Speaker 1: Caterpillars by E. F. Benson. I saw a month or
Speaker 1: two ago in an Italian paper that the Villa Cascana
Speaker 1: in which I once stayed had been pulled down, and
Speaker 1: that a manufactory of some sort was in process of
Speaker 1: erection at sight. There is therefore no longer any reason
Speaker 1: for refraining from writing of those things which I myself
Speaker 1: saw or imagined I saw in a certain room and
Speaker 1: on a certain landing of the villa in question, nor
Speaker 1: from mentioning the circumstances which followed, which may or may not,
Speaker 1: according to the opinion of the reader, throw some light
Speaker 1: on or be somehow connected with this experience. The Villa
Speaker 1: Cascana was, in all ways but one a perfectly delightful house.
Speaker 1: Yet if it were standing now, nothing in the world
Speaker 1: I used a phrase in its literal sense would induce
Speaker 1: me to set foot in it again, for I believe
Speaker 1: it to have been haunted in a very terrible and
Speaker 1: practical manner. Most ghosts, when all is said and done,
Speaker 1: do not do much harm. They may perhaps terrify, but
Speaker 1: the person whom they visit usually gets over their visitation.
Speaker 1: They may, on the other hand, be entirely friendly and beneficent,
Speaker 1: but the appearances in the Villa Cascana were not beneficent,
Speaker 1: and had they made their visit in a very slightly
Speaker 1: different manner, I do not suppose I should have got
Speaker 1: over it any more than Arthur Inglis did. The house
Speaker 1: stood on an alex clad hill, not far from the
Speaker 1: Sestri di Levante on the Italian Riviera, looking out over
Speaker 1: the iridescent blues of that enchanted sea, while behind it
Speaker 1: rose the pale green chestnut woods that climb up the
Speaker 1: hillsides till they give place to the pines that black,
Speaker 1: in contrast with them, crown the slopes all round. At
Speaker 1: the garden in the luxuriance of mid spring, bloomed and
Speaker 1: was fragrant, and the scent of magnolia and rose borne
Speaker 1: on the salt freshness of the winds from the sea
Speaker 1: flowed like a stream through the cool vaulted rooms. On
Speaker 1: the ground floor, a broad pillared loggia ran round three
Speaker 1: sides of the house, the top of which formed a
Speaker 1: balcony for certain rooms of the first floor. The main staircase,
Speaker 1: broadened of gray marble steps, led up from the hall
Speaker 1: to the landing. Outside these rooms, which were three in number,
Speaker 1: namely two big sitting rooms and a bedroom arranged on suite.
Speaker 1: The latter was unoccupied, the sitting rooms were in use.
Speaker 1: From these the main staircase was continued to the second floor,
Speaker 1: where were situated certain bedrooms, one of which I occupied,
Speaker 1: while from the other side of the first floor landing,
Speaker 1: some half dozen steps led to another suite of rooms, where,
Speaker 1: at the time I am speaking of Arthur Inglis, the
Speaker 1: artist had his bedroom and studio. Thus the landing outside
Speaker 1: my bedroom at the top of the house commanded both
Speaker 1: the landing of the first floor and also the steps
Speaker 1: that led to England room Jim Stanley and his wife. Finally,
Speaker 1: whose guest I was occupied rooms in another wing of
Speaker 1: the house, where also were the servants quarters. I arrived
Speaker 1: just in time for lunch on a brilliant noon of
Speaker 1: mid May. The garden was shouting with color and fragrance,
Speaker 1: and not less delightful after my broiling walk up from
Speaker 1: the marina. Should have been the coming from the reverberating
Speaker 1: heat and blaze of the day into the marble coolness
Speaker 1: of the villa. Only the reader has my bare word
Speaker 1: for this, and nothing more. The moment I set foot
Speaker 1: in the house, I felt that something was wrong. This feeling,
Speaker 1: I may say, was quite vague, though very strong. And
Speaker 1: I remember that when I saw letters waiting for me
Speaker 1: on the table in the hall, I felt certain that
Speaker 1: the explanation was here. I was convinced that there was
Speaker 1: bad news of some sort for me. Yet when I
Speaker 1: opened them, I found no such explanation of my premonition.
