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Page 4

Then Austin slid carefully off the seat, and stretched himself full
length upon the grass. "I _am_ drunk," he murmured, closing his eyes,
"drunk with the scent of the flowers. Don't you smell them, Lubin? The
air's heavy with it, and it has got into my brain. And how sweet the
grass smells too. I love it--it's like breathing the breath of Nature.
What do legs matter? It's much nicer to roll over the grass wherever
you want to go than to have the bother of walking. Don't worry about
me any more, nice Lubin. Go on tying up your sweet-peas. I'll come and
help you when I'm tired of rolling about. Just now I don't want
anything; I'm drunk--I'm happy--I'm satisfied--I'm happier than I ever
was before. Be kind to the flowers, Lubin; don't tie them too tight.
They're my friends and my lovers. Aren't you a little fond of them
too?"

Then, left to his own reflections, he lay perfectly peaceful and
content staring up into the sky. For months he had been fated to lead
an entirely new life, and now it had actually begun. His entrance upon
it was not bitter. He had flowers growing by his path, and books that
he loved, and one or two friends who loved him. It was all right! And
that was how he spent his first day of acknowledged cripplehood.

Chapter the Second

In a very short time Austin had overcome the initial difficulties of
locomotion, and now began to take regular exercise out of doors. It
would be too much to say that his gait was particularly elegant; but
there really was something triumphal about the way in which he learnt
to brandish his leg with every step he took, and the majestic swing
with which he brought it round to its place in advance of the other.
In fact, he soon found himself stumping along the highroads with
wonderful speed and safety; though to clamber over stiles, and work a
bicycle one-footed, of course took much more practice.

Hitherto I have said nothing about the neighbourhood of Austin's home.
Now when I say neighbourhood, I don't mean the topographical
surroundings--I use the word in its correcter sense of neighbours; and
these it is necessary to refer to in passing. Of course there were
several people living round about. There was the MacTavish family,
for instance, consisting of Mr and Mrs MacTavish, five daughters and
two sons. Mrs MacTavish had a brother who had been knighted, and on
the strength of such near relationship to Sir Titus and Lady
Clandougal, considered herself one of the county. But her claim was
not endorsed, even by the humbler gentry with whom she was forced to
associate, while as for the county proper it is not too much to say
that that august community had never even heard of her. The Miss
MacTavishes, ranging in age from fifteen to five-and-twenty, were
rather gawky young persons, with red hair and a perpetual giggle; in
fact they could not speak without giggling, even if it was to tell you
that somebody was dead. Every now and then Mrs MacTavish would
proclaim, with portentous complacency, that Florrie, or Lizzie, or
Aggie, was "out"--to the awe-struck admiration of her friends; which
meant that the young person referred to had begun to do up her hair in
a sort of bun at the back of her head, and had had her frock let down
a couple of tucks. Austin couldn't bear them, though he was always
scrupulously polite. And the boys were, if anything, less interesting
than the girls. The elder of the two--a freckled young giant named
Jock--was always asking him strange conundrums, such as whether he was
going to put the pot on for the Metropolitan--which conveyed no more
idea to Austin's mind than if he had said it in Chinese; while Sandy,
the younger, used to terrify him out of his wits by shouting out that
Yorkshire had got the hump, or that Jobson was 'not out' for a
century, or that wickets were cheap at the Oval. In fact, the entire
family bored him to extinction, though Aunt Charlotte, who had been an
old school-friend of the mamma, sang their praises perseveringly, and
said that the girls were dears.

Then there was the inevitable vicar, with a wife who piqued herself on
her smart bonnets; a curate, who preached Socialism, wore
knickerbockers, and belonged to the Fabian Society; a few unattached
elderly ladies who had long outlived the reproach of their virginity;
and just two or three other families with nothing particular to
distinguish them one way or another. It may readily be inferred,
therefore, that Austin had not many associates. There was really no
one in the place who interested him in the very least, and the
consequence was that he was generally regarded as unsociable. And so
he was--very unsociable. The companionship of his books, his bicycle,
his flowers and his thoughts was far more precious to him than that of
the silly people who bothered him to join in their vapid diversions
and unseasonable talk, and he rightly acted upon his preference. His
own resources were of such a nature that he never felt alone; and
having but few comrades in the flesh, he wisely courted the society of
those whom, though long since dead, he held in far higher esteem than
all the elderly ladies and curates and MacTavishes who ever lived. His
appetite in literature was keen, but fastidious. He devoured all the
books he could procure about the Renaissance of art in Italy. The
works of Mr Walter Pater were as a treasure-house of suggestion to
him, and did much to form and guide his gradually developing
mentality. He read Plato, being even more fascinated by the exquisite
technique of the dialectic than by the ethical value of the teaching.
And there was one small, slim book that he always carried about with
him, and kept for special reading in the fields and woods. This was
Virgil's Eclogues, the sylvan atmosphere of which penetrated the very
depths of his being, and created in him a moral or spiritual
atmosphere which was its counterpart. He seemed to live amid gracious
pastoral scenes, where beautiful youths and maidens passed a
perpetual springtime in a land of dewy lawns, and shady groves, and
pools, and rippling streams. Daphnis and Mopsus, Corydon, Alexis, and
Amyntas, were all to him real personages, who peopled his solitude,
inspired his poetic fancy, and fostered in his imagination the
elements of an ideal life where the beauty and purity and freshness of
untainted Nature reigned supreme. The accident of his lameness, by
incapacitating him for violent exercise out of doors, ministered to
the development of this spiritual tendency, and threw him back upon
the allurements of a refined idealism. Daphnis became to him the
embodiment, the concrete image, of eternal youthhood, of adolescence
in the abstract, the attribute of an idealised humanity. To lead the
pure Daphnis life of simplicity, stainlessness, communion with
beautiful souls, was to lead the highest life. To find one's bliss in
sunshine, flowers, and the winds of heaven--in both the physical and
moral spheres--was to find the highest bliss. Why should not he,
Austin Trevor, cripple as he was, so live the Daphnis life as to be
himself a Daphnis?

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 27th Apr 2025, 16:31

Austin and His Friends by Frederic H. Balfour