Austin and His Friends | Page 5

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