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    prepared by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Jeannie Howse, and the
    Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
    ()



    AUSTIN AND HIS FRIENDS

    by

    FREDERIC H. BALFOUR

    Author Of "The Expiation of Eugene," etc.

    London
    Greening & Co., Ltd.

    1906







    [Illustration: DAPHNIS AT THE FOUNTAIN]



    * * * * *

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    The old-fashioned ghost-story was always terrifying and ghastly;
    something that made people afraid to go to bed, or to look over their
    shoulders, or to enter a room in the dark. It dealt with apparitions
    in a white sheet, and clanking chains, and dreadful faces that peered
    out from behind the window curtains in a haunted chamber. And the more
    blood-curdling it was, the more keenly people enjoyed it--until they
    were left alone, and then they were apt to wish that they had been
    reading Robinson Crusoe or Alison's History of Europe instead. Now the
    present book embodies an attempt to write a _cheerful_ ghost-story; a
    story in which the ghostly element is of a friendly and pleasant
    character, and sheds a sense of happiness and sunshine over the entire
    life of the ghost-seer. Whether the author has succeeded in doing so
    will be for his readers to decide. It is only necessary to add that he
    has not introduced a single supernormal incident that has not occurred
    and been authenticated in the recorded experiences of persons lately
    or still alive.

    * * * * *




    Austin and His Friends

    Chapter the First


    It was rather a beautiful old house--the house where Austin lived.
    That is, it was old-fashioned, low-browed, solid, and built of that
    peculiar sort of red brick which turns a rich rose-colour with age;
    and this warm rosy tint was set off to advantage by the thick mantle
    of dark green ivy in which it was partly encased, and by the row of
    tall white and purple irises which ran along the whole length of the
    sunniest side of the building. There was an ancient sun-dial just
    above the door, and all the windows were made of small, square
    panes--not a foot of plate-glass was there about the place; and if the
    rooms were nor particularly large or stately, they had that
    comfortable and settled look which tells of undisturbed occupancy by
    the same inmates for many years. But the principal charm of the place
    was the garden in which the house stood. In this case the frame was
    really more beautiful than the picture. On one side, the grounds were
    laid out in very formal style, with straight walks, clipped box
    hedges, an old stone fountain, and a perfect bowling-green of a lawn;
    while at right angles to this there was a plot of land in which all
    regularity was set at naught, and sweet-peas, tulips, hollyhocks,
    dahlias, gillyflowers, wall-flowers, sun-flowers, and a dozen others
    equally sweet and friendly shared the soil with gooseberry bushes and
    thriving apple-trees. Taking it all in all, it was a lovable and most
    reposeful home, and Austin, who had lived there ever since he could
    remember, was quite unable to imagine any lot in life that could be
    compared to his.

    Now this was curious, for Austin was a hopeless cripple. Up to the age
    of sixteen, he had been the most active, restless, healthy boy in all
    the countryside. He used to spend his days in boating, bicycling,
    climbing hills, and wandering at large through the woods and leafy
    lanes which stretched far and wide in all directions of the compass.
    One of his chief diversions had been sheep-chasing; nothing delighted
    him more than to start a whole flock of the astonished creatures
    careering madly round some broad green meadow, their fat woolly backs
    wobbling and jolting along in a compact mass of mild perplexity at
    this sudden interruption of their never-ending meal, while Austin
    scampered at their tails, as much excited with the sport as Don
    Quixote himself when he dispersed the legions of Alifanfaron. Let
    hare-coursers, otter-hunters, and pigeon-torturers blame him if they
    choose; the exercise probably did the sheep a vast amount of good, and
    Austin fully believed that they enjoyed it quite as much as he did.
    Then suddenly a great calamity befell him. A weakness made itself
    apparent in his right knee, accompanied by considerable pain. The
    family doctor looked anxious and puzzled; a great surgeon was called
    in, and the two shook their heads together in very portentous style.
    It was a case of caries, they said, and Austin mustn't hunt sheep any
    more. Soon he had to lie upon the sofa for several hours a day, and
    what made Aunt Charlotte more anxious than anything else was that he
    didn't seem to mind lying on the sofa, as he would have done if he had
    felt strong and well; on the contrary, he grew thin and listless, and
    instead of always jumping up and trying to evade the doctor's orders,
    appeared quite content to lie there, quiet and resigned, from one
    week's end to another. That, thought shrewd Aunt Charlotte, betokened
    mischief. Another consultation followed, and then a very terrible
    sentence was pronounced. It was necessary, in order to save his life,
    that Austin should lose his leg.

