Austin and His Friends Part 20

"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, G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sive. 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed such happy times in the earth-life he was leaving.