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Page 44

"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
superstitious.--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 constituted 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
class.

"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 assured."

"It is all simple enough," he said. "I had a horrid dream just before
I woke--nothing circumstantial, 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 superstition, each of which is the very
antithesis 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
constitutes its superstitious 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 superstition 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.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 23:26

Austin and His Friends by Frederic H. Balfour