The conflict and the cloud of big forms, and the rough voices and snatchings, filled Nello with speechless dismay. He leaned back against his bed, and watched with feelings indescribable the basket which contained his treasure pulled and dragged about from one to another. First the handle gave way, then the lid was torn off, as one after another snatched at it. Oh, why was Nello so small and weak, and the others so big and strong!
“Give it here!” shouted the head boy; but in the midst of the scuffle, something happened which frightened them all—the bird got loose, carefully as it had been secured, flew up over their heads, fluttered for a moment, driven wild by the cloud of arms stretched out to catch it, and then, with a sweep of its wings, darted out through the open window, and was seen no more.
CHAPTER XXX.
A CHILD FORLORN.
Nello sobbed himself to sleep that night, scarcely conscious of the hubbub that was going on around him. He had watched with a pang unspeakable the escape of his bird, then had rushed blindly among the culprits, fighting and struggling in a passion of tears and childish rage, raining down harmless blows all around him, struggling to get out after it, to try to bring it back. Then Nello had been caught, too desperate to know who held him, in the hands of the head boy, who paid no more attention to his kicks and struggles than to his cries, and held him until, half dead with passion and misery, the poor little fellow sank exhausted, almost fainting, in the rough hands of his captors. Then the boys, who were not cruel, laid him on his bed and summoned Mrs. Swan. They all crowded round her to tell their story. Nobody had meant any harm. They had taken his basket to look at it, and the pigeon had got loose. “And it was a carrier!” the head boy said regretfully. They were as sorry as Nello could be, though by this time, under the combined influences of loneliness, desolation, homesickness, weariness, and loss, poor little Nello was almost beyond feeling the full extent of his troubles. “He’s a mammy’s boy,” said Mrs. Swan, who was rough, but not unkind. “He has never been at school before. A spoiled child, by all I can see.” But why had a spoiled child been sent here? This was what the good woman could not understand.
Nello slept and forgot his woes; and when he was awoke in the morning by the tumult, all the eleven jumping out of bed at once, performing their noisy but scanty ablutions, tossing boots about, and scrambling for clothes, the child lay trembling yet anxious, and half amused in spite of himself. The rough fun that was going on tempted Nello to laugh, though he was miserable. He shrank from them all, so big, so loud, so coarsely clothed, and in such a hurry; but he was tickled by their horse-play with each other—the hits and misses with which their missiles went and came. When the head boy was caught by a pillow straight in the face as he approached to execute justice upon one of the laggards, Nello could not restrain a little broken chuckle, which attracted the attention of the combatants. This, however, drew upon him the arrest of fate. “I say, little one, ain’t you going to get up?—bell’s rung!” said his next neighbour. The head boy was aggrieved by the poor little laugh. “Get up, you lazy little beggar!” he cried. “I say, let’s toss him!” cried another, with sudden perception of fun to be had easily. The boys meant no particular harm; but they made a simultaneous rush at the little trembling creature. Nello felt himself seized, he knew not for what purpose. Then the noise, and the rude, laughing faces—which looked to him in his fright like demons—all swam in giddy uncertainty round him, and the poor little fellow came down upon the floor, slipping out of their rough and careless hands, faint and sick and sore, his head turning, his little bones aching. But though in his giddiness and faintness he scarcely saw anything—even the faces turning into misty spectres—Nello’s spirit survived for a moment the collapse of his little frame. He got to his feet in a frenzy, and struck out at them with his white little childish fists. “I will kill you!” cried Nello, through his teeth; and a great horse-laugh got up. But this was soon extinguished in dismay and horror when the little fellow fell back fainting. They all gathered around, horror-stricken. “Lift him on his bed,” said the head boy almost in a whisper. They did not know anything about faints; they thought the child was dead. Then there was a pause. In their horror it occurred to more than one inexperienced imagination to hide the little body and run away. “What can they do to us?” said another, awe-stricken. “We didn’t mean it.” For a moment the boys had all that thrill of horrible sensation which ought to (but, it would seem, does not always) accompany homicide. At the end, however, humanity prevailed over villanous panic, and Mrs. Swan was called to the rescue. The boys were too glad to troop away, already subject to punishment on account of being late, and, huddling together, went down to the schoolroom in a band, where vengeance awaited them—though not for Nello’s murder, as some of them thought.
