Book: Austin and His Friends

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"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 'Phaedrus,' 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 'Phaedrus.' 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 Phaedrus 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 _risques_ 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, L500,000, in shares of L100 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.

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