Frederic Henry Balfour

“ 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?
No wonder a boy like this was voted unsociable. No wonder Sandy and Jock despised him as a muff, and the young ladies deplored his unaccountably elusive ways. The truth was that Austin simply had no use for any of them; his life was complete without them, it contained no niche into which they could ever fit. Lubin was a far more congenial comrade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One day a great joy came to Austin. He was hobbling about the garden with his aunt, when all of a sudden he saw Roger St Aubyn approaching them across the lawn. It was with immense pride that he presented his friend to Aunt Charlotte, who, as may be remembered, had been just a little huffy that St Aubyn had never called on her before; but now that he had actually come the small grievance was forgotten in a moment, and she welcomed him with charming cordiality.
"It is all the pleasanter to meet you," she said, "as I have now an opportunity of thanking you for all your kindness to Austin. ”

“ Aunt Charlotte blushed hotly. She felt angry with herself for having given him an opening for such a remark, and annoyed with him for taking advantage of it. "Let me give you some more tea," she said.
"Thank you so much, but I never exceed two cups," replied Mr Ogilvie, who did not particularly care for tea. "And yet there comes a time, you know, when the sight of so peaceful and attractive a home as this makes one wish that one had one like it of one's own. Of course a man has his tastes, his hobbies, his ambitions—every man, I mean, of character. And I am a man of character. ”

“ I may be one-sided, prejudiced, what you will, but I cannot help looking upon a public performer as I look upon no other human being. And I pity the performer, too; he takes himself so seriously, he fails so completely to realise what he really is. And the danger of going on the stage is that, once an actor, always an actor. Let a man once get bitten by the craze, and there's no hope for him. Only the very finest natures can escape. The fascination is too strong. He's ruined for any other career, however honourable and brilliant."
"Is that so, really?" asked Austin. ”

“ It really is very good of its kind, and the colours are wonderfully preserved."
"It's lovely!" sighed Austin, as he walked slowly up the hall, feasting his eyes once more on the beautiful fabrics. "What a thing to live with! Just think of having all these charming people as one's daily companions. I shouldn't want them to come to life, I like them just as they are. If they moved or spoke the charm would be broken. Why don't you spend hours every day in this wonderful place?"
"My dear boy, I haven't such an imagination as you have," answered St Aubyn, laughing. ”

“ But he's a gentleman, you understand. And if you could only see the sort of people my poor aunt tries to force upon me!"
"I think you may add me to Lubin—as your friend," observed St Aubyn; at which Austin flushed with pleasure. "But now, one other word. You say you want to realise your highest self. Well, the way to do it is not to live for yourself alone; it is to live for others. To save oneself one must first lose oneself—forget oneself, when occasion arises—for the sake of other people. It is only by self-sacrifice for the sake of others that the supreme heights are to be attained." ”

“ What is an artist?"
"An artist," exclaimed Austin, kindling, "is one who can see the beauty everywhere."
"The beauty?" repeated St Aubyn.
"The beauty that exists everywhere, even in ugly things. The beauty that ordinary people don't see," returned Austin. "Anybody can see beauty in what are called beautiful things—light, and colour, and grace. But it takes an artist to see beauty in a muddy road, and dripping branches, and drenching rain. ”

“ How nice," exclaimed Austin, brightly. "I certainly can't fancy myself old a bit. How funny it would be if one always preserved one's youthful shape and features, while one's skin got all cracked and rough and wrinkled like that old youth over there! The effect would be rather ghastly. But I don't want to grow old in any sense. I should like to remain a boy all my life. I suppose that in the other world people may live a thousand years and always remain eighteen. I'm nearly eighteen myself."
St Aubyn could not help casting a glance of keen interest at the boy as he said this. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Now I should propose 'The Art of Creation'—do you know it? It shows that the only possible creator is Thought, and explains how everything exists in idea before it takes tangible shape. This applies to the universe at large, as well as to everything we make ourselves. I'd tell the boys that whenever they think, they are really creating, so that——"
"I should vastly like to know where you pick up all these extraordinary notions!" interrupted the vicar, who could not for the life of him make out whether Austin was in jest or earnest. ”

“ The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types, we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God."
Austin delighted in symbolism, and these apparent paradoxes fascinated him. ”

“ This charming house of yours is a perfect haven of rest. Why do people knock about the world as they do, when they might stay quietly at home?"
"Nay, it is rather I who should ask you that," laughed Aunt Charlotte. "It is you who have been knocking about, you know, not I. Men are so fond of adventures, while we women have to content ourselves with a very humdrum sort of life. You've been a great traveller, have you not?"
This was a mild attempt at pumping on the part of Aunt Charlotte, for Mr Ogilvie certainly did not give one the idea of an explorer. ”

“ Oh, auntie, auntie, I shall never have faith in you again."
"You're a very disrespectful boy, that's what you are," retorted Aunt Charlotte, turning as pink as her ribbons. "The gentleman we're speaking of must be quite elderly, several years older than I am, and, for all I know, he may have a wife and half-a-dozen grown-up children by this time. You let your tongue wag a very great deal too fast, I can tell you, Austin." ”

“ The schoolroom was a desert, arid and unsatisfying; whereas the garden, the enclosed space which held stained cups of beauty and purple gold-eyed bells, that was a jewelled sanctuary. Lubin was nearer the heart of things than Freeman and Macaulay, though they would have disdained him as a clod. Virgil and Theocritus were greater philosophers than either Comte or Hegel. Daphnis and Corydon represented the finest flower, the purest type of human evolution, and Herbert Spencer was nothing better than a particularly silly old man. ”

