But the day was nothing to the night.
I suppose I had slept for about four hours, when I woke suddenly
thinking I heard a noise in the garden. And, immediately, before my eyes
were open, cold terrible fear seized me--not fear of something that was
happening, like the fear in the wood, but fear of something that might
happen.
Our room was on the first floor, looking out on to the garden--or
terrace, it was rather: a wedge-shaped block of ground covered with
roses and vines, and intersected with little asphalt paths. It was
bounded on the small side by the house; round the two long sides ran a
wall, only three feet above the terrace level, but with a good twenty
feet drop over it into the olive yards, for the ground fell very
precipitously away.
Trembling all over I stole to the window. There, pattering up and down
the asphalt, paths, was something white. I was too much alarmed to see
clearly; and in the uncertain light of the stars the thing took all
manner of curious shapes. Now it was a great dog, now an enormous white
bat, now a mass of quickly travelling cloud. It would bounce like a
ball, or take short flights like a bird, or glide slowly; like a wraith.
It gave no sound--save the pattering sound of what, after all, must be
human feet. And at last the obvious explanation forced itself upon my
disordered mind; and I realized that Eustace had got out of bed, and
that we were in for something more.
I hastily dressed myself, and went down into the dining-room which
opened upon the terrace. The door was already unfastened. My terror had
almost entirely passed away, but for quite five minutes I struggled with
a curious cowardly feeling, which bade me not interfere with the poor
strange boy, but leave him to his ghostly patterings, and merely watch
him from the window, to see he took no harm.
But better impulses prevailed and, opening the door, I called out:
"Eustace! what on earth are you doing? Come in at once."
He stopped his antics, and said: "I hate my bedroom. I could not stop in
it, it is too small."
"Come! come! I'm tired of affectation. You've never complained of it
before."
"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 fire-flies below him, of the invisible sea below the
fire-flies, of the great rocks covered with anemones and shells that
were slumbering in the invisible sea. He spoke of the rivers and
water-falls, 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 fainting: 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 further 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 Signer 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 lira 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."