    What does a boy generally feel under such circumstances? What would
    you and I feel? Austin's first impulse was to burst into a passionate
    fit of weeping, and he yielded to it unreservedly. But, the fit once
    past, he smiled brilliantly through his tears. True, he would never
    again be able to enjoy those glorious ramps up hill and down dale that
    up till then had sent the warm life coursing through his veins. Never
    more would he go scorching along the level roads against the wind on
    his cherished bicycle. The open-air athletic days of stress and effort
    were gone, never to return. But there might be compensations; who
    could tell? Happiness, all said and done, need not depend upon a
    shin-bone more or less. He might lose a leg, but legs were, after all,
    a mere concomitant to life--life did not consist in legs. There would
    still be something left to live for, and who could tell whether that
    something might not be infinitely grander and nobler and more
    satisfying than even the rapture of flying ten miles an hour on his
    wheel, or chevying a flock of agitated sheep from one pasture to
    another?

    Where this sudden inspiration came from, he then had no idea; but come
    it did, in the very nick of time, and helped him to dry his tears. The
    day of destiny also came, and his courage was put to the test. He knew
    well enough, of course, that of the operation he would feel nothing.
    But the sight of the hard, white, narrow pallet on which he had to
    lie, the cold glint of the remorseless instruments, the neatly folded
    packages of lint and cotton-wool, and the faint, horrible smell of
    chloroform turned him rather sick for a minute. Then he glanced
    downwards, with a sense of almost affectionate yearning, at the limb
    he was about to lose. "Good-bye, dear old leg!" he murmured, with a
    little laugh which smothered a rising sob. "We've had some lovely
    ramps together, but the best of friends must part."

    Afterwards, during the long days of dreary convalescence, he began to
    feel an interest in what remained of it; and then he found himself
    taking a sort of æsthetic pleasure in the smooth, beautifully-rounded
    stump, which really was in its way quite an artistic piece of work. At
    last, when the flesh was properly healed, and the white skin growing
    healthily again around his abbreviated member, he grew eager to make
    acquaintance with his new leg; for of course it was never intended
    that he should perform the rest of his earthly pilgrimage with only a
    leg and a half--let the added half be of what material it might. And
    his excitement may be better imagined than described when, one
    afternoon, the surgeon came in with a most wonderful object in his
    arms--a lovely prop of bright, black, burnished wood, set off with
    steel couplings and the most fascinating straps you ever saw. And the
    best of all was the socket, in which his soft white stump fitted as
    comfortably as though they had been made for one another--as, in fact,
    one of them had been. It was a little difficult to walk just at first,
    for Austin was accustomed to begin by throwing out his foot, whereas
    now he had to begin by moving his thigh; this naturally made him
    stagger, and for some time he could only get along with the aid of a
    crutch. But to be able to walk again at all was a great achievement,
    and then, if you only looked at it in the proper light, it really was
    great fun.

    There was, however, one person who, probably from a defective sense of
    humour, was unable to see any fun in it at all. Aunt Charlotte would
    have given her very ears for Austin, but her affection was of a
    somewhat irritable sort, and generally took the form of scolding. She
    was not a stupid woman by any means, but there was one thing in the
    world she never could understand, and that was Austin himself. He
    wasn't like other boys one bit, she always said. He had such a queer,
    topsy-turvy way of looking at things; would express the most
    outrageous opinions with an innocent unconsciousness that made her
    long to box his ears, and support the most arrant absurdities by
    arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect.
    Look at him now, for instance; a cripple for life, and pretending to
    see nothing in it but a joke, and expressing as much admiration for
    his horrible wooden leg as though it had been a king's sceptre! In
    Aunt Charlotte's view, Austin ought to have pitied himself immensely,
    and expressed a hope that God would help him to bear his burden with
    orthodox resignation to the Divine will; instead of which, he seemed
    totally unconscious of having any burden at all--a state of mind that
    was nothing less than impious. Austin was now seventeen, and it was
    high time that he took more serious views of life. Ever since he was a
    baby he had been her special charge; for his mother had died in giving
    him birth, and his father had followed her about a twelvemonth later.
    She had always done her duty to the boy, and loved him as though he
    had been her own; but she reminded onlookers rather of a conscientious
    elderly cat with limited views of natural history condemned by
    circumstances to take care of a very irresponsible young eaglet. The
    eaglet, on his side, was entirely devoted to his protectress, but it
    was impossible for him not to feel a certain lenient and amused
    contempt for her very limited horizon.

    "Auntie," he said to her one day, "you're just like a frog at the
    bottom of a well. You think the speck of blue you see above you is the
    entire sky, and the water you paddle up and down in is the ocean. Why
    can't you take a rather more cosmic view of things?"

