Book: Austin and His Friends

F >> Frederic H. Balfour >> Austin and His Friends




As for Aunt Charlotte, she, too, deemed it beyond the dreams of
possibility that she would ever marry. In fact, it was only Austin's
nonsense that had put so ridiculous a notion into her head. It was
true that, in the years gone by, the attentions of young Granville
Ogilvie had occasioned her heart a flutter. Perhaps some faint,
far-off reverberation of that flutter was making itself felt in her
heart now. It is so, no doubt, with many maiden ladies when they look
back upon the past. But if she had ever felt a little sore at her
sudden abandonment by the mercurial young man who had once touched her
fancy, the tiny scratch had healed and been forgotten long ago. At the
same time, although the idea of marriage after five-and-twenty years
was too absurd to be dwelt on for a moment, the worthy lady could not
help feeling how delightful it would be to be _asked_. Of course, that
would involve the extremely painful process of refusing; and Aunt
Charlotte, in spite of her rough tongue, was a merciful woman, and
never willingly inflicted suffering upon anybody. Even blackbeetles,
as she often told herself, were God's creatures, and Mr Ogilvie,
although he had deserted her, no doubt had finer sensibilities than a
blackbeetle. So she did not wish to hurt him if she could avoid it;
still, a proposal of marriage at the age of forty-seven would be
rather a feather in her cap, and she was too true a woman to be
indifferent to that coveted decoration. But then, once more, it was
quite possible that he would not propose at all.

The next morning Austin put on his straw hat, and went and sat down by
the old stone fountain in the full blaze of the sun, as was his
custom. Lubin was somewhere in the shrubbery, and, unaware that anyone
was within hearing, was warbling lustily to himself. Austin
immediately pricked up his ears, for he had had no idea that Lubin was
a vocalist. Away he carolled blithely enough, in a rough but not
unmusical voice, and Austin was just able to catch some of the words
of the quaint old west-country ballad that he was singing.

"Welcome to town, Tom Dove, Tom Dove,
The merriest man alive,
Thy company still we love, we love,
God grant thee still to thrive.
And never will we, depart from thee,
For better or worse, my joy!
For thou shalt still, have our good will,
God's blessing on my sweet boy."

"Bravo, Lubin!" cried Austin, clapping his hands. "You do sing
beautifully. And what a delightful old song! Where did you pick it
up?"

"Eh, Master Austin," said Lubin, emerging from among the
rhododendrons, "if I'd known you was a-listening I'd 'a faked up
something from a French opera for you. Why, that's an old song as I've
known ever since I was that high--'Tom of Exeter' they calls it. It's
a rare favourite wi' the maids down in the parts I come from."

"Shows their good taste," said Austin. "It's awfully pretty. Who was
Tom Dove, and why did he come to town?"

"Nay, I can't tell," replied Lubin. "Tis some made-up tale, I doubt.
They do say as how he was a tailor. But there is folks as'll say
anything, you know."

"A tailor!" exclaimed Austin, scornfully, "That I'm sure he wasn't.
But oh, Lubin, there _is_ somebody coming to town in a day or
two--somebody I want to find out about. Do you often go into the
town?"

"Eh, well, just o' times; when there's anything to take me there,"
answered Lubin, vaguely. "On market-days, every now and again."

"Oh yes, I know, when you go and sell ducks," put in Austin. "Now
what I want to know is this. Have you, within the last three or four
weeks, seen a stranger anywhere about?"

"A stranger?" repeated Lubin. "Ay, that I certainly have. Any amount
o' strangers."

"Oh well, yes, of course, how stupid of me!" exclaimed Austin,
impatiently. "There must have been scores and scores. But I mean a
particular stranger--a certain person in particular, if you understand
me. Anybody whose appearance struck you in any way."

"Well, but what sort of a stranger?" asked Lubin. "Can't you tell me
anything about him? What'd he look like, now?"

"That's just what I want to find out," replied Austin. "If I could
describe him I shouldn't want you to. All I know is that he's a sort
of elderly gentleman, rather more than fifty. He may be fifty-five, or
getting on for sixty. Now, isn't that near enough? Oh--and I'm almost
sure that he's a traveller."

"H'm," pondered Lubin, leaning on his broom reflectively. "Well, yes,
I did see a sort of elderly gentleman some three or four weeks ago,
standing at the bar o' the 'Coach-and-Horses.' What his age might be I
couldn't exactly say, 'cause he was having a drink with his back
turned to the door. But he was a traveller, that I know."

