Book: Austin and His Friends

F >> Frederic H. Balfour >> Austin and His Friends




He hopped out of the room in some excitement, full of this new
project. Aunt Charlotte, less enthusiastic, continued knitting
placidly, her only anxiety being lest Austin should strain his back in
leaning over the boxes. In about twenty minutes or so he returned,
followed by Martha, the two carrying between them a battered green
chest full of odds and ends, which she had carefully dusted before
bringing into the drawing-room. "There!" he said, triumphantly;
"here's treasure-trove, if you like. Put it on the chair, Martha,
close by me, and then I can empty it at my leisure. Now for a plunge
into the past. Isn't it going to be fun, auntie?"

"I hope, my dear, that the entertainment will come up to your
expectations," observed Aunt Charlotte, equably.

"Sure to," said Austin, beginning to rummage about. "What are these?
Old exercise-books, as I live! Oh, do look here; isn't this wonderful?
Here's a translation: 'Horace, Liber I, Satire 5.' How brown the ink
is. _Aricia a little town on the way to Appia received me coming from
the magnificent city of Rome with poor accommodation. Heliodorus by far
the most learned orator of the Greeks accompanied me. We came to the
market-place of Appius filled with sailors and insolent brokers._--Were
they stockbrokers, I wonder? Oh, auntie, these are exercises done by my
grandfather when he was a little boy. Poor little grandfather; what
pains he seems to have taken over it, and how beautifully it's written.
I hope he got a lot of marks; do you think he did? _The sailor, soaked
in poor wine, and the passenger, earnestly celebrate their absent
mistresses._ Poor things! They don't seem to have had a very enjoyable
excursion. However, I can't read it all through. Oh--here are a lot of
letters. Not very interesting. All about contracts and sales, and silly
things like that. Here's a funny book, though. Do look, auntie. It must
have been printed centuries ago by the look of it. I wonder what it's
all about. _A Sequel to the Antidote to the Miseries of Human Life,
containing a Further Account of Mrs Placid and her daughter Rachel. By
the Author of the Antidote._ What _does_ it all mean? 'Squire
Bustle'--'Miss Finakin'--'Uncle Jeremiah'--used people to read books
like this when grandfather was a little boy? It looks quite charming,
but I think we'll put it by for the present. What's this? Oh, a
daguerreotype, I suppose--an extraordinary-looking, smirking old
person in a great bonnet with large roses all round her face, and tied
with huge ribbons under her chin. Dear auntie, why don't you wear
bonnets like that? You _would_ look so sweet! Pamphlets--tracts--oh
dear, these are all dreadfully dry. What a mixture it all is, to be
sure. The things seem to have been shot in anyhow. Hullo--an album.
_Now_ we shall see. This is evidently of much later date than the other
treasures, though it is at the bottom of them all."

He dragged out an old, soiled, photographic album bound in purple
morocco, and all falling to pieces. It proved to contain family
portraits, none of them particularly attractive in themselves, but
interesting enough to Austin. He turned over the pages one by one,
slowly. Aunt Charlotte glanced curiously at them over her spectacles
from where she sat.

"I don't think I remember ever seeing that album," she said. "I wonder
whom it can have belonged to. Ah! I expect it must have been your
father's. Yes--there's a photograph of your Uncle Ernest, when he was
just of age. You never saw him, he went to Australia before you were
born. Those ladies I don't know. What a string of them there are, to
be sure. I suppose they were----"

"There she is!" cried Austin, suddenly bringing his hand down upon the
page. "That's my mother. I told you I should know her, didn't I?"

Aunt Charlotte jumped. "The very photograph!" she exclaimed. "I had no
idea there was a copy in existence. But how in the wide world did you
recognise it?"

Austin continued examining it for some seconds without replying. "I
don't think it quite does her justice," he said at last, thoughtfully.
"The position isn't well arranged. It makes the chin too small."

"Quite true!" assented Aunt Charlotte. "It's the way she's holding her
head." Then, with another start: "But how can you know that?"

"Because I saw her only the other day," said Austin.

For a moment Aunt Charlotte thought he was wool-gathering. He spoke in
such a perfectly calm, natural tone, that he might have been referring
to someone who lived in the next street. But a glance at his face
convinced her that he meant exactly what he said.

"Austin!" she exclaimed. "What can you be thinking about?"

