LITMIR.BIZ

Chapter the ThirdToC

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      He stood leaning against the old stone fountain on the straight lawn under the noonday sun. The bees hummed slumberously around him, sailing from flower to flower, and the hot air, laden with the scents of the soil, seemed to penetrate his body at every pore, infusing a sense of vitality into him which pulsed through all his veins. 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. He had always loved the noon.

      "The world seems literally palpitating with life," he thought, as he rested his arm on the rim of the time-worn fountain. "I'm sure it's conscious, in some way or other. How it must enjoy itself! Look at the trees; so strong, and calm, and splendid. They know well enough how strong they are, and when there's a storm that tries to blow them down, how they do revel in battling with it! And then the hot air, embracing the earth so voluptuously—playing with the slender plants, and caressing the upstanding flowers. They stand up because they want to be caressed, the amorous creatures. How wonderful it is—the different characters that flowers have. Some are shrill and fierce and passionate, while others are meek and sly, and pretend to shrink when they are even noticed. Some are wicked—shamelessly, insolently, magnificently wicked—like those scarlet anthuriums, with their curling yellow tongues. That flower is the very incarnation of sin; no, not incarnation—what's the word? I can't think, but it doesn't matter. Incarnation will do, for the thing is exactly like recalcitrant human flesh. Lubin!"

      "Yes, Sir?" responded Lubin, who was digging near.

      "What are the wickedest flowers you know?" asked Austin.

      "Well, Sir, I should say them as had most thorns," said Lubin feelingly.

      "I wonder," mused Austin. Then he relapsed into his meditations. "How thick with life the air is. I'm sure it's populated, if we only had eyes to see. I feel it throbbing all round me—full of beings as much alive as I am, only invisible. 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. "I wonder what time it is?"

      Lubin glanced up at the sundial. "Just five minutes past the hour, or thereabouts, I make it."

      "Oh, Lubin, let's go and bathe!" cried Austin suddenly. "You must be far hotter than I am. There's plenty of time—we don't lunch till half-past one. How long would it take us to get to the bathing-pool just at the bend of the river?"

      "Well—not above ten minutes, I should say," was Lubin's answer. "I'd like a dip myself more'n a little, but I'm not quite sure if I ought to—you see the mistress wants all this finished up by the afternoon, and then——"

      "But you must!" insisted Austin. "You forget that I've only got one leg, so I can't swim as I used, and you've got to come and take care I don't get drowned. 'O weep for Adonais—he is dead!' How angry Aunt Charlotte would be. And then she'd cry, poor dear, and go into hideous mourning for her poor Austin. Come along, Lubin—but wait, I must just go and get a couple of towels. Oh, I'm simply mad for the water. I'll be back in less than a flash."

      Lubin drove his spade into the earth, turned down his sleeves, and rested—a fair-skinned, bronzed, wholesome object, good to look at—while Austin stumped away. In less than five minutes the two youths started off together, tramping through the long, lush meadow-grass which lay between the end of the garden and the river. The sun burned fiercely overhead, and the air quivered in the heat.

      "Isn't it wonderful!" cried Austin, when they reached the edge of the water, and were standing under the shade of some trees that overhung the towing-path. "Come, Lubin, strip—I'm half undressed already. Look at the white and purple lights in the water—aren't they marvellous? Now we're going right down into them. Oh the freedom of air, and colour, and body—how I do hate clothes! I say, how funny my stump looks, doesn't it? Just like a great white rolling-pin. You must go in first, Lubin, and then you'll be prepared to catch me when I begin drowning."

      Lubin, standing nude and shapely, like a fair Greek statue, for a moment on the bank, took a silent header and disappeared. Then Austin prepared to follow. He tumbled rather than plunged into the water, and, unable to attain an erect position owing to his imperfect organism, would have fared badly if Lubin had not caught him in his arms and turned him deftly over on his back.

      "You just content yourself with floating face upwards, Sir," he said. "There's no sort of use in trying to strike out, you'd only sink to the bottom like a boat with a hole in it. There—let me hold you like this; one hand'll do it. Look out for the river-weeds. Now try and work your foot. Seems to be making you go round and round, somehow. But that don't matter. A bathe's a bathe, all said and done. 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. Don't you like it? 'Now more than ever it seems rich to die——'"

      But the next moment, owing probably to Lubin having lost his equilibrium, the young rhapsodist found himself, spluttering and half-choked, nearer to the bed of the river than the surface, while his leg was held in chancery by a network of clinging water-weeds. Lubin had some slight difficulty in extricating him, and for the moment, at least, his poetic fantasies came to an abrupt and unromantic finish.

      "Here, get on my back, and I'll swim you out as far as them water-lilies," said Lubin, giving him a dexterous hoist. "I'm awfully keen on the yellow sort, and they look wonderful fine ones. That's better. Now, Sir, you can just imagine yourself any drownded heathen as comes into your head, only hold tight and don't stir. If you do you'll get drownded in good earnest, and I shall have to settle accounts with your aunt afterwards. Are you ready? Right, then. And now away we go."

      He struck out strongly and slowly, with Austin crouching on his shoulders. They arrived in safety at the point aimed at, and managed to tear away a grand cluster of the great, beautiful yellow flowers; but the process was a very ticklish one, and the struggle resulted, not unnaturally, in Austin becoming dislodged from his not very secure position, and floundering head foremost into the depths. Lubin caught him as he rose again, and, taking him firmly by one hand, helped him to swim alongside of him back to the shore. It was a difficult feat, and by the time they had accomplished the distance they were both pretty well exhausted.

      "You have been good to me, Lubin," gasped Austin, as he flung himself sprawling on the grass. "I've had a lovely time—haven't you too? Was I very heavy? Perhaps it is rather a bore to have only one leg when one wants to swim. But now you can always say you've saved me from drowning, can't you. I should have gone under a dozen times if you hadn't held me up and lugged me about. Oh, dear, now we must put on our clothes again—what a barbarism clothes are! I do hate them so, don't you? But

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