"A traveller? I wonder whether that was the one!" exclaimed Austin.
"Had he a dark-brown face? Or a wooden leg? Or a scar down one of his
cheeks?"

"Not as I see," answered Lubin, beginning to sweep the lawn. "But a
traveller he was, because the barmaid told me so. Travelled all over
the country in bonnets."

"Travelled in bonnets?" cried Austin. "What _do_ you mean, Lubin? How
can a man go travelling about the country in a bonnet? Had he a bonnet
on when you saw him drinking in the bar?"

"Lor', Master Austin, wherever was you brought up?" exclaimed Lubin,
in grave amazement at the youth's ignorance. "When a gentleman
'travels' in anything, it means he goes about getting orders for it.
Now this here gentleman was agent, I take it, for some big millinery
shop in London, and come down here wi' boxes an' boxes o' bonnets, an'
tokes, and all sorts o' female headgear as women goes about in----"

"In short, he was a commercial traveller," said Austin, very mildly.
"You see, my dear Lubin, we have been talking of different things. I
wasn't thinking of a gentleman who hawks haberdashery. When I said
traveller, I meant a man who goes tramping across Africa, and shoots
elephants, and gets snowed up at the North Pole, and has all sorts of
uncomfortable and quite incredible adventures. They always have faces
as brown as an old trunk, and generally limp when they walk. That's
the sort of person I'm looking out for. You haven't seen anyone like
that, have you?"

"Nay--nary a one," said Lubin, shaking his head. "Would he have been
putting up at one o' the inns, now, or staying long wi' some o' the
gentry?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," acknowledged Austin.

"Might as well go about looking for a ram wi' five feet," remarked
Lubin. "Some things you can't find 'cause they don't exist, and other
things you can't find 'cause there's too many of 'em. And as you don't
know nothing about this gentleman, and wouldn't know him if you met
him in the street permiscuous, I take it you'll have to wait to see
what he looks like till he turns up again of his own accord. 'Tain't
in reason as you can go up to every old gentleman with a brown face
as you never see before an' ask him if he's ever been snowed up at the
North Pole and why he hasn't got a wooden leg. He'd think, as likely
as not, as you was trying to get a rise out of him. Don't you know
what the name may be, neither?"

"Oh yes, I do, of course," responded Austin. "He's a Mr Ogilvie."

"Never heard of 'im," said Lubin. "Might find out at one o' the inns
if any party o' that name's been staying there, but I doubt they
wouldn't remember. Folks don't generally stay more'n one night, you
see, just to have a look at the old market-place and the church, and
then off they go next morning and don't leave no addresses. Th' only
sort as stays a day or two are the artists, and they'll stay painting
here for more'n a week at a time. It may 'a been one o' them."

"I wonder!" exclaimed Austin, struck by the idea. "Perhaps he's an
artist, after all; artists do travel, I know. I never thought of that.
However, it doesn't matter. It's only some old friend of Aunt
Charlotte's, and he's coming to call on her soon, so it isn't worth
bothering about meanwhile."

He therefore dismissed the matter from his mind, and set about the far
more profitable employment of fortifying himself by a morning's
devotion to garden-craft, both manual and mental, against the
martyrdom (as he called it) that he was to undergo that afternoon. For
Aunt Charlotte had insisted on his accompanying her to tea at the
vicarage, and this was a function he detested with all his heart. He
never knew whom he might meet there, and always went in fear of
Cobbledicks, MacTavishes, and others of the same sort. The vicar
himself he did not mind so much--the vicar was not a bad little thing
in his way; but Mrs Sheepshanks, with her patronising disapproval and
affected airs of smartness, he couldn't endure, while the Socialistic
curate was his aversion. The reason he hated the curate was partly
because he always wore black knickerbockers, and partly because he was
such chums with the MacTavish boys. How any self-respecting individual
could put up with such savages as Jock and Sandy was a problem that
Austin was wholly unable to solve, until it was suggested to him by
somebody that the real attraction was neither Jock nor Sandy, but one
of their screaming sisters--a Florrie, or a Lottie, or an Aggie--it
really did not matter which, since they were all alike. When this
once dawned upon him, Austin despised the knickerbockered curate more
than ever.