"It's perfectly true," he assured her. "I saw her a few weeks ago in
the garden. She stood and looked at me over the gate, and then
suddenly disappeared."

"And you really believe it?" cried Aunt Charlotte in amaze.

"I don't believe it, I know it," he answered, laying down the
photograph. "I saw her as distinctly as I see you now. It was that day
we had been having tea at the vicarage, when we met the man who wanted
to set fire to some bishop or other. Ask Lubin; he'll remember it fast
enough."

This time Aunt Charlotte fairly collapsed. It was no longer any use
flouting Austin's statements; they were too calm, too collected, to be
disposed of by mere derision. There could be no doubt that he firmly
believed he had seen something or somebody, and whatever might be the
explanation of that belief it had enabled him not only to recognise
his mother's photograph but to criticise, and criticise correctly, a
certain defect in the portrait. She could not deny that what he said
was true. "Can such things really be?" she uttered under her breath.

"Dear auntie, they _are_," said Austin. "I've been conscious of it for
months, and lately I've had the proof. Indeed, I've had more than
one. There are people all round us, only it isn't given to everybody
to see them. And it isn't really very astonishing that it should be
so, when one comes to think of it."

From that day forward Aunt Charlotte watched Austin with a sense of
something akin to awe. Certainly he was different from other folk.
With all his love of life, his keen interest in his surroundings, and
his wealth of boyish spirits, he seemed a being apart--a being who
lived not only in this world but on the boundary between this world
and another. As an orthodox Christian woman of course she believed in
that other--"another and a better world," as she was accustomed to
call it. But that that world was actually around her, hemming her in,
within reach of her fingertips so to speak, that was quite a new idea.
It gave her the creeps, and she strove to put it out of her head as
much as possible. But ere many weeks elapsed, it was forced upon her
in a very painful way, and she could no longer ignore the feeling
which stole over her from time to time that not only was the boundary
between the two worlds a very narrow one, but that her poor Austin
would not be long before he crossed it altogether.

For there was no doubt that he was beginning to fade. He got paler
and thinner by degrees, and one day she found him in a dead faint upon
the floor. The slight uneasiness in his hip had increased to actual
pain, and the pain had spread to his back. In an agony of apprehension
she summoned the doctor, and the doctor with hollow professional
cheerfulness said that that sort of thing wouldn't do at all, and that
Master Austin must make up his mind to lie up a bit. And so he was put
to bed, and people smiled ghastly smiles which were far more
heartrending than sobs, and talked about taking him away to some
beautiful warm southern climate where he would soon grow strong and
well again. Austin only said that he was very comfortable where he
was, and that he wouldn't think of being taken away, because he knew
how dreadfully poor Aunt Charlotte suffered at sea, and travelling was
a sad nuisance after all. And indeed it would have been impossible to
move him, for his sufferings were occasionally very great. Sometimes
he would writhe in strange agonies all night long, till they used to
wonder how he would live through it; but when morning came he scarcely
ever remembered anything at all, and in answer to enquiries always
said that he had had a very good night indeed, thank you. Once or
twice he seemed to have a dim recollection of something--some "bustle
and fluff," as he expressed it--during his troubled sleep; and then he
would ask anxiously whether he really had been giving them any bother,
and assure them that he was so very sorry, and hoped they would
forgive him for having been so stupid. At which Aunt Charlotte had to
smile and joke as heroically as she knew how.

There were some days, however, when he was quite free from pain, and
then he was as bright and cheerful as ever. He lay in his white bed
surrounded by the books he loved, which he read intermittently; and
every now and then, when Aunt Charlotte thought he was strong enough,
a visitor would be admitted. Roger St Aubyn, now back from Italy,
often dropped in to sit with him, and these were golden hours to
Austin, who listened delightedly to his friend's absorbing
descriptions of the beautiful places he had been to and the wonderful
old legends that were attached to them. Then nothing would content him
but that Lubin must come up occasionally and tell him how the garden
was looking, and what he thought of the prospects for next summer, and
answer all sorts of searching questions as to the operations in which
he had been engaged since Austin had been a prisoner. Austin enjoyed
these colloquies with Lubin; the very sight of him, he said, was like
having a glimpse of the garden. But somehow Lubin's eyes always looked
rather red and misty when he came out of the room, and it was noticed
that he went about his work in a very half-hearted and listless
manner.

