"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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.n.a.lyses 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 a.s.sured 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.ds of Greece'--Louis Dyer, you know--and then I'd read them a few carefully-selected pa.s.sages from the 'Phaedrus.' Then, by way of something lighter, and more appropriate to their circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sage 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 superst.i.tions----"

"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, 500,000, in shares of 100 each. Solicitors, Messrs Somebody Something & Co., Fetter Lane, E.C. Bankers, The Sh.o.r.editch & 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 cla.s.s 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 'Peac.o.c.k' 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 antic.i.p.ation. 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, att.i.tudinising 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.

"Guests, to my pledge!

Down on your knees, and drink a measure to The safety of the King--the monarch, say I?

The G.o.d Sardanapalus! mightier than His father Baal, the G.o.d Sardanapalus!"

[_Thunder. Confusion._]

Ah, that was thrilling, if you like, in spite of the halting rhythm.

And yet, even at that supreme moment, the vision of the umbrella and the rather shabby hat would crop up again, and Austin didn't quite know whether to let himself be thrilled or to lean back and roar. The conspiracy burst out a few minutes afterwards, and then there ensued a most terrifying and portentous battle, rioters and loyalists furiously attempting to kill each other by the singular expedient of clattering their swords together so as to make as much noise as possible, and then pa.s.sing them under their antagonists' armpits, till the stage was heaped with corpses; and all this b.l.o.o.d.y work entirely irrespective of the valuable gla.s.s and china on the supper-table, and the costly hearthrugs strewn about the floor. Even Sardanapalus, having first looked in the gla.s.s to make sure that his helmet was straight, performed prodigies of valour, and the curtain descended to his insatiable shouting for fresh weapons and a torrent of tumultuous applause from the gallery.

"Now for it!" said Austin to himself, when another act had been got through, in the course of which Sardanapalus had suffered from a distressing nightmare. He took Mr Buskin's card out of his pocket, and, hurrying out as fast as he could manage, stumped his way round to the stage door. Cerberus would fain have stopped him, but Austin flourished his card in pa.s.sing, and enquired of the first civil-looking man he met where the manager was to be found. He was piloted through devious ways and under strange scaffoldings, to the foot of a steep and very dirty flight of steps--luckily there were only seven--at the top of which was dimly visible a door; and at this, having screwed his courage to the sticking-place, he knocked.

"Come in!" cried a voice inside.