The New Collected Short Stories Read Online Free Page B

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 goat’s 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.