One day, however, a visitor called whose presence was not so
sympathetic. This was Mr Sheepshanks, the vicar. Of course he was
quite right to call--indeed it would have been an unpardonable
omission had he not done so; at the same time his little furtive
movements and professional air of solemnity got on Austin's nerves,
and produced a sense of irritation that was certainly not conducive to
his well-being. At last the point was reached to which the vicar had
been gradually leading up, and he suggested that, now that it had
pleased Providence to stretch Austin on a couch of pain, it was
advisable that he should think about making his peace with God.

"Make my peace with God?" repeated Austin, opening his eyes. "What
about? We haven't quarrelled!"

"My dear young friend, that is scarcely the way for a creature to
speak of its relations with its Creator," said the vicar, gravely
shocked.

"Isn't it?" said Austin. "I'm very sorry; I thought you were hinting
that I had some grudge against the Creator, and that I ought to make
it up. Because I haven't, not in the very least. I've had a lovely
life, and I'm more obliged to Him for it than I can say."

"Ahem," coughed the vicar dubiously. "One scarcely speaks of being
_obliged_ to the Almighty, my dear Austin. We owe Him our everlasting
gratitude for His mercies to us, and when we think how utterly
unworthy the best of us are of the very least attention on His
part----"

"I don't see that at all," interrupted Austin. "On the contrary,
seeing that God brought us all into existence without consulting any
one of us I think we have a right to expect a great deal of attention
on His part. Surely He has more responsibility towards somebody He has
made than that somebody has towards Him. That's only common sense, it
seems to me."

The vicar thought he had never had such an unmanageable penitent to
deal with since he took orders. "But how about sin?" he suggested,
shifting his ground. "Have you no sense of sin?"

"I'm almost afraid not," acknowledged Austin, with well-bred concern.
"Ought I to have?"

"We all ought to have," replied the vicar sternly. "We have all
sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

"I don't see how we could have done otherwise," remarked Austin, who
was getting rather bored. "Little people like us can't be expected to
come up to a standard which I suppose implies divine perfection. I
dare say I've done lots of sins, but for the life of me I've no idea
what they were. I don't think I ever thought about it."

"It's time you thought about it now, then," said the vicar, getting
up. "I won't worry you any more to-day, because I see you're tired.
But I shall pray for you, and when next I come I hope you'll
understand my meaning more clearly than you do at present."

"That is very kind of you," said Austin, putting out his almost
transparent hand. "I'm awfully sorry to give you so much trouble.
You'll see Aunt Charlotte before you go away? I know she'll expect
you to go in for a cup of tea."

So the vicar escaped, almost as glad to do so as Austin was to be left
in peace. And the worst of it was that, though he cudgelled his brains
for many hours that night, he could not think of any sins in
particular that Austin had been in the habit of committing. He was
kind, he was pure, and he was unselfish. His exaggerated abuse of
people he didn't like was more than half humorous, and was rather a
fault than a sin. Yet he must be a sinner somehow, because everybody
was. Perhaps his sin consisted in his not being pious in the
evangelical sense of the word. Yet he loved goodness, and the vicar
had once heard a great Roman Catholic divine say that loving goodness
was the same thing as loving God. But Austin had never said that he
loved God; he had only said that he was much obliged to Him. The poor
vicar worried himself about all this until he fell asleep, taking
refuge in the reflection that if he couldn't understand the state of
Austin's soul there was always the probability that God did.

Aunt Charlotte, on her side, was too much absorbed in her anxiety and
sorrow to trouble herself with such misgivings. The light of her life
was burning very low, and bade fair to be extinguished altogether.
What were theological conundrums to her now? It would be positively
wicked to fear that anything dreadful could happen to Austin because
he had forgotten his catechism and was not impressed by the vicar's
prosy discourses in church. Face to face with the possibility of
losing him, all her conventionality collapsed. The boy had been
everything in the world to her, and now he was going elsewhere.

