‘Besides, I can’t see anything—no flowers, no leaves, no sky: only a stone wall.’ The outlook of Eustace’s room certainly was limited; but, as I told him, he had never complained of it before.
‘Eustace, you talk like a child. Come in! Prompt obedience, if you please.’
He did not move.
‘Very well: I shall carry you in by force,’ I added, and made a few steps towards him. But I was soon convinced of the futility of pursuing a boy through a tangle of asphalt paths, and went in instead to call Mr Sandbach and Leyland to my aid.
When I returned with them he was worse than ever. He would not even answer us when we spoke, but began singing and chattering to himself in a most alarming way.
‘It’s a case for the doctor now,’ said Mr Sandbach, gravely tapping his forehead.
He had stopped his running, and was singing, first low, then loud—singing five-finger exercises, scales, hymn tunes, scraps of Wagner—anything that came into his head. His voice—a very untuneful voice—grew stronger and stronger, and he ended with a tremendous shout which boomed like a gun among the mountains, and awoke everyone who was still sleeping in the hotel. My poor wife and the two girls appeared at their respective windows, and the American ladies were heard violently ringing their bell.
‘Eustace,’ we all cried, ‘stop! stop, dear boy, and come into the house.’
He shook his head, and started off again—talking this time. Never have I listened to such an extraordinary speech. At any other time it would have been ludicrous, for here was a boy, with no sense of beauty and a puerile command of words, attempting to tackle themes which the greatest poets have found almost beyond their power. Eustace Robinson, aged fourteen, was standing in his nightshirt, saluting, praising, and blessing the great forces and manifestations of Nature.
He spoke first of night and the stars and planets above his head, of the swarms of fireflies below him, of the invisible sea below the fireflies, of the great rocks covered with anemones and shells that were slumbering in the invisible sea. He spoke of the rivers and waterfalls, of the ripening bunches of grapes, of the smoking cone of Vesuvius and the hidden fire-channels that made the smoke, of the myriads of lizards who were lying curled up in the crannies of the sultry earth, of the showers of white rose-leaves that were tangled in his hair. And then he spoke of the rain and the wind by which all things are changed, of the air through which all things live, and of the woods in which all things can be hidden.
Of course, it was all absurdly high faluting: yet I could have kicked Leyland for audibly observing that it was ‘a diabolical caricature of all that was most holy and beautiful in life.’
‘And then’—Eustace was going on in the pitiable conversational doggerel which was his only mode of expression—‘and then there are men, but I can’t make them out so well.’ He knelt down by the parapet, and rested his head on his arms.
‘Now’s the time,’ whispered Leyland. I hate stealth, but we darted forward and endeavoured to catch hold of him from behind. He was away in a twinkling, but turned round at once to look at us. As far as I could see in the starlight, he was crying. Leyland rushed at him again, and we tried to corner him among the asphalt paths, but without the slightest approach to success.
We returned, breathless and discomfited, leaving him to his madness in the farther corner of the terrace. But my Rose had an inspiration.
‘Papa,’ she called from the window, ‘if you get Gennaro, he might be able to catch him for you.’
I had no wish to ask a favour of Gennaro, but, as the landlady had by now appeared on the scene, I begged her to summon him from the charcoal-bin in which he slept, and make him try what he could do.
She soon returned, and was shortly followed by Gennaro, attired in a dress coat, without either waistcoat, shirt, or vest, and a ragged pair of what had been trousers, cut short above the knees for purposes of wading. The landlady, who had quite picked up English ways, rebuked him for the incongruous and even indecent appearance which he presented.
‘I have a coat and I have trousers. What more do you desire?’
‘Never mind, Signora Scafetti,’ I put in. ‘As there are no ladies here, it is not of the slightest consequence.’ Then, turning to Gennaro, I said: ‘The aunts of Signor Eustace wish you to fetch him into the house.’
He did not answer.
‘Do you hear me? He is not well. I order you to fetch him into the house.’
‘Fetch! fetch!’ said Signora Scafetti, and shook him roughly by the arm.