On the present occasion, however, the MacTavishes were happily not
there; the only other guest (for of course the curate didn't count)
being a friend of the curate's, who had come to spend a few days with
him in the country. The friend was a harsh-featured, swarthy young
man, belonging to what may be called the muscular variety of high
Ritualism; much given to a sort of aggressive slang--he had been known
to refer to the bishop of his diocese as "the sporting old jester that
bosses our show"--and representing militant sacerdotalism in its most
blusterous and rampant form. He was also in the habit of informing
people that he was "nuts" on the Athanasian Creed, and expressing the
somewhat arbitrary opinion that if the Rev. John Wesley had had his
deserts he would have been exhibited in a pillory and used as a target
for stale eggs. There are a few such interesting youths in Holy
Orders, and the curate's friend was one of them.

The party were assembled in the garden, where Mrs Sheepshanks's best
tea-service was laid out. To say that the conversation was brilliant
would be an exaggeration; but it was pleasant and decorous, as
conversations at a vicarage ought to be. The two ladies compared notes
about the weather and the parish; the curate asked Austin what he had
been doing with himself lately; the friend kept silence, even from
good words, while the vicar, one of the mildest of his cloth, sat
blinking in furtive contemplation of the friend. Certainly it was not
a very exhilarating entertainment, and Austin felt that if it went on
much longer he should scream. What possible pleasure, he marvelled,
could Aunt Charlotte find in such a vapid form of dissipation? Even
the garden irritated him, for it was laid out in the silly Early
Victorian style, with wriggling paths, and ribbon borders, and shrubs
planted meaninglessly here and there about the lawn, and a dreadful
piece of sham rockwork in one corner. Of course the vicar's wife
thought it quite perfect, and always snubbed Austin in a very lofty
way if he ever ventured to express his own views as to how a garden
should be fitly ordered. Then his eye happened to fall upon the
curate's friend; and he caught the curate's friend in the act of
staring at him with a most offensive expression of undisguised
contempt.

Now, Austin was courteous to everyone; but to anybody he disliked his
politeness was simply deadly. Of course he took no notice of the young
parson's tacit insolence; he only longed, as fervently as he knew how
to long, for an opportunity of being polite to him. And the occasion
was soon forthcoming. The conversation growing more general by
degrees, a reference was made by the vicar, in passing, to a certain
clergyman of profound scholarship and enlightened views, whose
recently published book upon the prophet Daniel had been painfully
exercising the minds of the editor and readers of the _Church Times_;
and it was then that the curate's friend, without moving a muscle of
his face, suddenly leaned forward and said, in a rasping voice:

"The man's an impostor and a heretic. He ought to be burned. I would
gladly walk in the procession, singing the 'Te Deum,' and set fire to
the faggots myself."[A]

And there was no doubt he meant it. A dead silence fell upon the
party. The curate looked horribly annoyed. The ladies exclaimed "Oh!"
with a little shudder of dismay. The vicar started, fidgeted, and
blinked more nervously than ever. Then Austin, with the most charming
manner in the world, broke the spell.

"Really!" he exclaimed, turning towards the speaker, a bright smile of
interest upon his face. "That's a most delightfully original
suggestion. May I ask what religion you belong to?"

"What religion!" scowled the curate's friend, astounded at the
enquiry.

"Yes--it must be one I never heard of," replied Austin, sweetly. "I am
so awfully ignorant, you know; I know nothing of geography, and
scarcely anything about the religions of savage countries. Are you a
Thug?"

"Oh, Austin!" breathed Aunt Charlotte, faintly.

"I always do make such mistakes," continued Austin, with his most
engaging air; "I'm so sorry, please forgive me if I'm stupid. I
forgot, of course Thugs don't burn people alive, they only strangle
them. Perhaps I'm thinking of the Bosjesmans, or the Andaman
Islanders, or the aborigines of New Guinea. I do get so mixed up! But
I've often thought how lovely it would be to meet a cannibal. You
aren't a cannibal, are you?" he added wistfully.

"I'm a priest of the Church of England," replied the curate's friend,
with crushing scorn, though his face was livid. "When you're a little
older you'll probably understand all that that implies."

"Fancy!" exclaimed Austin, with an air of innocent amazement. "I've
heard of the Church of England, but I quite thought you must belong to
one of those curious persuasions in Africa, isn't it--or is it
Borneo?--where the services consist in skinning people alive and then
roasting them for dinner. It occurred to me that you might have gone
there as a missionary, and that the savages had converted you instead
of you converting the savages. I'm sure I beg your pardon. And have
you ever set fire to a bishop?"

"Austin! Austin!" came still more faintly from Aunt Charlotte.

