. "I hope they haven't
been embezzling your money?"

"Do, for goodness sake, pull yourself together and try not to talk
nonsense for once in your life," retorted Aunt Charlotte, tartly.
"Embezzling my money, indeed!--I should just like to catch them at it.
Of course it's nothing of the kind. But I've lately given them certain
instructions which they virtually refuse to carry out, and in a case
of that sort it's always better to discuss the affair in person."

"I see," said Austin, beginning to munch his apple. "I wonder why they
won't do what you want them to. Isn't it very rude of them?"

"Rude? Well--I can't say they've been exactly rude," acknowledged Aunt
Charlotte. "But they're making all sorts of difficulties, and hint
that they know better than I do----"

"Which is absurd, of course," put in Austin, with his very simplest
air.

Aunt Charlotte glanced sharply at him, but there was not the faintest
trace of irony in his expression. "I fancy they don't quite understand
the question," she said, "so I intend to run up and explain it to
them. One can do these things so much better in conversation than by
writing. I shall get lunch in town, and then there'll be time for me
to do a little shopping, perhaps, before catching the 4.40 back. That
will get me here in ample time for dinner at half-past seven."

"And what train do you go by in the morning?" enquired Austin.

"The 10.27," replied his aunt. "I shall take the omnibus from the
Peacock that starts at a quarter to ten."

It cannot be said that Aunt Charlotte's projected trip to town
interested Austin much. Business of any sort was a profound mystery to
him, and with regard to speculations, investments, and such-like
matters his mind was a perfect blank. He had a vague notion that
perhaps Aunt Charlotte wanted some money, and that the bankers had
refused to give her any; though whether she had a right to demand it,
or they a right to withhold it, he had no more idea than the man in
the moon. So he dismissed the whole affair from his mind as something
with which he had nothing whatever to do, and spent the evening in the
company of Sir Thomas Browne. At ten o'clock he went forth into the
garden, and became absorbed in an attempt to identify the different
colours of the flowers in the moonlight. It proved a fascinating
occupation, for the pale, cold brightness imparted hues to the
flowers that were strange and weird, so that it was a matter of real
difficulty to say what the colours actually were. Then he wondered how
it was he had never before discovered what an inspiring thing it was
to wander all alone at night about a garden illuminated by a brilliant
moon. The shadows were so black and secret, the radiance so spiritual,
the shapes so startlingly fantastic, it was like being in another
world. And then the silence. That was the most compelling charm of
all. It helped him to feel. And he felt that he was not alone, though
he heard nothing and saw nobody. The garden was full of
flower-fairies, invisible elves and sprites whose mission it was to
guard the flowers, and who loved the moonlight more than they loved
the day; dainty, diaphanous creatures who were wafted across the
smooth lawns on summer breezes, and washed the thirsty petals and
drooping leaves in the dew which the clear blue air of night diffuses
so abundantly. He had a sense--almost a knowledge--that the garden he
was in was a dream-garden, a sort of panoramic phantasm, and that the
real garden lay _behind_ it somehow, hidden from material eyesight,
eluding material touch, but there all the same, unearthly and elysian,
more beautiful a great deal than the one in which he was standing,
and teeming with gracious presences. It seemed a revelation to him,
this sudden perception of a real world underlying the apparent one;
and for nearly half-an-hour he sauntered to and fro in a reverie,
leaning sometimes against the old stone fountain, and sometimes
watching the pale clouds as they began flitting together as though to
keep a rendezvous in space, until they concealed the face of the moon
entirely from view and left the garden dark.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whether Austin had strange dreams that night or no, certain it is that
when he came down to breakfast in the morning his face was set and
there was a look of unusual preoccupation in his eyes. Aunt Charlotte,
being considerably preoccupied with her own affairs, noticed nothing,
and busied herself with the teapot as was her wont. Austin chipped his
egg in silence, while his auntie, helping herself generously to fried
bacon, made some remark about the desirability of laying a good
foundation in view of her journey up to town. Thereupon Austin said:

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to go to town this morning,
auntie?"

"Of course it is," replied Aunt Charlotte, munching heartily. "I told
you so last night."

"Why can't you go to-morrow instead?" asked Austin, tentatively.
"Would it be too late?"

"I've arranged to go _to-day_," said Aunt Charlotte, with decision.
"The sooner this business is settled the better. What should I gain by
waiting?"

"I don't see any particular hurry," said Austin. "It's only giving
yourself trouble for nothing. If I were you I'd write what you want to
say, and then go up to see these people if their answer was still
unsatisfactory."

"But you see you don't know anything about the matter," retorted Aunt
Charlotte, beginning to wonder at the boy's persistency. "What in the
world makes you want me not to go?"

"Oh--I only thought it might prove unnecessary," replied he, rather
lamely. "It's going to be very hot, and after all----"

"It'll be quite as hot to-morrow," said Aunt Charlotte, as she stirred
her tea.

