Selected Stories (9781440673832) Read Online Free PDF

thought this positively rude. I did not wish any unpleasantness; so I merely turned away and assisted my wife and Miss Mary Robinson to put out the lunch—not a very nice lunch.
    â€˜Eustace dear,’ said his aunt, ‘come and help us here.’
    He was in a particularly bad temper that morning. He had, as usual, not wanted to come, and his aunts had nearly allowed him to stop at the hotel to vex Janet. But I, with their permission, spoke to him rather sharply on the subject of exercise; and the result was that he had come, but was even more taciturn and moody than usual.
    Obedience was not his strong point. He invariably questioned every command, and only executed it grumbling. I should always insist on prompt and cheerful obedience, if I had a son.
    â€˜I’m—coming—Aunt—Mary,’ he at last replied, and dawdled to cut a piece of wood to make a whistle, taking care not to arrive till we had finished.
    â€˜Well, well, sir!’ said I, ‘you stroll in at the end and profit by our labours.’ He sighed, for he could not endure being chaffed. Miss Mary, very unwisely, insisted on giving him the wing of the chicken, in spite of all my attempts to prevent her. I remember that I had a moment’s vexation when I thought that, instead of enjoying the sun, and the air, and the woods, we were all engaged in wrangling over the diet of a spoilt boy.
    But, after lunch, he was a little less in evidence. He withdrew to a tree trunk, and began to loosen the bark from his whistle. I was thankful to see him employed, for once in a way. We reclined, and took a dolce far niente.
    Those sweet chestnuts of the South are puny striplings compared with our robust Northerners. But they clothed the contours of the hills and valleys in a most pleasing way, their veil being only broken by two clearings, in one of which we were sitting.
    And because these few trees were cut down, Leyland burst into a petty indictment of the proprietor.
    â€˜All the poetry is going from Nature,’ he cried, ‘her lakes and marshes are drained, her seas banked up, her forests cut down. Everywhere we see the vulgarity of desolation spreading.’
    I have had some experience of estates, and answered that cutting was very necessary for the health of the larger trees. Besides, it was unreasonable to expect the proprietor to derive no income from his lands.
    â€˜If you take the commercial side of landscape, you may feel pleasure in the owner’s activity. But to me the mere thought that a tree is convertible into cash is disgusting.’
    â€˜I see no reason,’ I observed politely, ‘to despise the gifts of Nature because they are of value.’
    It did not stop him. ‘It is no matter,’ he went on, ‘we are all hopelessly steeped in vulgarity. I do not except myself. It is through us, and to our shame, that the Nereids have left the waters and the Oreads the mountains, that the woods no longer give shelter to Pan.’
    â€˜Pan!’ cried Mr Sandbach, his mellow voice filling the valley as if it had been a great green church, ‘Pan is dead. That is why the woods do not shelter him.’ And he began to tell the striking story of the mariners who were sailing near the coast at the time of the birth of Christ, and three times heard a loud voice saying: ‘The great God Pan is dead.’
    â€˜Yes. The great God Pan is dead,’ said Leyland. And he abandoned himself to that mock misery in which artistic people are so fond of indulging. His cigar went out, and he had to ask me for a match.
    â€˜How very interesting,’ said Rose. ‘I do wish I knew some ancient history.’
    â€˜It is not worth your notice,’ said Mr Sandbach. ‘Eh, Eustace?’
    Eustace was finishing his whistle. He looked up, with the irritable frown in which his aunts allowed him to indulge, and made no reply.
    The conversation turned to various topics and then died out. It was a