The vicar, scandalised at first, was now in convulsions of silent
laughter. Mrs Sheepshanks's parasol was lowered in a most suspicious
manner, so as completely to hide her face; while the unfortunate
curate, with his head almost between his knees, was working havoc in
the vicarage lawn with the point of a heavy walking-stick. The only
person who seemed perfectly at his ease was Austin, and he was
enjoying himself hugely. Then the vicar, feeling it incumbent upon
him, as host, to say something to relieve the strain, attempted to
pull himself together.

"My dear boy," he said, in rather a quavering voice, "you may be
perfectly sure that our valued guest has no sympathy with any of the
barbarous religions you allude to, but is a most loyal member of the
Church of England; and that when he said he would like to 'burn' a
brother clergyman--one of the greatest Talmudists and Hebrew scholars
now alive--it was only his humorous way of intimating that he was
inclined to differ from him on one or two obscure points of historical
or verbal criticism which----"

"It was not," said the curate's friend.

Mrs Sheepshanks immediately turned to Aunt Charlotte, and remarked
that feather boas were likely to be more than ever in fashion when the
weather changed; and Aunt Charlotte said she had heard from a most
authoritative source that pleated corselets were to be the rage that
autumn. Both ladies then agreed that the days were certainly beginning
to draw in, and asked the curate if he didn't think so too. The curate
fumbled in his pocket, and offered Austin a cigarette, and Austin,
noticing the unconcealed annoyance of the unfortunate young man, who
was really not a bad fellow in the main, felt kindly towards him, and
accepted the cigarette with effusion. The vicar relapsed into silence,
making no attempt to complete his unfinished sentence; then he stole a
glance at the saturnine face of the stranger, and from that moment
became an almost liberal-minded theologian; He had had an
object-lesson that was to last him all his life, and he never forgot
it.

"Well, Austin," said Aunt Charlotte, when they were walking home, a
few minutes later, "of course you _ought_ to have a severe scolding
for your behaviour this afternoon; but the fact is, my dear, that on
this occasion I do not feel inclined to give you one. That man was
perfectly horrible, and deserved everything he got. I only hope it may
have done him good. I couldn't have believed such people existed at
the present day. The most charitable view to take of him is that he
can scarcely be in his right mind."

"What, because he wanted to burn somebody alive?" said Austin. "Oh,
that was natural enough. I thought it rather an amusing idea, to tell
the truth. The reason I went for him was that I caught him making
faces at me when he thought I wasn't looking. I saw at once that he
was a beast, so the instant he gave me an opportunity of settling
accounts with him I took it. Oh, what a blessing it is to be at home
again! Dear auntie, let's make a virtuous resolution. We'll neither of
us go to the vicarage again as long as we both shall live."

He strolled into the garden--the good garden, with straight walks, and
clipped hedges, and fair formal shape--and threw himself down upon a
long chair. He had already begun to forget the incidents of the
afternoon. Here was rest, and peace, and beauty. How tired he was! Why
did he feel so tired? He could not tell. A deep sense of satisfaction
and repose stole over him. Lubin was there, tidying up, but he did not
feel any inclination to talk to Lubin or anybody else. He liked
watching Lubin, however, for Lubin was part of the garden, and all his
associations with him were pleasant. The scent of the flowers and the
grass possessed him. The sun was far from setting, and a young
crescent moon was hovering high in the heavens, looking like a silver
sickle against the blue. From the distant church came the sound of
bells ringing for even-song, faint as horns of elf-land, through the
still air. He felt that he would like to lie there always--just
resting, and drinking in the beauty of the world.

Suddenly he half-rose. "Lubin!" he called out quickly, in an
undertone.

"Sir," responded Lubin, turning round.

"Who was that lady looking over the garden-gate just now?"

"Lady?" repeated Lubin. "I never saw no lady. Whereabouts was she?"

"On the path of course, outside. A second ago. She stood looking at me
over the gate, and then went on. Run to the gate and see how far she's
got--quick!"

Lubin did as he was bidden without delay, looking up and down the
road. Then he returned, and soberly picked up his broom.

"There ain't no lady there," he said. "No one in sight either way.
Must 'a been your fancy, Master Austin, I expect."

"Fancy, indeed!" retorted Austin, excitedly. "You'll tell me next it's
my fancy that I'm looking at you now. A lady in a large hat and a sort
of light-coloured dress. She _must_ be there. There's nowhere else for
her to be, unless the earth has swallowed her up. I'll go and look
myself."

He struggled up and staggered as fast as he could go to the gate. Then
he pushed it open and went out as far as the middle of the road from
which he could see at least a hundred yards each way. But not a living
creature was in sight.