The house was a very mournful place just then, and the servants moved
noiselessly about as though in the presence of some strange mystery.
The only person in it who seemed really happy was Austin himself. A
great London surgeon came to see him once, and then there was talk of
hiring a trained nurse. But Austin combatted this project with all the
vigour at his command, protesting that trained nurses always scented
themselves with chloroform and put him in mind of a hospital; he
really could not have one in the room. Some assistance, however, was
necessary, for the disease was making such rapid progress that he
could no longer turn himself in bed; and Austin, recognising the fact,
insisted that Lubin and no other should tend him. So Lubin, tearfully
overjoyed at the distinction, exchanged the garden for the
sick-chamber, into which, as Austin said, he seemed to bring the very
scent of grass and flowers; and there he passed his time, day after
day, raising the helpless boy in his strong arms, shifting his
position, anticipating his slightest wish, and even sleeping in a low
truckle-bed in a corner of the room at night.

Sometimes Austin would lie, silent and motionless, for hours, with a
perfectly calm and happy look upon his face. This was when the pain
relaxed its grip upon him. At other times he would talk almost
incessantly, apparently holding a conversation with people whom Lubin
could not see. One would have thought that someone very dear to him
had come to pay him a visit, and that he and this mysterious someone
were deeply attached to each other, so bright and playful were the
smiles that rippled upon his lips. He spoke in a low, rapid undertone,
so that Lubin could only catch a word or two here and there; then
there would be a pause, as though to allow for some unheard reply, to
which Austin appeared to be listening intently; and then off he would
go again as fast as ever. His eyes had a wistful, far-off look in
them, and every now and then he seemed puzzled at Lubin's presence,
not being quite able to reconcile the actual surroundings of the
sick-room with those other scenes that were now dawning upon his
sight, scenes in which Lubin had no place. There was a little
confusion in his mind in consequence; but as the days went on things
gradually became much clearer.

Now Austin, in spite of his utter indifference to, or indeed aversion
from, theological religion, had always loved his Sundays. To him they
were as days of heaven upon earth, and in them he appeared to take an
instinctive delight, as though the very atmosphere of the day filled
him with spiritual aspirations, and thoughts which belonged not to
this world. Above all, he loved Sunday evenings, which appeared to him
a season hallowed in some special way, when all high and pure
influences were felt in their greatest intensity. And now another
Sunday came round, and, as had been the case all through his illness,
he felt and knew by instinct what day it was. He lay quite still, as
the distant chime of the church bells was wafted through the air,
faint but just audible in the silent room. Aunt Charlotte smiled
tenderly at him through her tears; she was going to church, poor soul,
to pray for his recovery, though knowing quite well that what she
called his recovery was beyond hope. Austin shot a brilliant smile at
her in return, and Aunt Charlotte rushed out of the room choking.

The day drew to its close, the darkness gathered, and Austin, who had
been suffering considerably during the afternoon, was now easier. At
about seven o'clock his aunt stole softly in, unable to keep away, and
looked at him. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be asleep.

"How has he been this afternoon?" she asked of Lubin in an undertone.

"Seemed to be sufferin' a bit about two hour ago, but nothing more 'n
usual," said Lubin. "Then he got easier and sank asleep, quite
quiet-like. He's breathin' regular enough."

"He doesn't look worse--there's even a little colour in his cheeks,"
observed Aunt Charlotte, as she watched the sleeping boy. "He's in
quite a nice, natural slumber. If nursing could only bring him round!"

"I'd nurse him all my life for that matter," replied Lubin huskily,
standing on the other side of the bed.

"I know you would, Lubin," cried Aunt Charlotte. "You've been
goodness itself to my poor darling. What wouldn't I do--what wouldn't
we all do--to save his precious life!"

"Is he waking up?" whispered Lubin, bending over. "Nay--just turning
his head a bit to one side. He's comfortable enough for the time
being. If it wasn't for them crooel pains as seizes him----"

"Ah, but they're only the symptoms of the disease!" sighed Aunt
Charlotte, mournfully. "And the doctor says that if they were to leave
him suddenly, it--wouldn't--be a good--sign." Here she began to sob
under her breath. "It might mean that his poor body was no longer
capable of feeling. Well, God knows what's best for all of us. Aren't
you getting nearly worn out yourself, Lubin?"

"I? Laws no, ma'am," answered Lubin almost scornfully. "I get a sort
o' dog's snooze every now and again, and when Martha was here this
morning I slept for four hour on end. No fear o' me caving in. Ah,
would ye now?" observing some feeble attempt on Austin's part to shift
his position. "There!" as he deftly slipped his hands under him, and
turned him a little to one side. "That eases him a bit. It's stiff
work, lying half the day with one's back in the same place."

