"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 lira 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 of 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.