Austin and His Friends | Page 6

in the fields
and woods. This was Virgil's Eclogues, the sylvan atmosphere of which
penetrated the very depths of his being, and created in him a moral or

spiritual atmosphere which was its counterpart. He seemed to live amid
gracious pastoral scenes, where beautiful youths and maidens passed a
perpetual springtime in a land of dewy lawns, and shady groves, and
pools, and rippling streams. Daphnis and Mopsus, Corydon, Alexis,
and Amyntas, were all to him real personages, who peopled his solitude,
inspired his poetic fancy, and fostered in his imagination the elements
of an ideal life where the beauty and purity and freshness of untainted
Nature reigned supreme. The accident of his lameness, by
incapacitating him for violent exercise out of doors, ministered to the
development of this spiritual tendency, and threw him back upon the
allurements of a refined idealism. Daphnis became to him the
embodiment, the concrete image, of eternal youthhood, of adolescence
in the abstract, the attribute of an idealised humanity. To lead the pure
Daphnis life of simplicity, stainlessness, communion with beautiful
souls, was to lead the highest life. 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. Lubin never bothered him about football, or cricket, or
horse-racing, never worried him with invitations to horrible picnics,
never outraged his sensibilities in any way. On the contrary, Lubin
rather contributed to his happiness by the care he took of the flowers,
and the intelligence he showed in carrying out all Austin's elaborately
conveyed instructions. Why, Lubin himself was a sort of Daphnis--in a
humble way. But Sandy! No, Austin was not equal to putting up with
Sandy.
There was, however, one gentleman in the neighbourhood whom
Master Austin was gracious enough to approve. This was a certain Mr
Roger St Aubyn, a man of taste and culture, who possessed a very rare
collection of fine pictures and old engravings which nobody had ever
seen. St Aubyn was, in fact, something of a recluse, a student who

seldom went beyond his park gates, and found his greatest pleasure in
reading Greek and cultivating orchids. It was by the purest accident that
the two came across each other. Austin was lying one afternoon on a
bank of wild hyacinths just outside Combe Spinney, lazily admiring the
effect of his bright black leg against the bright blue sky, and thinking of
nothing in particular. Mr St Aubyn, who happened to be strolling in
that direction, was attracted by the unwonted spectacle, and ventured
on some good-humoured quizzical remark. This led to a conversation,
in the course of which the scholar thought he discovered certain
original traits in the modest observations of the youth. One topic drifted
into another, and soon the two were engaged in an animated discussion
about pursuits in life. It was in the course of this that Austin let drop the
one word--Art.
"What is Art?" queried St Aubyn.
Austin hesitated for some moments. Then he said, very slowly:
"That is a question to which a dozen answers might be given. A whole
book would be required to deal with it."
St Aubyn was delighted, both at the reply and at the hesitation that had
preceded it.
"And are you an artist?" he enquired.
"I believe I am," replied Austin, very seriously. "Of course one doesn't
like to be too confident, and I can't draw a single line, but still----"
"Good again," approved the other. "Here as in everything else all
depends upon the definition. 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 people cursed and grumbled on that
rainy day we had last week; it made me sick to hear them. Now I saw
the beauty under the ugliness of it all--the wonderful soft greys and
browns, the tiny glints of silver between the leaves, the flashes of pearl
and orpiment behind the