"Well, why not go by a later train, then?" suggested Austin. "Look
here; go by the 4.20 this afternoon, and take me with you. We'll go to
a nice quiet hotel, and have a beautiful dinner, and see some of the
sights, and then you'd have all to-morrow morning to do your business
with these horrid old gentlemen at the bank. Now don't you think
that's rather a good idea?"

"I--dare--_say_!" cried Aunt Charlotte, in her highest key. "So that's
what you're aiming at, is it? Oh, you're a cunning boy, my dear, if
ever there was one. But your little project would cost at least four
times as much as I propose to spend to-day, and for that reason alone
it's not to be thought of for a moment. What in creation ever put such
an idea into your head?"

"I don't want to come with you in the very least, really--especially
as you don't want to have me," replied Austin. "But I do wish you'd
give up your idea of going to London by the 10.27 this morning. If
you'll only do that I don't care for anything else. Take the same
train to-morrow, if you like, but not to-day. That's all I have to ask
you."

"But why--why--why?" demanded Aunt Charlotte, in not unnatural
amazement.

"I can't tell you why," said Austin. "It wouldn't be any use."

"You are the very absurdest child I ever came across!" exclaimed Aunt
Charlotte. "I've often had to put up with your fancies, but never with
any so outrageously unreasonable as this. Now not another word. I'm
going to travel by the 10.27 this morning, and if you like to come and
see me off, you're at perfect liberty to do so."

Austin made no reply, and breakfast proceeded in silence. Then he
glanced at the clock, and saw that it was ten minutes to nine. As soon
as the meal was finished, he rose from his chair and moved slowly
towards the door.

"You still intend to go by the----"

"Hold your tongue!" snapped his aunt. Whereupon Austin left the room
without another word. Then he stumped his way upstairs and was not
seen again. Aunt Charlotte, meanwhile, began preparations for her
journey. It was now close on nine o'clock, and she had to order the
dinner, see that she had sufficient money for her expenses, choose a
bonnet for travelling in, and look after half-a-dozen other important
trifles before setting out to catch the railway omnibus at the
Peacock. At last Austin, waiting behind a door, heard her enter her
room to dress. Very gently he stole out with something in his pocket,
and two minutes afterwards was standing on the lawn with his straw
hat tilted over his eyes, chattering with Lubin about tubers, corms,
and bulbs, potting and bedding-out, and other pleasant mysteries of
garden-craft.

It was not very long, however, before a singular bustle was heard on
the first floor. Maids ran scuttling up and down stairs, voices
resounded through the open windows, and then came the sound of thumps,
as of somebody vigorously battering at a door. Austin turned round,
and began walking towards the house. He was met by old Martha, who
seemed to be in a tremendous fluster about something.

"Master Austin! Master Austin! Oh, here you are. What in the world is
to be done? Your aunt's locked up in her bedroom, and nobody can find
the key!"

"Is that all?" answered Austin calmly. "Then she'll have to stay there
till it turns up, evidently."

"But the mistress says she's sure you know all about it," panted
Martha, in great distress, "and she's in a most terrible taking. Now,
Master Austin, I do beseech you--'tain't no laughing matter, for the
omnibus starts in a few minutes, and your aunt----"

A terrific banging was now heard from the locked-up room, accompanied
by shouts and cries from the imprisoned lady. Austin advanced to the
foot of the staircase, looking rather white, and listened.

"Austin! Austin! Where are you? What have you done with the key?"
shrieked Aunt Charlotte, in a tempest of despair and rage. "Let me
out, I say, let me out at once! It's you who have done this, I know it
is. Open the door, or I shall lose the train!" A fresh bombardment
from the lady's fists here followed. "Where _is_ Austin, Martha? Can't
you find him anywhere?"

"He's here, ma'am," cried back Martha, in quavering tones, "but he
don't seem as if----"

"Call Lubin with a ladder!" interrupted the desperate lady. "I must
catch the omnibus, if I break all my bones in getting out of the
window. Where's Lubin? Isn't there a ladder tall enough? Austin!
Austin! Where _is_ Austin, and why doesn't he open the door?"

"He was here not a moment ago," replied Martha, tremulously, "but
where he's got to now, or where he's put the key, the Lord only knows.
Perhaps he's gone to see about a ladder. Lubin! have you seen Master
Austin anywhere?"

But Austin, unobserved in the confusion, having stealthily glanced at
his watch, had slipped out at the garden gate, and now stood looking
down the road. The omnibus had just started, and for about thirty
seconds he remained watching it as it lumbered and clattered along in
a cloud of dust until it was lost to view. Then he went back to the
house, and handed the key to Martha. "There's the key," he said. "Tell
Aunt Charlotte I'm going for a walk, and I'll let her know all about
it when I come back to lunch."