‘Eustazio is well where he is.’
‘Fetch! fetch!’ Signora Scafetti screamed, and let loose a flood of Italian, most of which, I am glad to say, I could not follow. I glanced up nervously at the girls’ window, but they hardly know as much as I do, and I am thankful to say that none of us caught one word of Gennaro’s answer.
The two yelled and shouted at each other for quite ten minutes, at the end of which Gennaro rushed back to his charcoal-bin and Signora Scafetti burst into tears, as well she might, for she greatly valued her English guests.
‘He says,’ she sobbed, ‘that Signor Eustace is well where he is, and that he will not fetch him. I can do no more.’
But I could, for, in my stupid British way, I have got some insight into the Italian character. I followed Mr Gennaro to his place of repose, and found him wriggling down on to a dirty sack.
‘I wish you to fetch Signor Eustace to me,’ I began.
He hurled at me an unintelligible reply.
‘If you fetch him, I will give you this.’ And out of my pocket I took a new ten lire note.
This time he did not answer.
‘This note is equal to ten lire in silver,’ I continued, for I knew that the poor-class Italian is unable to conceive of a single large sum.
‘I know it.’
‘That is, two hundred soldi.’
‘I do not desire them. Eustazio is my friend.’
I put the note into my pocket.
‘Besides, you would not give it me.’
‘I am an Englishman. The English always do what they promise.’
‘That is true.’ It is astonishing how the most dishonest of nations trust us. Indeed, they often trust us more than we trust one another. Gennaro knelt up on his sack. It was too dark to see his face, but I could feel his warm garlicky breath coming out in gasps, and I knew that the eternal avarice of the South had laid hold upon him.
‘I could not fetch Eustazio to the house. He might die there.’
‘You need not do that,’ I replied patiently. ‘You need only bring him to me; and I will stand outside in the garden.’ And to this, as if it were something quite different, the pitiable youth consented.
‘But give me first the ten lire.’
‘No.’—for I knew the kind of person with whom I had to deal. Once faithless, always faithless.
We returned to the terrace, and Gennaro, without a single word, pattered off towards the pattering that could be heard at the remoter end. Mr Sandbach, Leyland, and myself moved away a little from the house, and stood in the shadow of the white climbing roses, practically invisible.
We heard ‘Eustazio’ called, followed by absurd cries of pleasure from the poor boy. The pattering ceased, and we heard them talking. Their voices got nearer, and presently I could discern them through the creepers, the grotesque figure of the young man, and the slim little white-robed boy. Gennaro had his arm round Eustace’s neck, and Eustace was talking away in his fluent, slip-shod Italian.
‘I understand almost everything,’ I heard him say. ‘The trees, hills, stars, water, I can see all. But isn’t it odd! I can’t make out men a bit. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Ho capito,’ said Gennaro gravely, and took his arm off Eustace’s shoulder. But I made the new note crackle in my pocket; and he heard it. He stuck his hand out with a jerk; and the unsuspecting Eustace gripped it in his own.
‘It is odd!’ Eustace went on—they were quite close now—‘It almost seems as if—as if�
��’
I darted out and caught hold of his arm, and Leyland got hold of the other arm, and Mr Sandbach hung on to his feet. He gave shrill heart-piercing screams; and the white roses, which were falling early that year, descended in showers on him as we dragged him into the house.
As soon as we entered the house he stopped shrieking; but floods of tears silently burst forth and spread over his upturned face.
‘Not to my room,’ he pleaded. ‘It is so small.’
His infinitely dolorous look filled me with strange pity, but what could I do? Besides, his window was the only one that had bars to it.
‘Never mind, dear boy,’ said kind Mr Sandbach. ‘I will bear you company till the morning.’
At this his convulsive struggles began again. ‘Oh, please, not that. Anything but that. I will promise to lie still and not to cry more than I can help, if I am left alone.’
So we laid him on the bed, and drew the sheets over him, and left him sobbing bitterly, and saying: ‘I nearly saw everything, and now I can see nothing at all.’