Then Martha appeared at the door, and insisted on Aunt Charlotte going
downstairs and trying to take some nourishment. In the sick-room all
was silent. Austin continued sleeping peacefully, an expression of
absolute contentment and happiness upon his face, while Lubin sat by
the bedside watching.

But Austin did not go on sleeping all the night. There came a time
when his deep unconsciousness was invaded by a very strange and
wonderful sensation. He no longer felt himself lying motionless in
bed, as he had been doing for so long. He seemed rather to be
floating, as one might float along the current of a strong, swift
stream. He felt no bed under him, though what it was that held him up
he couldn't guess, and it never occurred to him to wonder. All he knew
was that his pains had vanished, that his body was scarcely palpable,
and that the smooth, gliding motion--if motion it could be called--was
the most exquisite sensation he had ever felt. What _could_ be
happening? Austin, his mind now wide awake, and thoroughly on the
alert, lay for some time in rapt enjoyment of this new experience.
Then he opened his eyes, and found that he was in bed after all; the
nightlight was burning on a table by the window, the bookcase stood
where it did, and he could even discern Lubin, who seemed to have
dropped asleep, in an armchair three or four yards away. That made the
mystery all the greater, and Austin waited in expectant silence to see
what would happen next.

Suddenly, as in a flash, the whole of his past life unrolled itself
before his consciousness. He saw himself a toddling baby, a growing
child, a schoolboy, a happy young rascal chasing sheep; then came a
period of pain, a gradual convalescence, a joyful life in the country
air, a life of reading, a life of pleasant dreams, a life into which
entered his friendship with St Aubyn, his days with Lubin in the
garden, his encounters with Mr Buskin, and those strange experiences
that had reached him from another world. That other world was coming
very near to him now, and he was coming very near to it! And all these
recollections formed one marvellous panorama, one great simultaneous
whole, with no appearance of succession, but just as though it had
happened all at once. Austin seemed to be past reasoning; he had
advanced to a stage where thinking and speculating were things gone by
for ever, and his perceptions were wholly passive. There was his
life, spread out in consciousness before him; and meanwhile he was
undergoing a change.

He looked up, and saw a dim, violet cloud hanging horizontally over
him. It was in shape like a human form; his own form. At that moment a
great tremor, a sort of convulsive thrill, passed through him as he
lay, jarring every nerve, and awaking him, at that supreme crisis, to
the existence of his body. A sense of confusion followed; and then he
seemed to pass out of his own head, and found himself poised in the
air immediately over the place where he had just been lying. He saw
the violet cloud no more, though whether he had coalesced with it, or
the cloud itself had become disintegrated, he could not tell; then, by
a sort of instinct, he assumed an erect position, and saw that he was
balanced, somehow, a little distance from the bed, looking down upon
it. And on the bed, connected with him by a faintly luminous cord, lay
the white, still, beautiful form of a dead boy. "And that was my
body!" he cried, in awestruck wonder, though his words caused no
vibration in the air.

He looked at himself, and saw that he was glorious, encircled by a
radiant fire-mist. And he was throbbing and pulsating with life, able
to move hither and thither without effort, free from lameness, free
from weight, strong, vigorous, full of energy, poised like a bird in
the pure air of heaven, ready to take his flight in any conceivable
direction at the faintest motion of his own will. Then the
resplendence that enveloped him extended, until the whole room was
full of it; and in the midst of it there stood a very sweet and
gracious figure, robed in white drapery, and with eyes of intensest
love, more beautiful to look at than anything that Austin had ever
dreamed of. "Mother!" he whispered, as he glided swiftly towards her.

The walls and ceiling of the room dissolved, and a wonderful
landscape, the pageantry and splendour of the Spirit Land, revealed
itself. It was bathed in a light that never was on land or sea, and
there were sunny slopes, and jewelled meadows, and silvery streams,
and flowers that only grow in Paradise. Austin was dazzled with its
glory; here at last was the realisation of all he had dimly fancied,
all he had ever longed for. And yet as he floated outwards and upwards
into the heavenly realms, the crown and climax of his happiness lay in
the thought that he could always, by the mere impulse of desire,
revisit the sweet old garden he had loved, and watch Lubin at his
work among the flowers, and stand, though all unseen, beside the old
stone fountain where he had passed such happy times in the earth-life
he was leaving.

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