“ Ghosts did not appear so attractive as they had done yesterday afternoon, when he had talked about them with Lubin. However—here he was.
Mr St Aubyn, tall and middle-aged, with a refined face set in a short, pointed beard, received him with exquisite cordiality. How seldom does a man realise the positive idolatry he can inspire by treating a well-bred youth on equal terms, instead of assuming airs of patronage and condescension! The boy accepts such an attitude as natural, perhaps, but he resents it nevertheless, and never gives the man his confidence. ”

“ The effect of this red, throbbing light upon the garden in which he stood was almost unearthly, something resembling that of an eclipse viewed through warm-coloured glass; beautiful in itself, yet abnormal, fantastic, suggestive of weird imaginings. Austin, absorbed in contemplation, moved slowly through the shrubbery until he reached the lawn; then came to a dead stop. An astounding vision appeared before him. Standing by the old stone fountain, scarcely ten yards away, he saw the figure of a youth. ”

“ Austin always said that high noon was the supreme moment of the day. To some folks the most beautiful time was dawn, to others sunset, but at noon Nature was like a flower at its full, a flower in the very zenith of its strength and glory. ”

“ Meanwhile Austin meditated on the little episode on his side, as he made his way along the road. "I daresay dear old auntie was a bit put out," he thought, "but she brought it all upon herself. She doesn't see that everybody must live his own life, that it's a duty one owes to oneself to realise one's own individuality. Now it's bad for me to associate with people I detest—bad for my soul's development; just as bad as it is for anyone's body to eat food that doesn't agree with him. ”

“ A burly, muscular boy, who played football and read 'Tom Brown,' would have been far more to her taste, for such a one she would at least have understood. But Austin, with his queer notions and audacious paradoxes, was utterly beyond her. Unluckily, too, she had no sense of humour, and instead of laughing at his occasionally preposterous sallies, she allowed them to irritate and worry her. A person with no sense of humour is handicapped from start to finish, and is as much to be pitied as one born blind or deaf. ”

“ Lubin had been requisitioned to provide a special supply of the freshest and finest flowers for the drawing-room, and she had herself gone to the pastrycook's to order the cheese-cakes and cream-tarts on which the expected visitor was to be regaled. Of course she kept on telling herself all the time what a foolish old woman she was, and how silly Mr Ogilvie would think her if he only knew of all her little fussy preparations; men who had knocked about the world hated to be fidgeted over and made much of, and no doubt it was quite natural they should. ”

“ But if I'm rather desultory I always enjoy reading, because books give me so many new ideas, and it's delightful to have always something fresh to think about."
"Yes, yes," rejoined St Aubyn. "I don't know what you read, of course, but it's clear you don't read many novels."
"Novels!" exclaimed Austin scornfully. "How can people read novels, when there are so many other books in the world?"
"Well, what have you been reading, then?" enquired St Aubyn, lighting a cigarette. ”

“ Phalanxes of smartly-dressed ladies impeded the traffic outside the windows of all the millinery shops, omnibuses rattled up and down in a never-ending procession, and strident urchins with little pink newspapers under their arms yelled for all they were worth. Austin, absorbed in the cheerful spectacle, sauntered hither and thither, now attracted by the fresh verdure of the Green Park, now gazing with vivid interest at the ever-varying types of humanity that surged around him ”

“ Sunlight palls on you; gas is so much more festive! The scents of the fields are vulgar; finer the hot smells of the playhouse, more meet for a cultured nostril!" Of course Austin made all this nonsense up himself, but he felt so happy that it amused him to attribute the words to the dear flower-friends who were all around him, and to whom he could never be really faithless. Faugh! that playhouse! He would never enter one again. Be an actor! Lubin was a cleaner gentleman than any painted Buskin on the stage. ”

“ Now, what do you make of that?"
"I knew it must be some nonsense of the sort!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, in her most vigorous tones. "Raps, indeed! I never heard such twaddle. Of course I don't doubt your word, but it's clear enough that you dreamt the whole thing. You always were a dreamer, Austin, and you're getting worse than ever. I don't believe you know half the time whether you're asleep or awake." ”

“ There must be a world—if we could only find it—where loveliness that we only know as pictured exists in actual reality. What a dream-like hall it was, on that still summer afternoon. Yet there was something uncanny about it too. St Aubyn had stepped out of sight, and Austin left by himself began to experience a very extraordinary sensation. ”

“ Chemistry deals with inanimate substances, alchemy with the principle of life itself. The highest aim of the alchemist was the evolution of a divine and immortal being out of a mortal and semi-animal man; the development, in short, of all those hidden properties which lie latent in man's nature."
"That is a very valuable thing to know," observed Austin, greatly interested. "Every day I live, the more I realise the truth that everything we see is on the surface, and that there's a whole world of machinery—I can't think of a better term—working at the back of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ People used to see them once upon a time—why can't we now? Naiads, and dryads, and fauns, and the great god Pan everywhere; oh, to think we may be actually surrounded by these wonders of beauty, and yet unable to talk to any of them! Nothing but wicked old women, and horrible young men in plaid knickerbockers and bowler hats, who worry one about odds and handicaps. It's all very sad and ugly."
"Aren't you rather hot, standing there in the sun, Sir, all this time?" said Lubin, looking up.
"Very hot," replied Austin. ”

“ How jolly cool it is!"
"Isn't it exquisite?" murmured Austin, with closed eyes. "I do think that drowning must be a lovely death. We're like the minnows, Lubin, 'staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, to taste the luxury of sunny beams tempered with coolness.' That's what our wavy bodies are doing now. ”

“ 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. ”