Nello came to himself at last, after giving Mrs. Swan a great deal of trouble; and there was nothing for it but to leave him in bed all day; for the child was bruised with the fall, aching in every limb, and too resentful and wretched to make any effort. He lay and cried and brooded, what between childish plans of vengeance and equally childish projects of escape. Oh, the pangs of impotence with which the small boy wronged contemplated the idea of those big fellows who had been so cruel to him! How should weakness be aware that strength does not intend to be cruel? Nello could not be tolerant, or understanding, at his age, even if there had not been his aching bones to prove the wickedness of his assailants. He hated them all. How could he help hating them? He lay and planned what he would do to them. But Nello’s dreams were not malicious. At the last moment, when they had suffered torments of dread in prospect of the punishment which he permitted them (in his fancy) to see approaching, Nello’s vengeance suddenly turned into magnanimous contempt. He would not condescend to reprisals; he would crush them with forgiveness as soon as they saw his power. Such were the plans which the child lay and concocted, and which amused him, though he was not aware of it. But when the boys came in Nello shrank to the farther side of his bed; he would not look at them; he would not listen to the rough inquiries. When they went away again, however, and he was left alone, a sudden fit of longing came over him. Oh, to see somebody he knew!—somebody that was kind! Schemes of vengeance pall, like every other amusement. He gazed round upon the bare walls, the range of beds, the strange, ugly, desolate place. He could not tell if it was worse when the savages were there, filling it with noise, stumblings of heavy feet, cries of rough voices, or when the sounds all died away, and he was left lonely, not a soul to speak to him; no kind hand to touch his hot little head; nobody to give him a drink, though he wanted it so much. Nello had to clamber out of bed, to pour himself out a cup of water from the great brown jug, which he could scarcely lift—and fell upon his bed again, utterly heartsick and desolate. Nobody to give him a drink! How they used to pet him when he had a headache! How Martuccia would croon over him, and bathe his head, and kiss his hands, and bring him everything she could think of to please him! And Mary would come and stand by his side, and put her cool, white hand upon his head—that hand which he had once called “as soft as snow.” Nello remembered the smile that came on Mary’s face when he had called her hand “as soft as snow.” He did not himself see the poetry of the phrase, but he thought he could feel again that mingled coolness, and softness, and whiteness. And Lily! Lily would sit by him all day long, and read to him, or sing to him, or tell him stories, or play when he got a little better and could play. A great lump came in Nello’s throat. “Oh, my Lily!” he cried, with a lamentable cry. He had no mother to appeal to, poor child—not even the imagination of a mother. Lily had been everything. Nothing had ever been so bad with him but could be borne when Lily was there. Naturally he had not so much felt the want of Lily when it was pleasure (as he thought) that he was going to. He could part with her without much emotion in the excitement of novelty and childish hope; but now——. Nello turned his face to the wall and sobbed. The lonely place—all the lonelier for bearing traces of that rude multitude—held him, a little atom, in its midst. Nobody heard his crying, or cared. He tore the bedclothes with his little frantic hands, with that sense of the intolerable which comes so easily to a child. But what did it matter that it was intolerable? Little Nello, like older people, had to bear it all the same.
It was best to leave the child quiet, the Swans thought. They were not unkind, but they were not used to take much trouble. The boys who came to them generally were robust boys, able to take care of themselves, and to whom it did no harm to be hustled about—who enjoyed the scrimmages and struggles. Mrs. Swan had her own children to look after. “I’ve left him to himself; he’s better to be quite quiet,” she said to her husband, and the husband approved; “far better for him to be quiet.” Attempts to amuse a child, in such circumstances, would have been foolish, they thought, and as for petting and sympathising with him, far better that he should get accustomed to it, and make up his mind to put up with it like the rest. They could not make any difference between one and another; and if he had a day’s rest, and was allowed to lie in bed, what could the child want more? There was no imagination in the house lively enough to envisager the circumstances from Nello’s point of view, or to understand what chills of terror, what flushes of passion, came over the child, when the others poured in to bed again in the evening, driving him desperate with fear and wild with anger. Who could imagine anything so vehement in the mind of such a little boy? But Nello was not molested that next evening; they were disposed rather to be obsequious to him, asking, in their rough way, how he was, and offering him half-eaten apples and bits of sticky sweetmeats, by way of compensation. But Nello would not listen to these clumsy overtures. He turned his face to the wall persistently, and would have nothing to say to them. Even the tumult that was going on did not tempt him to turn round, though, after the first moment of fright, the crowd in the room was rather comforting than otherwise to Nello. The sound of their voices kept him from that melancholy absorption in himself.
Next morning he had to get up, though he was still sick and sore. Nello was so obstinate in his refusal to do so, that the master himself had to be summoned. Mr. Swan would stand no nonsense.
“Get up, my boy,” he said, “you’ll get no good lying there. There has nothing happened to you more than happens to new boys everywhere. Come, you’re not a baby to cry. Get up, and be a man.”
“I want to go home,” said Nello.