Part 11 (2/2)
”Well--if you want me to explain, of course I'll do so; but I don't suppose it'll make any difference,” said Austin. ”Some time ago, I told you that just as I was going to get over a stile, I felt something push me back, and so I came home another way. You'll recollect that if I _had_ got over that stile I should have come across a rabid dog where there was no possibility of escape, and no doubt have got frightfully bitten. But when I told you how I was prevented, you scoffed at the whole story, and said that I was superst.i.tious.--Stop a minute! I haven't finished yet.--Then, only the other day, my life was saved from all those bricks tumbling on me when I was asleep by just the same sort of interposition. Again you jeered at me, and when I told you I had heard raps in the wall you ridiculed the idea, and--do you remember?--the words were scarcely out of your mouth when you heard the raps yourself, and then you got nearly beside yourself with fright and anger, and said it was the devil. And now for the third time the same sort of thing has happened.
What is the good of telling you about it? You'd only scoff and jeer as you did before, although on this occasion it is your own life that has been saved, not mine.”
Certainly Master Austin was having his revenge on Aunt Charlotte for the torrent of abuse she had poured upon him a few minutes previously.
For a short time she sat quite still, the picture of perplexity and irritation. The facts as Austin stated them were incontrovertible, and yet--probably because she lacked the instinct of causality--she could not accept his explanation of them. There are some people in the world who are const.i.tuted like this. They create a mental atmosphere around them which is as impenetrable to conviction in certain matters as a brick wall is to a parched pea. They will fall back on any loophole of a theory, however imbecile and far-fetched, rather than accept some simple and self-evident solution that they start out by regarding as impossible. And Aunt Charlotte was a very apposite specimen of the cla.s.s.
”I'll not scoff, at anyrate, Austin,” she said at last. ”I cannot forget--and I never will forget--that it's to you I owe it that I am sitting here this moment. Tell me what moved you to act as you did this morning. I may not share your belief, but I will not ridicule it.
Of that you may rest a.s.sured.”
”It is all simple enough,” he said. ”I had a horrid dream just before I woke--nothing circ.u.mstantial, but a general sense of the most awful confusion, and disaster, and terror. I fancy it was that that woke me.
And as I was opening my eyes, a voice said to me quite distinctly, as distinctly as I am speaking now, '_Keep auntie at home this morning._'
The words dinned themselves into my ears all the time I was dressing, and then I acted upon them as you know. But what would have been the good of telling you? None whatever. So I tried persuasion, and when that failed I simply locked you in.”
Now there are two sorts of superst.i.tion, each of which is the very ant.i.thesis of the other. The victim of one believes all kinds of absurdities blindfold, oblivious of evidence or causality. The upsetting of a salt-cellar or the fall of a mirror is to him a harbinger of disaster, entirely irrespective of any possible connection between the cause and the effect. A bit of stalk floating on his tea presages an unlooked-for visitor, and the guttering of a candle is a sign of impending death. All this he believes firmly, and acts upon, although he would candidly acknowledge his inability to explain the principle supposed to underlie the sequence between the omen and its fulfilment. It is the irrationality of the belief that const.i.tutes its superst.i.tious character, the contented acquiescence in some inconceivable and impossible law, whether physical or metaphysical, in virtue of which the predicted event is expected to follow the wholly unrelated augury. The other sort of superst.i.tion is that of which, as we have seen, Aunt Charlotte was an exemplification.
Here, again, there is a splendid disregard of evidence, testimony, and causal laws. But it takes the form of scepticism, and a scepticism so blindly partial as to sink into the most abject credulity. The wildest sophistries are dragged in to account for an unfamiliar happening, and scientific students are accused, now of idiocy, now of fraud, rather than the fact should be confessed that our knowledge of the universe is limited. If Aunt Charlotte, for instance, had seen a table rise into the air of itself in broad daylight she would have said, ”I certainly saw it happen, and as an honest woman I can't deny it; but I don't believe it for all that.” The succession of abnormal occurrences, however, of which Austin had been the subject, had begun to undermine her dogmatism; and this last event, the interposition of something, she knew not what, to save her from a horrible accident, appealed to her very strongly. There was a pathos, too, about the part played in it by Austin which touched her to the quick, and she reproached herself keenly for the injustice with which she had treated him in her unreasoning anger.
She felt a great lump come in her throat as he ceased speaking, and for a moment or two found it impossible to answer. ”A voice!” she uttered at last. ”What sort of a voice, Austin?”
”It sounded like a woman's,” he replied.
Chapter the Ninth
From this time forward Austin seemed to live a double life. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he inhabited two worlds. Around him the flowers bloomed in the garden, Lubin worked and whistled, Aunt Charlotte bustled about her duties, and everything went on as usual.
