Selected Stories (9781440673832) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.’
    â€˜Every English boy should be able to swim,’ I said, ‘I will teach you myself.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Oh, what a perfectly lovely place,’ said my daughter Rose. ‘What a picture it would make!’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜On the contrary,’ said Leyland, ‘it would make a very poor picture. Indeed, it is not paintable at all.’
    â€˜And why is that?’ said Rose, with far more deference than he deserved.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Indeed, who could help being contented!’ said the elder Miss Robinson; and Mr Sandbach said the same.
    â€˜Ah!’ said Leyland, ‘you all confuse the artistic view of Nature with the photographic.’
    Poor Rose had brought her camera with her, so I