We informed the Miss Robinsons of all that had happened, and returned to the dining-room, where we found Signora Scafetti and Gennaro whispering together. Mr Sandbach got pen and paper, and began writing to the English doctor at Naples. I at once drew out the note, and flung it down on the table to Gennaro.
‘Here is your pay,’ I said sternly, for I was thinking of the Thirty Pieces of Silver.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ said Gennaro, and grabbed it.
He was going off, when Leyland, whose interest and indifference were always equally misplaced, asked him what Eustace had meant by saying ‘he could not make out men a bit’.
‘I cannot say. Signor Eustazio’ (I was glad to observe a little deference at last) ‘has a subtle brain. He understands many things.’
‘But I heard you say you understood,’ Leyland persisted.
‘I understand, but I cannot explain. I am a poor Italian fisher-lad. Yet, listen: I will try.’ I saw to my alarm that his manner was changing, and tried to stop him. But he sat down on the edge of the table and started off, with some absolutely incoherent remarks.
‘It is sad,’ he observed at last. ‘What has happened is very sad. But what can I do? I am poor. It is not I.’
I turned away in contempt. Leyland went on asking questions. He wanted to know who it was that Eustace had in his mind when he spoke.
‘That is easy to say,’ Gennaro gravely answered. ‘It is you, it is I. It is all in this house, and many outside it. If he wishes for mirth, we discomfort him. If he asks to be alone, we disturb him. He longed for a friend, and found none for fifteen years. Then he found me, and the first night I—I who have been in the woods and understood things too—betray him to you and send him in to die. But what could I do?’
‘Gently, gently,’ said I.
‘Oh, assuredly he will die. He will lie in the small room all night, and in the morning he will be dead. That I know for certain.’
‘There, that will do,’ said Mr Sandbach. ‘I shall be sitting with him.’
‘Filomena Giusti sat all night with Caterina, but Caterina was dead in the morning. They would not let her out, though I begged, and prayed, and cursed, and beat the door, and climbed the wall. They were ignorant fools, and thought I wished to carry her away. And in the morning she was dead.’
‘What is all this?’ I asked Signora Scafetti.
‘All kinds of stories will get about,’ she replied, ‘and he least of anyone, has reason to repeat them.’
‘And I am alive now,’ he went on, ‘because I had neither parents nor relatives nor friends, so that, when the first night came, I could run through the woods, and climb the rocks, and plunge into the water, until I had accomplished my desire!’
We heard a cry from Eustace’s room—a faint but steady sound, like the sound of wind in a distant wood heard by one standing in tranquillity.
‘That,’ said Gennaro, ‘was the last noise of Caterina. I was hanging on to her window then, and it blew out past me.’
And, lifting up his hand, in which my ten lire note was safely packed, he solemnly cursed Mr Sandbach, and Leyland, and myself, and Fate, because Eustace was dying in the upstairs room. Such is the working of the Southern mind; and I verily believe that he would not have moved even then, had not Leyland, that unspeakable idiot, upset the lamp with his elbow. It was a patent self-extinguishing lamp, bought by Signora Scafetti, at my special request, to replace the dangerous thing that she was using. The result was, that it went out; and the mere physical change from light to darkness had more power over the ignorant animal nature of Gennaro than the most obvious dictates of logic and reason.
I felt, rather than saw, that he had left the room, and shouted out to Mr Sandbach: ‘Have you got the key to Eustace’s room in your pocket?’ But Mr Sandbach and Leyland were both on the floor, having mistaken each other for Gennaro, and some more precious time was wasted in finding a match. Mr Sandbach had only just time to say that he had left the key in the door, in case the Miss Robinsons wished to pay Eustace a visit, when we heard a noise on the stairs, and there was Gennaro, carrying Eustace down.
We rushed out and blocked up the passage, and they lost heart and retreated to the upper landing.
‘Now they are caught,’ cried Signora Scafetti. ‘There is no other way out.’
We were cautiously ascending the staircase, when there was a terrific scream from my wife’s room, followed by a heavy thud on the asphalt path. They had leapt out of her window.
