I
Eustace's career--if career it can be called--certainly dates from that
afternoon in the chestnut woods above Ravello. I confess at once that I
am a plain, simple man, with no pretensions to literary style. Still, I
do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I
have therefore decided to give an unbiassed account of the extraordinary
events of eight years ago.
Ravello is a delightful place with a delightful little hotel in which we
met some charming people. There were the two Miss Robinsons, who had
been there for six weeks with Eustace, their nephew, then a boy of about
fourteen. Mr. Sandbach had also been there some time. He had held a
curacy in the north of England, which he had been compelled to resign on
account of ill-health, and while he was recruiting at Ravello he had
taken in hand Eustace's education--which was then sadly deficient--and
was endeavouring to fit him for one of our great public schools. Then
there was Mr. Leyland, a would-be artist, and, finally, there was the
nice landlady, Signora Scafetti, and the nice English-speaking waiter,
Emmanuele--though at the time of which I am speaking Emmanuele was away,
visiting a sick father.
To this little circle, I, my wife, and my two daughters made, I venture
to think, a not unwelcome addition. But though I liked most of the
company well enough, there were two of them to whom I did not take at
all. They were the artist, Leyland, and the Miss Robinsons' nephew,
Eustace.
Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be
amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here.
But Eustace was something besides: he was indescribably repellent.
I am fond of boys as a rule, and was quite disposed to be friendly. I
and my daughters offered to take him out--'No, walking was such a fag.'
Then I asked him to come and bathe--'No, he could not swim.'
"Every English boy should be able to swim," I said, "I will teach you
myself."
"There, Eustace dear," said Miss Robinson; "here is a chance for you."
But he said he was afraid of the water!--a boy afraid!--and of course I
said no more.
I would not have minded so much if he had been a really studious boy,
but he neither played hard nor worked hard. His favourite occupations
were lounging on the terrace in an easy chair and loafing along the high
road, with his feet shuffling up the dust and his shoulders stooping
forward. Naturally enough, his features were pale, his chest contracted,
and his muscles undeveloped. His aunts thought him delicate; what he
really needed was discipline.
That memorable day we all arranged to go for a picnic up in the chestnut
woods--all, that is, except Janet, who stopped behind to finish her
water-colour of the Cathedral--not a very successful attempt, I am
afraid.
I wander off into these irrelevant details, because in my mind I cannot
separate them from an account of the day; and it is the same with the
conversation during the picnic: all is imprinted on my brain together.
After a couple of hours' ascent, we left the donkeys that had carried
the Miss Robinsons and my wife, and all proceeded on foot to the head of
the valley--Vallone Fontana Caroso is its proper name, I find.
I have visited a good deal of fine scenery before and since, but have
found little that has pleased me more. The valley ended in a vast
hollow, shaped like a cup, into which radiated ravines from the
precipitous hills around. Both the valley and the ravines and the ribs
of hill that divided the ravines were covered with leafy chestnut, so
that the general appearance was that of a many fingered green hand, palm
upwards, which was clutching convulsively to keep us in its grasp. Far
down the valley we could see Ravello and the sea, but that was the only
sign of another world.
"Oh, what a perfectly lovely place," said my daughter Rose. "What a
picture it would make!"
"Yes," said Mr. Sandbach. "Many a famous European gallery would be proud
to have a landscape a tithe as beautiful as this upon its walls."
"On the contrary," said Leyland, "it would make a very poor picture.
Indeed, it is not paintable at all."
"And why is that?" said Rose, with far more deference than he deserved.
"Look, in the first place," he replied, "how intolerably straight
against the sky is the line of the hill. It would need breaking up and
diversifying. And where we are standing the whole thing is out of
perspective. Besides, all the colouring is monotonous and crude."
"I do not know anything about pictures," I put in, "and I do not pretend
to know: but I know what is beautiful when I see it, and I am thoroughly
content with this."
"Indeed, who could help being contented!" said the elder Miss Robinson
and Mr. Sandbach said the same.
"Ah!" said Leyland, "you all confuse the artistic view of nature with
the photographic."
Poor Rose had brought her camera with her, so I thought this positively
rude. I did not wish any unpleasantness; so I merely turned away and
assisted my wife and Miss Mary Robinson to put out the lunch--not a very
nice lunch.
"Eustace, dear," said his aunt, "come and help us here."
He was in a particularly bad temper that morning. He had, as usual, not
wanted to come, and his aunts had nearly allowed him to stop at the
hotel to vex Janet. But I, with their permission, spoke to him rather
sharply on the subject of exercise; and the result was that he had come,
but was even more taciturn and moody than usual.
Obedience was not his strong point. He invariably questioned every
command, and only executed it grumbling. I should always insist on
prompt and cheerful obedience, if I had a son.
"I'm--coming--Aunt--Mary," he at last replied, and dawdled to cut a
piece of wood to make a whistle, taking care not to arrive till we had
finished.