He was out of the house in a twinkling, stumping along as hard as he
could go until he reached the moors. He had played a daring game, but
felt quite satisfied with the result so far, as he knew that there
were no cabs to be had in the village, and that, even if his aunt were
mad enough to brave a two-mile tramp along the broiling road, she
could not possibly reach the station in time to catch the train. Now
that the deed was done, a sensation of fatigue stole over him, and
with a sigh of relief he flung himself down on the soft tussocks of
purple heather, and covered his eyes with his straw hat. For
half-an-hour he lay there motionless and deep in thought. No suspicion
that he had acted wrongly disturbed him for a moment. Of course it was
a pity that poor Aunt Charlotte should have been disappointed, and
certainly that locking of her up in her bedroom had been a very
painful duty; but if it was necessary--as it was--what else could he
have done? No doubt she would forgive him when she understood his
reasons; and, after all, it was really her own fault for having been
so obstinate.

It was now half-past ten, and Austin had no intention of getting home
before it was time for lunch. He had thus the whole morning before
him, and he spent it rambling about the moors, struggling up hills,
revelling in the heat tempered by cool grass, and wondering how
Daphnis would have behaved if he had had an unreasonable old aunt to
take care of; for Aunt Charlotte was really a great responsibility,
and dreadfully difficult to manage. Then, coming on a deep, clear
rivulet which ran between two meadows, he yielded to a sudden impulse,
and, stripping himself to the skin, plunged into it, wooden leg and
all. There he floated luxuriously for a while, the sun blazing
fiercely overhead, and the cool waters playing over his white body.
When he emerged, covered with sparkling drops, he remembered that he
had no towel; so there was nothing to be done but to stagger about and
disport himself like a naked faun among the buttercups and bulrushes,
until the sun had dried him. As soon as he was dressed, he looked at
his watch, and found that it was nearly twelve. Then he consulted a
little time-table, and made a rapid calculation. It would take him
just half-an-hour to reach the station from where he was, and
therefore it was high time to start.

Off he set, and arrived there, as it seemed, at a moment of great
excitement. The station-master was on the platform, in the act of
posting up a telegram, around which a number of people--travellers,
porters, and errand-boys--were crowding eagerly. Austin joined the
group, and read the message carefully and deliberately twice through.
He asked no questions, but listened to the remarks he heard around
him. Then he passed rapidly through the booking-office, and struck out
on his way home.

Meantime Aunt Charlotte had passed the hours fuming. To her, Austin's
extraordinary behaviour was absolutely unaccountable, except on the
hypothesis that he was not responsible for his actions. Her rage was
beyond control. That the boy should have had the unheard-of audacity
to lock her up in her own bedroom in order to gratify some mad whim,
and so have upset her plans for the entire day, was an outrage
impossible to forgive. If he was not out of his mind he ought to be,
for there was no other excuse for him that she could think of. What
_was_ to be done with such a boy? He was too old to be whipped, too
young to be sent to college, too delicate to be placed under
restraint. But she would let him feel the full force of her
indignation when he returned. He should apologise, he should eat his
fill of humble pie, he should beg for mercy on his knees. She had put
up with a good deal, but this last escapade was not to be overlooked.
Even Martha, when she came in to lay the cloth for lunch, could think
of nothing to say in extenuation of his offence.

It was certainly two hours before her excitement allowed her to sit
down and begin to knit. Even then--and naturally enough--while she was
musing the fire burned. It never occurred to her to reflect that there
must have been some _reason_ for Austin's extraordinary prank, and
that the first thing to be done was to discover what that was. She was
too angry to take this obvious fact into consideration, and so, when
Austin at last appeared, his eyes full of suppressed excitement and
his forehead bathed in sweat, her pent-up wrath found vent and she
flamed out at him in a rage.

For some minutes Austin stood quite silent while she stormed. If it
made her feel better to storm, well, let her do it. Half-a-dozen times
she demanded what he meant by his behaviour, and how he dared, and
whether he had suddenly gone crazy, and then went on storming without
waiting for his reply. Once, when he opened his mouth to speak, she
sharply told him to shut it again. It was clear, even to Martha, that
if Austin's conduct had been inexplicable, his aunt's was utterly
absurd.

"You've asked me several times what made me lock you up this morning,"
he said at last, when she paused for breath, "and each time you've
refused to let me answer you. That's not very reasonable, you know.
Now I've got something to tell you, but if you want to do any more
raving please do it at once and get it over, and then I'll have my
turn."

"Will you go to your room this instant and stay there?" cried Aunt
Charlotte, pointing to the door.

"Certainly not," replied Austin. "And now I'll ask you to listen to me
for a minute, for you must be tired with all that shouting." Aunt
Charlotte took up her work with trembling hands, ostentatiously
pretending that Austin was no longer in the room. "You wanted to go to
town by the 10.27 train, and I took forcible measures to prevent you.
It may therefore interest you to know what became of that train, and
what you have escaped. There's been a frightful collision. The down
express ran into it at the curve just beyond the signal station at
Colebridge Junction, owing to some mistake of the signalman, I
believe. Anyhow, in the train you wanted to go by there were five
people killed outright, and fourteen others crunched up and mangled in
a most inartistic style. And if I hadn't locked you up as I did you'd
probably be in the County Hospital at this moment in an exceedingly
unpleasant predicament."

Dead silence. Then, "The Lord preserve us!" ejaculated Martha, who
stood by, in awe-struck tones. Aunt Charlotte slowly rai

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