    This extraordinary remark occurred in the course of a wrangle between
    the two, because Austin insisted on his pet cat--a plump, white,
    matronly creature he had christened 'Gioconda,' because (so _he_ said)
    she always smiled so sweetly--sitting up at the dinner-table and being
    fed with tit-bits off his own fork; and Aunt Charlotte objected to
    this proceeding on the ground that the proper place for cats was in
    the kitchen. Austin, on his side, averred that cats were in many ways
    much superior to human beings; that they had been worshipped as gods
    by the philosophical Egyptians because they were so scornful and
    mysterious; and that Gioconda herself was not only the divinest cat
    alive, but entitled to respect, if only as an embodiment and
    representative of cat-hood in the abstract, which was a most important
    element in the economy of the universe. It was when Aunt Charlotte
    stigmatised these philosophical reflections as a pack of impertinent
    twaddle that Austin had had the audacity to say that she was like a
    frog.

    And now her eaglet had been maimed for life, and whatever he might
    feel about it himself her own responsibilities were certainly much
    increased. At this very moment, for instance, after having practised
    stumping about the room for half-an-hour he insisted on going
    downstairs. Of course the idea was ridiculous. Even the doctor shook
    his head, while old Martha, who had tubbed Austin when he was two
    years old, joined in the general protest. But Austin, disdaining to
    argue the point with any one of them, had already hobbled out of the
    room, and before they were well aware of it had begun to essay the
    descent perilous. Ominous bumps were heard, and then a dull thud as of
    a body falling. But a bend in the wall had caught the body, and the
    explorer was none the worse. Then Aunt Charlotte, rushing back into
    the bedroom, flung open the window wide.

    "Lubin!" she shouted lustily.

    A young gardener boy, tall, round-faced and curly-haired, glanced up
    astonished from his work among the sweet-peas.

    "Come up here directly and carry Master Austin downstairs. He's got a
    wooden leg and hasn't learnt how to use it."

    The consequence of which was that two minutes later Austin, panting
    and enraged at the failure of his first attempt at independence, found
    himself firmly encircled by a pair of strong young arms, lifted gently
    from the ground, and carried swiftly and safely downstairs and out at
    the garden door.

    "Now you just keep quiet, Master Austin," murmured Lubin, chuckling as
    Austin began to kick. "No use your starting to run before you know how
    to walk. Wooden legs must be humoured a bit, Sir; 'twon't do to expect
    too much of 'em just at first, you see. This one o' yours is mighty
    handsome to look at, I don't deny, but it's not accustomed to
    staircases and maybe it'll take some time before it is. Hold tight,
    Sir; only a few yards more now. There! Here we are on the lawn at
    last. Now you can try your paces at your leisure."

    "You're awfully nice to me, Lubin," gasped Austin, red with
    mortification, as he slipped from the lad's arms on to the grass, "but
    I felt just now as if I could have killed you, all the same."

    "Lor', Sir, I don't mind," said Lubin. "I doubt that was no more'n
    natural. Can you stand steady? Here--lay hold o' my arm. Slow and
    sure's the word. Look out for that flower-bed. Now, then, round you
    go--that's it. Ah!"--as Austin fell sprawling on the grass. "Now how
    are you going to get up again, I should like to know? Seems to me the
    first thing you've got to learn is not to lose your balance, 'cause
    once you're down 'tain't the easiest thing in creation to scramble up
    again. You'll have to stick to the crutch at first, I reckon. Up we
    come! Now let's see how you can fare along a bit all by yourself."

    Austin was thankful for the support of his crutch, with the aid of
    which he managed to stagger about for a few minutes at quite a
    respectable speed. It reminded him almost of the far-off days when he
    was learning to ride his bicycle. At last he thought he would like to
    rest a bit, and was much surprised when, on flinging himself down
    upon a garden seat, his leg flew up in the air.

    "Lively sort o' limb, this new leg o' yours, Sir," commented Lubin, as
    he bent it into a more decorous position. "You'll have to take care it
    don't carry you off with it one o' these fine days. Seems to me it
    wants taming, and learning how to behave itself in company. I heard
    tell of a cork leg once upon a time as was that nimble it started off
    running on its own account, and no earthly power could stop it.
    Wouldn't have mattered so much if it'd had nobody but itself to
    consider, but unluckily the gentleman it belonged to happened to be
    screwed on to the top end of it, and of course he had to follow. They
    do say as how he's following it still--poor beggar! Must be worn to a
    shadow by this time, I should think. But p'raps it ain't true after
    all. There are folks as'll say anything."

    "I expect it's true enough," replied Austin cheerfully. "If you want a
    thing to be true, all you've got to do is to believe it--believe it as
    hard as you can. That makes it true, you see. At least, that's what
    the new psychology teaches. Thought creates things, you
    understand--though how it works I confess I can't explain. But never
    mind. Oh, dear, how drunk I am!"

    "Drunk, Sir? No, no, only a bit giddy," said Lubin, as he stood
    watching Austin with his hands upon his hips. "You're not over strong
    yet, and that new leg of yours has been giving you too much exercise
    to begin with. You just keep quiet a few minutes, and you'll soon be
    as right as ninepence."

    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

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