Speaker 1: My correspondence all reeked of prosperity. Yet clear miscarriage of
Speaker 1: a presentiment did not dissipate my uneasiness in that cool,
Speaker 1: fragrant house. There was something wrong. I am at pains
Speaker 1: to mention this, because to the general view, it may
Speaker 1: explain that, though I am, as a rule so excellent
Speaker 1: a sleep, or that the extinction of my light on
Speaker 1: getting into bed is apparently contemporaneous with being called on
Speaker 1: the following morning, I slept very badly on my first
Speaker 1: night at the Villa Cascana. It may also explain the
Speaker 1: fact that when I did sleep, if it was indeed
Speaker 1: in sleep that I saw what I thought I saw,
Speaker 1: I dreamed in a very vivid and original manner. Original,
Speaker 1: that is to say, in the sense that something that,
Speaker 1: as far as I knew, had never previously entered into
Speaker 1: my consciousness usurped it then. But since in addition to
Speaker 1: this evil premonition, certain words and events occurring during the
Speaker 1: rest of the day might have suggested something of what
Speaker 1: I thought happened that night, it will be well to
Speaker 1: relate them after lunch. Then I went round the house
Speaker 1: with Missus Stanley, and during our tour she referred, it
Speaker 1: is true to the unoccupied bedroom on the first floor,
Speaker 1: which opened out of the room where we had lunched.
Speaker 1: We left that unoccupied, she said, because Jim and I
Speaker 1: have a charming bedroom and dressing room, as you saw
Speaker 1: in the wing, and if we used it ourselves, we
Speaker 1: should have to turn the dining room into a dressing
Speaker 1: room and have our meals downstairs. As it is, however,
Speaker 1: we have our little flat there. Arthur Inglis has his
Speaker 1: little flat in the other passage. And I remembered our
Speaker 1: Tyke extraordinary that you once said that the higher up
Speaker 1: you were in a house, the better you were pleased.
Speaker 1: So I put you at the top of the house
Speaker 1: instead of giving you that room. It is true that
Speaker 1: a doubt, vague as my uneasy premonition, crossed my mind
Speaker 1: at this I did not see why Missus Stanley should
Speaker 1: have explained all this if there had been not been
Speaker 1: more to explain. I allow therefore that the thought that
Speaker 1: there was something to explain about the unoccupied bedroom was
Speaker 1: momentarily present to my mind. The second thing that may
Speaker 1: have borne on my dream was this. At dinner, the
Speaker 1: conversation turned for a moment on ghosts. Anglis, with the
Speaker 1: certainty of conviction, expressed his belief that anybody who could
Speaker 1: possibly believe in the existence of supernatural phenomena was unworthy
Speaker 1: of the name of an ass The subject instantly dropped.
Speaker 1: As far as I can recollect, nothing else occurred or
Speaker 1: was said that could bear on what follows. We all
Speaker 1: went to bed rather early, and personally I yawned my
Speaker 1: way upstairs, feeling hideously sleepy. My room was rather hot,
Speaker 1: and I threw all the windows wide, and from without
Speaker 1: poured in the white light of the moon and the
Speaker 1: love song of many nightingales. I undressed quickly and got
Speaker 1: into bed. But though I had felt so sleepy before,
Speaker 1: I now felt extremely wide awake. But I was quite
Speaker 1: content to be awake. I did not toss or turn.
Speaker 1: I felt perfectly happy listening to the song and seeing
Speaker 1: the light. Then it is possible I may have gone
Speaker 1: to sleep, and what follows may have been a dream.
Speaker 1: I thought, anyhow, that after a time, the nightingales ceased singing,
Speaker 1: and the moon sank. I thought also that if for
Speaker 1: some unexplained reason, I was going to lie awake all night,
Speaker 1: I might as well read. And I remembered that I
Speaker 1: had left a book in which I was interested in
Speaker 1: the dining room on the first floor. So I got
Speaker 1: out of bed, lit a candle, and went downstairs. I
Speaker 1: went into the room, saw on a side table the
Speaker 1: book I had come to look for, and then simultaneously
Speaker 1: saw that the door into the unoccupied bedroom was open.
