Part 3 (1/2)
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 companions.h.i.+p 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 Cobbled.i.c.k 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 a.s.sociate 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 a.r.s.enic 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 a.s.suming airs of patronage and condescension! The boy accepts such an att.i.tude 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 cas.e.m.e.nts, and carved doorways, and cool, dim rooms oak-panelled, and broad fireplaces; and around it lay a s.h.i.+ning 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 gra.s.s 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 j.a.pan; 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 a.s.sociates 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sociate 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 companions.h.i.+p 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.”