“And where have you been?”
“Here.”
“And lying down all the time, you idle boy?”
“No, not all the time.”
“What were you doing before?”
“Oh; standing or sitting.”
“Stood and sat doing nothing! Don’t you know the poem ‘Satan finds some mischief still for—’ ”
“Oh, my dear madam, hush! hush!” Mr. Sandbach’s voice broke in; and my wife, naturally mortified by the interruption, said no more and moved away. I was surprised to see Rose immediately take her place, and, with more freedom than she generally displayed, run her fingers through the boy’s tousled hair.
“Eustace! Eustace!” she said, hurriedly, “tell me everything—every single thing.”
Slowly he sat up—till then he had lain on his back.
“Oh, Rose,” he whispered, and, my curiosity being aroused, I moved nearer to hear what he was going to say. As I did so, I caught sight of some goats’ footmarks in the moist earth beneath the trees.
“Apparently you have had a visit from some goats,” I observed. “I had no idea they fed up here.”
Eustace laboriously got on to his feet and came to see; and when he saw the footmarks he lay down and rolled on them, as a dog rolls in dirt.
After that there was a grave silence, broken at length by the solemn speech of Mr. Sandbach.
“My dear friends,” he said, “it is best to confess the truth bravely. I know that what I am going to say now is what you are all now feeling. The Evil One has been very near us in bodily form. Time may yet discover some injury that he has wrought among us. But, at present, for myself at all events, I wish to offer up thanks for a merciful deliverance.”
With that he knelt down, and, as the others knelt, I knelt too, though I do not believe in the Devil being allowed to assail us in visible form, as I told Mr. Sandbach afterwards. Eustace came too, and knelt quietly enough between his aunts after they had beckoned to him. But when it was over he at once got up, and began hunting for something.
“Why! Someone has cut my whistle in two,” he said. (I had seen Leyland with an open knife in his hand—a superstitious act which I could hardly approve.)
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he continued.
“And why doesn’t it matter?” said Mr. Sandbach, who has ever since tried to entrap Eustace into an account of that mysterious hour.
“Because I don’t want it any more.”
“Why?”
At that he smiled; and, as no one seemed to have anything more to say, I set off as fast as I could through the wood, and hauled up a donkey to carry my poor wife home. Nothing occurred in my absence, except that Rose had again asked Eustace to tell her what had happened; and he, this time, had turned away his head, and had not answered her a single word.
As soon as I returned, we all set off. Eustace walked with difficulty, almost with pain, so that, when we reached the other donkeys, his aunts wished him to mount one of them and ride all the way home. I make it a rule never to interfere between relatives, but I put my foot down at this. As it turned out, I was perfectly right, for the healthy exercise, I suppose, began to thaw Eustace’s sluggish blood and loosen his stiffened muscles. He stepped out manfully, for the first time in his life, holding his head up and taking deep draughts of air into his chest. I observed with satisfaction to Miss Mary Robinson, that Eustace was at last taking some pride in his personal appearance.
Mr. Sandbach sighed, and said that Eustace must be carefully watched, for we none of us understood him yet. Miss Mary Robinson being very much—over much, I think—guided by him, sighed too.
“Come, come. Miss Robinson,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with Eustace. Our experiences are mysterious, not his. He was astonished at our sudden departure, that’s why he was so strange when we returned. He’s right enough—improved, if anything.”
“And is the worship of athletics, the cult of insensate activity, to be counted as an improvement?” put in Leyland, fixing a large, sorrowful eye on Eustace, who had stopped to scramble on to a rock to pick some cyclamen. “The passionate desire to rend from Nature the few beauties that have been still left her—that is to be counted as an improvement too?”
It is mere waste of time to reply to such remarks, especially when they come from an unsuccessful artist, suffering from a damaged finger. I changed the conversation by asking what we should say at the hotel. After some discussion, it was agreed that we should say nothing, either there or in our letters home. Importunate truth-telling, which brings only bewilderment and discomfort to the hearers, is, in my opinion, a mistake; and, after a long discussion, I managed to make Mr. Sandbach acquiesce in my view.
Eustace did not share in our conversation. He was racing about, like a real boy, in the wood to the right. A strange feeling of shame; prevented us from openly mentioning our fright to him. Indeed, it seemed almost reasonable to conclude that it had made but little impression on him. So it disconcerted us when he bounded back with an armful of flowering acanthus, calling out:
“Do you suppose Gennaro’ll be there when we get back?”
Gennaro was the stopgap waiter, a clumsy, impertinent fisher-lad, who had been had up from Minori in the absence of the nice English-speaking Emmanuele. It was to him that we owed our scrappy lunch; and I could not conceive why Eustace desired to see him, unless it was to make mock with him of our behaviour.
“Yes, of course he will be there,” said Miss Robinson. “Why do you ask, dear?”
“Oh, I thought I’d like to see him.”
“And why?” snapped Mr. Sandbach.
“Because, because I do, I do; because, because I do.” He danced away into the darkening wood to the rhythm of his words.
“This is very extraordinary,” said Mr. Sandbach.