Speaker 1: A curious gray light, not of dawn nor of moonshine,
Speaker 1: came out of it, and I looked in the bed
Speaker 1: stood just opposite the door, a big four poster hung
Speaker 1: with tapestry at the head. Then I saw that the
Speaker 1: grayish light of the bedroom came from the bed, or
Speaker 1: rather from what was on the bed, for it was
Speaker 1: covered with great caterpillars a foot or more in length,
Speaker 1: which crawled over it. They were faintly luminous, and it
Speaker 1: was the light from them that showed me the room,
Speaker 1: instead of the sucker feet of ordinary caterpillars. They had
Speaker 1: rows of pincers, like crabs, and they moved by grasping
Speaker 1: what they lay on with their pincers and then sliding
Speaker 1: their bodies forward. In color, these dreadful insects were yellowish gray,
Speaker 1: and they were covered with irregular lumps and swellings. There
Speaker 1: must have been hundreds of them, for they formed a
Speaker 1: sort of writhing, crawling pyramid on the bed. Occasionally one
Speaker 1: fell off onto the floor with a soft, fleshy thud,
Speaker 1: and though the floor was of hard concrete, it yielded
Speaker 1: to the pincer feet as if it had been putty,
Speaker 1: and crawling back, the caterpillar would mount onto the bed
Speaker 1: again to rejoin its fearful companions. They appeared to have
Speaker 1: no faces, so to speak, but at one of them
Speaker 1: there was a mouth that opened sideways and respiration. Then
Speaker 1: as I looked, it seemed to me that they all
Speaker 1: suddenly became conscious of my presence. All the mouths, at
Speaker 1: any rate, were turned in my direction, and next moment
Speaker 1: they began dropping off the bed with those soft fleshy
Speaker 1: thuds onto the floor and wriggling towards me. For a second,
Speaker 1: a paralysis as of a dream was on me. But
Speaker 1: the next I was running upstairs again to my room,
Speaker 1: and I remember feeling the cold of the marble steps
Speaker 1: on my bare feet. I rushed into my bedroom and
Speaker 1: slammed the door behind me, and then I was certainly
Speaker 1: wide awake. Now I found myself standing by my bed,
Speaker 1: with a sweat of terror pouring from me. The noise
Speaker 1: of the banged door still rang in my ears. But
Speaker 1: as would have been more usual if this had been
Speaker 1: mere nightmare, the terror that had been mine when I
Speaker 1: saw those foul beasts crawling about the bed or dropping
Speaker 1: softly onto the floor, did not cease then awake. Now,
Speaker 1: if dreamed before, I did not at all recover from
Speaker 1: the horror of dream. It did not seem to me
Speaker 1: that I had dreamed. And until dawn I sat or stood,
Speaker 1: not daring to lie down, thinking that every rustle or
Speaker 1: movement that I heard was the approach of the caterpillars
Speaker 1: to them, and the claws that bit into the cement.
Speaker 1: The wood of the door was child's play. Steel would
Speaker 1: not keep them out. But with the sweet and noble
Speaker 1: return of day, the horror vanished. The whisper of wind
Speaker 1: became benignant again, the nameless fear. Whatever it was was
Speaker 1: smoothed out and terrified me no longer. Dawn broke hewless
Speaker 1: at first, then it grew dove colored. Then the flaming
Speaker 1: pageant of light spread over the sky. The admirable rule
Speaker 1: of the house was that everybody had breakfast where and
Speaker 1: when he pleased, And in consequence, it was not till
Speaker 1: lunch time that I met any of the other members
Speaker 1: of our party, since I had breakfast on my balcony
Speaker 1: and wrote letters and other things till lunch. In fact,
Speaker 1: I got down to that meal rather late, after the
Speaker 1: other three had begun. Between my knife and fork there
Speaker 1: was a small pill box of cardboard, and as I
Speaker 1: sat down, English spoke, Do look at that, he said,
Speaker 1: since you are interested in natural history. I found it
Speaker 1: crawling on my counterpane last night, and I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. I think that before I opened the
Speaker 1: pill box I expected something of the sort which I
Speaker 1: found in it. Inside, anyhow, was a small caterpillar, grayish
Speaker 1: yellow in color, with curious bumps and increscences on its rings.
Speaker 1: It was extremely active and hurried round the box this way,
Speaker 1: and that its feet were unlike the feet of any caterpillar.
Speaker 1: I ever saw. They were like the pincers of a crab.
Speaker 1: I looked and shut the lid down again. No, I
Speaker 1: don't know it, I said, but it looks rather unwholesome.
Speaker 1: What are you going to do with it? Oh, I
Speaker 1: shall keep it, said Inglis. It has begun to spin.
Speaker 1: I want to see what sort of a mooth it
Speaker 1: turns into. I opened the box again and saw that
Speaker 1: these hurrying movements were indeed the beginning of the spinning
Speaker 1: of the web of its cocoon. Then English spoke again.
Speaker 1: It has got funny feet too, he said, They are
Speaker 1: like crabs pincers. What's the Latin for crab? Oh? Yes, cancer?
Speaker 1: So in case it is unique, let's christen it cancer
Speaker 1: English senses. Then something happened to my brain, some momentary
Speaker 1: piecing together of all that I had seen or dreamed.
Speaker 1: Something in his words seemed to me to throw light
Speaker 1: on it all, and my own intense horror at the
Speaker 1: experience of the night before linked itself onto what he
Speaker 1: had just said. In in fact, I took the box
Speaker 1: and threw it, caterpillar and all out of the window.