"It's enough to make one's hair stand on end!" he exclaimed, as he
came slowly back. "Where can she have got to? She was here--here, by
the gate--not twenty seconds ago, only a few yards from where I was
sitting. Don't talk to me about fancy; that's sheer nonsense. I saw
her as distinctly as I see you now, and I should know her again
directly if I saw her a year hence. Of all inexplicable things!"

There was no more lying down. He was too much puzzled and excited to
keep still. Up and down he paced, cudgelling his brains in search of
an explanation, wondering what it could all mean, and longing for
another glimpse of the mysterious visitor. For one brief moment he had
had a full, clear view of her face, and in that moment he had been
struck by her unmistakable resemblance to himself.


FOOTNOTES:

[A] A fact. Said in the writer's presence by a young clergyman of the
same breed as the one here described.




Chapter the Eleventh


The repairs to the ceiling in Austin's room were now finished, and it
was with great satisfaction that he resumed possession of his old
quarters. The mysterious events that had befallen him when he slept
there last, some weeks before, recurred very vividly to his mind as he
found himself once more amid the familiar surroundings, and although
he heard no more raps or anything else of an abnormal nature, he felt
that, whatever dangers might threaten him in the future, he would
always be protected by those he thought of as his unseen friends. Aunt
Charlotte, meanwhile, had taken an opportunity of consulting the vicar
as to the orthodoxy of a belief in guardian angels, and the vicar had
reassured her at once by referring her to the Collect for St Michael
and All Angels, in which we are invited to pray that they may succour
and defend us upon earth; so that there really was nothing
superstitious in the conclusion that, as Austin had undoubtedly been
succoured and defended in a very remarkable manner on more than one
occasion, some benevolent entity from a better world might have had a
hand in it. The worthy lady, of course, could not resist the
temptation of informing Mr Sheepshanks of what her bankers had said
about the investment he had so earnestly urged upon her, and the vicar
seemed greatly surprised. He had not put any money into it himself, it
was true, but was being sorely tempted by another prospectus he had
just received of an enterprise for recovering the baggage which King
John lost some centuries ago in the Wash. The only consideration that
made him hesitate was the uncertainty whether, in view of the
perishable nature of the things themselves, they would be worth very
much to anybody if ever they were fished up.

"Austin," said Aunt Charlotte, two days afterwards at breakfast, "I
have had another letter from Mr Ogilvie. Of course I wrote to him when
I heard first, saying how pleased I should be to see him whenever he
was in the neighbourhood again; and now I have his reply. He proposes
to call here to-morrow afternoon, and have a cup of tea with us."

"So the fateful day has come at last," remarked Austin. "Very well,
auntie, I'll make myself scarce while you're talking over old times
together, but I insist on coming in before he goes, remember. I'm
awfully curious to see what he's like. Do you think he wears a wig?"

"I really haven't thought about it," replied his aunt. "It's nothing
to me whether he does or not--or to you either, for the matter of
that. Of course you must present yourself to him some time or other;
it would be most discourteous not to. And do, if you can, try and
behave rather more like other people. Don't parade your terrible
ignorance of geography, for instance, as you do sometimes. He would
think that I had neglected your education disgracefully, and seeing
what a traveller he's been himself--"

"All right, auntie, I won't give you away," Austin assured her. "You'd
better tell him what a horrid dunce I am before I come in, and then he
won't be so surprised if I do put my foot in it. After all, we're not
sure that he's been a traveller. He may be a painter. Lubin says that
lots of painters come down here sometimes. My own idea is that he'll
turn out to be nothing but a bank manager, or perhaps a stockbroker. I
expect he's rolling in money."

Austin had said nothing to his aunt about the lady who had looked over
the gate for one brief moment and then so unaccountably disappeared.
What would have been the use? He felt baffled and perplexed, but it
was not likely that Aunt Charlotte would be able to throw any light
upon the mystery. She would probably say that he had been dreaming, or
that he only imagined it, or that it was an old gipsy woman, or one of
the MacTavish girls playing a trick, or something equally fatuous and
absurd. But the more he thought of it the more he was convinced of the
reality of the whole thing, and of the existence of some great marvel.
That he had seen the lady was beyond question. That she had vanished
the next moment was also beyond question. That she had hidden behind a
tree or gone crouching in a ditch was inconceivable, to say the least
of it; so fair and gracious a person would scarcely descend to such
undignified manoeuvres, worthy only of a hoydenish peasant girl. And
yet, what could possibly have become of her? The enigma was quite
unsolvable.

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