Chapter 8
"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?"