I reached the terrace just in time to see Eustace jumping over the parapet of the garden wall. This time I knew for certain he would be killed. But he alighted in an olive tree, looking like a great white moth, and from the tree he slid on to the earth. And as soon as his bare feet touched the clods of earth he uttered a strange loud cry, such as I should not have thought the human voice could have produced, and disappeared among the trees below.
‘He has understood and he is saved,’ cried Gennaro, who was still sitting on the asphalt path. ‘Now, instead of dying he will live!’
‘And you, instead of keeping the ten lire, will give them up,’ I retorted, for at this theatrical remark I could contain myself no longer.
‘The ten lire are mine,’ he hissed back in a scarcely audible voice. He clasped his hand over his breast to protect his ill-gotten gains, and, as he did so, he swayed forward and fell upon his face on the path. He had not broken any limbs, and a leap like that would never have killed an Englishman, for the drop was not great. But those miserable Italians have no stamina. Something had gone wrong inside him, and he was dead.
The morning was still far off, but the morning breeze had begun, and more rose leaves fell on us as we carried him in. Signora Scafetti burst into screams at the sight of the dead body, and, far down the valley towards the sea, there still resounded the shouts and the laughter of the escaping boy.
The Other Side of the Hedge
MY PEDOMETER TOLD ME that I was twenty-five; and, though it is a shocking thing to stop walking, I was so tired that I sat down on a milestone to rest. People outstripped me, jeering as they did so, but I was too apathetic to feel resentful, and even when Miss Eliza Dimbleby, the great educationist, swept past, exhorting me to persevere, I only smiled and raised my hat.
At first I thought I was going to be like my brother, whom I had had to leave by the roadside a year or two round the corner. He had wasted his breath on singing and his strength on helping others. But I had travelled more wisely, and now it was only the monotony of the highway that oppressed me—dust under foot and brown crackling hedges on either side, ever since I could remember.
And I had already dropped several things—indeed, the road behind was strewn with the things we all had dropped; and the white dust was settling down on them, so that already they looked no better than stones. My muscles were so weary that I could not even bear the weight of those things I still carried. I slid off the milestone into the roa
d, and lay there prostrate, with my face to the great parched hedge, praying that I might give up.
A little puff of air revived me. It seemed to come from the hedge; and, when I opened my eyes, there was a glint of light through the tangle of boughs and dead leaves. The hedge could not be as thick as usual. In my weak, morbid state, I longed to force my way in, and see what was on the other side. No one was in sight, or I should not have dared to try. For we of the road do not admit in conversation that there is another side at all.
I yielded to the temptation, saying to myself that I would come back in a minute. The thorns scratched my face, and I had to use my arms as a shield, depending on my feet alone to push me forward. Half-way through I would have gone back, for in the passage all the things I was carrying were scraped off me, and my clothes were torn. But I was so wedged that return was impossible, and I had to wriggle blindly forward, expecting every moment that my strength would fail me and that I should perish in the undergrowth.
Suddenly cold water closed round my head, and I seemed sinking down for ever. I had fallen out of the hedge into a deep pool. I rose to the surface at last, crying for help, and I heard someone on the opposite bank laugh and say: ‘Another!’ And then I was twitched out and laid panting on the dry ground.
Even when the water was out of my eyes I was still dazed, for I had never been in so large a space, nor seen such grass and sunshine. The blue sky was no longer a strip, and beneath it the earth had risen grandly into hills—clean, bare buttresses, with beech trees in their folds, and meadows and clear pools at their feet. But the hills were not high, and there was in the landscape a sense of human occupation—so that one might have called it a park, or garden, if the words did not imply a certain triviality and constraint.
As soon as I got my breath, I turned to my rescuer and said:
‘Where does this place lead to?’
‘Nowhere, thank the Lord!’ said he, and laughed. He was a man of fifty or sixty—just the kind of age we mistrust on the road—but there was no anxiety in his manner, and his voice was that of a boy of eighteen.
Selected Stories Page 5
