Part 10 (1/2)

”Then, Mr. Lackaday----”

”You can omit the 'Mr.,'” said Andrew, ”if you care to do so.”

”You're more English than I thought,” smiled Horatio Bakkus.

”I'm proud that you should say so,” replied Andrew.

”I was about to remark,” said Bakkus, ”when you interrupted me, that I wondered why a young Englishman of obviously decent upbringing should be pursuing this contemptible form of livelihood.”

”I beg your pardon,” said Andrew, pausing in the act of conveying to his mouth a morsel of sandwich. He was puzzled; comrades down on their luck had cursed the profession for a _sale metier_ and had wished they were road sweepers; but he had never heard it called contemptible. It was a totally new conception.

Bakkus repeated his words and added: ”It is below the dignity of one made in G.o.d's image.”

”I am afraid I do not agree with you,” replied Andrew, stiffly. ”I was born in the profession and honourably bred in it and I have known no other and do not wish to know any other.”

”You were born an imitator? It seems rather a narrow scheme of life.”

”I was born in a circus, and whatever there could be learned in a circus I was taught. And it was, as you have guessed, a decent upbringing. By Gum, it was!” he added, with sudden heat.

”And you're proud of it?”

”I don't see that I've got anything else to be proud of,” said Andrew.

”And you must be proud of something?”

”If not you had better be dead,” said Andrew.

”Ah!” said Bakkus, and went on with his supper.

Andrew, who had hitherto held himself on the defensive against impertinence, and was disposed to dislike the cynical att.i.tude of his new acquaintance, felt himself suddenly disarmed by this ”Ah!” Perhaps he had dealt too cruel a blow at the disillusioned owner of the pretty little tenor voice in which he could not take very much pride. Bakkus broke a silence by remarking:

”I envy you your young enthusiasm. You don't think it better we were all dead?”

”I should think not!” cried Andrew.

”You say you know all that a circus can teach you. What does that mean? You can ride bare back and jump through hoops?”

”I learned to do that--for Clown's business,” replied Andrew. ”But that's no good to me now. I am a professional juggler and conjurer and trick musician. I'm also a bit of a gymnast and sufficient of a contortionist to do eccentric dancing.”

Bakkus took a sip of beer, and regarded him with his mocking eyes.

”And you'd sooner keep on throwing up three b.a.l.l.s in the air for the rest of your natural life than just be comfortably dead? I should like to know your ideas on the point. What's the good of it all? Supposing you're the most wonderful expert that ever lived--supposing you could keep up fifty b.a.l.l.s in the air at the same time, and could balance fifty billiard cues, one on top of another, on your nose--what's the good of it?”

Andrew rubbed his head. Such problems had never occurred to him. Old Ben Flint's philosophy pounded into him, at times literally with a solid and well-deserved paternal cuff, could be summed up in the eternal dictum: ”That which thou hast to do, do it with all thy might.” It was the beginning and end of his rule of life. He looked not, nor thought of looking, further. And now came this Schopenhaurian with his question.

”What's the good of it?”

”I suppose I'm an artist, in my way,” he replied, modestly.

”Artist?” Bakkus laughed derisively. ”Pardon me, but you don't know what the word means. An artist interprets nature in concrete terms of emotion, in words, in colour, in sound, in stone--I don't say that he deserves to live. I could prove to you, if I had time, that Michael Angelo and Dante and Beethoven were the curses of humanity. Much better dead. But, anyhow, they were artists. Even I with my tinpot voice singing 'Annie Laurie' and 'The Sands of Dee' and such-like clap-trap which brings a lump in the throat of the grocer and his wife, am an artist. But you, my dear fellow--with your fifty billiard cues on top of your nose? There's a devil of a lot of skill about it of course--but nothing artistic. It means nothing.”

”Yet if I could perform the feat,” said Andrew, ”thousands and thousands of people would come to see me; more likely a million.”