But beyond and behind all this there was something else. The dreams and reveries that had hitherto invaded him became felt realities; he no longer had any doubt that he was encircled by beings whom he could not see, but who were none the less actual for that. And the curious feature of the case was that it all seemed perfectly natural to him, and so far from feeling frightened, or suffering from any sense of being haunted, he experienced a sort of pleasure in it, a grateful consciousness of friendly though unseen companions.h.i.+p that heightened his joy in life. Who these invisible guardians could be, of course he had no idea; it was enough for him just then to know that they were there, and that, by their timely intervention on no fewer than three ocasions, they had given ample proof that they both loved and trusted him.
Aunt Charlotte, on her side, could not but acknowledge that there must be ”something in it,” as she said; it could not all be nothing but Austin's fancy. She remembered that people who wrote hymns and poems talked sometimes of guardian angels, and it was possible that a belief in guardian angels might be orthodox. It was even conceivable that it was a benevolent functionary of this cla.s.s who had let St Peter out of prison; and if the inst.i.tution had existed then, why, there was nothing unreasonable in the conclusion that it might possibly exist now. She revolved these questionings in her mind during her journey up to town the day after Austin's escapade, when, as she told herself, she would be perfectly safe from accident; for it was not in the nature of things that two collisions should happen so close together.
And she had reason to be glad she went, seeing that her bankers received her with perfect cordiality, and convinced her that she would certainly lose all her money if she insisted on investing it in any such wild-cat scheme as the one she had set her heart upon. They suggested, instead, certain foreign bonds on which she would receive a perfectly safe four-and-a-half per cent.; and so pleased was she at having been preserved from risking her two thousand pounds that she not only indulged in a modest half-bottle of Beaune with her lunch, but bought a pretty pencil-case for Austin. She determined at the same time to let the vicar know what her bankers had said about the investment he had urged upon her, and promised herself that she would take the opportunity--of course without mentioning names--of consulting him about the orthodoxy of guardian angels. He might be expected to prove a safer guide in such a matter as that than in questions of high finance.
A few days afterwards, Austin went to call upon his friend St Aubyn.
He longed to see the beautiful gardens at the Court again, now that he had obtained a glimpse into the mystic side of garden-craft through the writings of Sir Thomas Browne; he felt intensely curious to pay another visit to the haunted Banqueting Hall, which had a special fascination for him since his own abnormal experiences; and he felt that a confidential talk with Mr St Aubyn himself would do him no end of good. _There_ was a man, at anyrate, to whom he could open his heart; a man of high culture, wide sympathies, and great knowledge of life. He was shown into the big, dim drawing-room, where a faint perfume of lavender seemed to hang about, imparting to him a sense of quiet and repose that was very soothing; through the half-closed shutters the colours of the garden again gleamed brilliantly in the suns.h.i.+ne, and there was heard a faint liquid sound, as of the plas.h.i.+ng of an adjacent fountain. St Aubyn entered in a few minutes, and greeted him very cordially.
”Well, and what have you been about?” he said, after a few preliminaries had been exchanged. ”Reading and dreaming, I suppose, as usual?”
”I'm afraid I've done both, and very little else to speak of,” replied Austin, laughing. ”I'm always reading, off and on, without much system, you know. But if I'm rather desultory I always enjoy reading, because books give me so many new ideas, and it's delightful to have always something fresh to think about.”
”Yes, yes,” rejoined St Aubyn. ”I don't know what you read, of course, but it's clear you don't read many novels.”
”Novels!” exclaimed Austin scornfully. ”How _can_ people read novels, when there are so many other books in the world?”
”Well, what have you been reading, then?” enquired St Aubyn, lighting a cigarette.
”I've been dipping into one of the most puzzling, fascinating, bothering books I ever came across,” replied Austin, following his example. ”I mean 'The Garden of Cyrus,' by Sir Thomas Browne. I can't follow him a bit, and yet, somehow, he drags me along with him. All that about the quincunx is most baffling. He seems to begin with the arrangement of a garden, and then to lead one on through a maze of arithmetical progressions till one finds oneself landed in a mystical philosophy of life and creation, and I don't know what all. If I could only understand him better I should probably enjoy him more.”
St Aubyn smiled. ”Well, of course, it all sounds very fanciful,” he said. ”One must read him as one reads all those curious old mediaeval authors, who are full of pseudo-science and theories based on fables.
His great charm to me is his style, which is singularly rich and chaste. But I've no doubt whatever, myself, that a great deal of this ancient lore, which we have been accustomed to regard as so much sciolism, not to say pure nonsense, had a germ of truth in it, and that truth I believe we are gradually beginning to re-discover. You see, one mustn't always take the formulas employed by these old writers in their literal sense. Many were purely symbolic, and concealed occult meanings. Now the philosopher's stone, to take a familiar example, was not a stone at all. The word was no more than a symbol, and covered a search for one of the great secrets--the origin of life, or the nature of matter, or the attainment of immortality.
<script>