"Well, well, sir!" said I, "you stroll in at the end and profit by our
labours." He sighed, for he could not endure being chaffed. Miss Mary,
very unwisely, insisted on giving him the wing of the chicken, in spite
of all my attempts to prevent her. I remember that I had a moment's
vexation when I thought that, instead of enjoying the sun, and the air,
and the woods, we were all engaged in wrangling over the diet of a
spoilt boy.
But, after lunch, he was a little less in evidence. He withdrew to a
tree trunk, and began to loosen the bark from his whistle. I was
thankful to see him employed, for once in a way. We reclined, and took a
_dolce far niente_.
Those sweet chestnuts of the South are puny striplings compared with our
robust Northerners. But they clothed the contours of the hills and
valleys in a most pleasing way, their veil being only broken by two
clearings, in one of which we were sitting.
And because these few trees were cut down, Leyland burst into a petty
indictment of the proprietor.
"All the poetry is going from Nature," he cried, "her lakes and marshes
are drained, her seas banked up, her forests cut down. Everywhere we see
the vulgarity of desolation spreading."
I have had some experience of estates, and answered that cutting was
very necessary for the health of the larger trees. Besides, it was
unreasonable to expect the proprietor to derive no income from his
lands.
"If you take the commercial side of landscape, you may feel pleasure in
the owner's activity. But to me the mere thought that a tree is
convertible into cash is disgusting."
"I see no reason," I observed politely, "to despise the gifts of Nature,
because they are of value."
It did not stop him. "It is no matter," he went on, "we are all
hopelessly steeped in vulgarity. I do not except myself. It is through
us, and to our shame, that the Nereids have left the waters and the
Oreads the mountains, that the woods no longer give shelter to Pan."
"Pan!" cried Mr. Sandbach, his mellow voice filling the valley as if it
had been a great green church, "Pan is dead. That is why the woods do
not shelter him." And he began to tell the striking story of the
mariners who were sailing near the coast at the time of the birth of
Christ, and three times heard a loud voice saying: "The great God Pan is
dead."
"Yes. The great God Pan is dead," said Leyland. And he abandoned himself
to that mock misery in which artistic people are so fond of indulging.
His cigar went out, and he had to ask me for a match.
"How very interesting," said Rose. "I do wish I knew some ancient
history."
"It is not worth your notice," said Mr. Sandbach. "Eh, Eustace?"
Eustace was finishing his whistle. He looked up, with the irritable
frown in which his aunts allowed him to indulge, and made no reply.
The conversation turned to various topics and then died out. It was a
cloudless afternoon in May, and the pale green of the young chestnut
leaves made a pretty contrast with the dark blue of the sky. We were all
sitting at the edge of the small clearing for the sake of the view, and
the shade of the chestnut saplings behind us was manifestly
insufficient. All sounds died away--at least that is my account: Miss
Robinson says that the clamour of the birds was the first sign of
uneasiness that she discerned. All sounds died away, except that, far in
the distance, I could hear two boughs of a great chestnut grinding
together as the tree swayed. The grinds grew shorter and shorter, and
finally that sound stopped also. As I looked over the green fingers of
the valley, everything was absolutely motionless and still; and that
feeling of suspense which one so often experiences when Nature is in
repose, began to steal over me.
Suddenly, we were all electrified by the excruciating noise of Eustace's
whistle. I never heard any instrument give forth so ear-splitting and
discordant a sound.
"Eustace, dear," said Miss Mary Robinson, "you might have thought of
your poor Aunt Julia's head."
Leyland who had apparently been asleep, sat up.
"It is astonishing how blind a boy is to anything that is elevating or
beautiful," he observed. "I should not have thought he could have found
the wherewithal out here to spoil our pleasure like this."
Then the terrible silence fell upon us again. I was now standing up and
watching a catspaw of wind that was running down one of the ridges
opposite, turning the light green to dark as it travelled. A fanciful
feeling of foreboding came over me; so I turned away, to find to my
amazement, that all the others were also on their feet, watching it too.
It is not possible to describe coherently what happened next: but I, for
one, am not ashamed to confess that, though the fair blue sky was above
me, and the green spring woods beneath me, and the kindest of friends
around me, yet I became terribly frightened, more frightened than I ever
wish to become again, frightened in a way I never have known either
before or after. And in the eyes of the others, too, I saw blank,
expressionless fear, while their mouths strove in vain to speak and
their hands to gesticulate. Yet, all around us were prosperity, beauty,
and peace, and all was motionless, save the catspaw of wind, now
travelling up the ridge on which we stood.
Who moved first has never been settled. It is enough to say that in one
second we were tearing away along the hillside. Leyland was in front,
then Mr. Sandbach, then my wife. But I only saw for a brief moment; for
I ran across the little clearing and through the woods and over the
undergrowth and the rocks and down the dry torrent beds into the valley
below. The sky might have been black as I ran, and the trees short
grass, and the hillside a level road; for I saw nothing and heard
nothing and felt nothing, since all the channels of sense and reason
were blocked. It was not the spiritual fear that one has known at other
times, but brutal overmastering physical fear, stopping up the ears, and
dropping clouds before the eyes, and filling the mouth with foul tastes.
And it was no ordinary humiliation that survived; for I had been afraid,
not as a man, but as a beast.