Speaker 1: There was a gravel path just outside, and beyond it
Speaker 1: a fountain playing into a basin. The box fell onto
Speaker 1: the middle of this English laughed. So the students of
Speaker 1: the occult don't like solid facts, he said, my poor caterpillar.
Speaker 1: The talk went off again at once onto other subjects.
Speaker 1: And I have only given in detail as they happen,
Speaker 1: these trivialities, in order to be sure myself that I
Speaker 1: have recorded everything that could have borne on occult subjects,
Speaker 1: or on the subject of caterpillars. But at the moment
Speaker 1: when I threw the pill box into the fountain, I
Speaker 1: lost my head. My only excuse is that, as is
Speaker 1: probably plain, the tenant of it was in miniature exactly
Speaker 1: what I had seen crowded onto the bed in the
Speaker 1: unoccupied room. And though this translation of those phantoms into
Speaker 1: flesh and blood or whatever it is that caterpillars are
Speaker 1: made of, ought perhaps to have relieved the horror of
Speaker 1: the night, as a matter of fact, it did nothing
Speaker 1: of the kind. It only made the crawling pyramid that
Speaker 1: covered the bed in the unoccupied room more hideously real.
Speaker 1: After lunch we spent a lazy hour two strolling about
Speaker 1: the garden or sitting in the loggia. And it must
Speaker 1: have been about four o'clock when Stanley, and I started
Speaker 1: off the bathe down the path that led by the
Speaker 1: fountain into which I had thrown the pill box. The
Speaker 1: water was shallow and clear, and at the bottom of
Speaker 1: it I saw its white remains. The water had disintegrated
Speaker 1: the cardboard, and it had become no more than a
Speaker 1: few strips and shreds of sod and paper. The center
Speaker 1: of the fountain was a marble Italian cupid, which squirted
Speaker 1: the water out of a wine skin held under its arm,
Speaker 1: and crawling up its leg was the caterpillar, strange and
Speaker 1: scarcely credible, as it seemed, it must have survived the
Speaker 1: falling to bits of its prison and made its way
Speaker 1: to shore. And there it was out of arm's reach,
Speaker 1: weaving and waving this way and that as it evolved
Speaker 1: its cocoon. Then as I looked at it, it seemed
Speaker 1: to me again that like the caterpillar I had seen
Speaker 1: last night, it saw me, and, breaking out of the
Speaker 1: threads that surrounded it, it crawled down the marble leg
Speaker 1: of the cupid and began swimming like a snake across
Speaker 1: the water of the fountain towards me. It came with
Speaker 1: extraordinary speed, the fact of a caterpillar. Being able to
Speaker 1: swim was new to me, and in another moment was
Speaker 1: crawling up the marble lip of the basin. Just then
Speaker 1: English joined us, why if it is an old cancer ingleciensis? Again,
Speaker 1: he said, catching sight of the beast, what a tearing
Speaker 1: hurry it is in We were standing side by side
Speaker 1: on the path, and when the caterpillar had advanced to
Speaker 1: within about a yard of us, it stopped and began
Speaker 1: waving again, as if in doubt as to the direction
Speaker 1: in which it should go. Then it appeared to make
Speaker 1: up its mind and crawled onto English's shoe. It likes
Speaker 1: me best, he said, But I don't really know that
Speaker 1: I like it. And as it won't drown, I think
Speaker 1: perhaps He shook it off his shoe onto the gravel
Speaker 1: path and trod on it all afternoon the air got
Speaker 1: heavier and heavier, with a sirocco that was, without doubt
Speaker 1: coming up from the south. And that night again I
Speaker 1: went up to bed feeling very sleepy, but below my drowsiness,
Speaker 1: so to speak, there was the consciousness stronger than before,
Speaker 1: that there was something wrong in the house, that something
Speaker 1: dangerous was close at hand. But I fell asleep at
Speaker 1: once and how long after I do not know either
Speaker 1: woke or dreamed. I awoke feeling that I must get
Speaker 1: up at once, or I should be too late. Then,
Speaker 1: dreaming or awake, I lay and fought this sphere, telling
Speaker 1: myself that I was but the prey of my own nerves,
Speaker 1: disordered by sirocco or what not, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: quite clearly knowing in another part of my mind, so
Speaker 1: to speak, that every moment's delay added to the danger.
Speaker 1: At last, this second feeling became irresistible, and I put
Speaker 1: on coat and trousers and went out of my room
Speaker 1: on to the landing. And then I saw that I
Speaker 1: had already delayed too long, and that I was now
Speaker 1: too late. The whole of the landing of the first
Speaker 1: floor below was invisible under the swarm of caterpillars that
Speaker 1: crawled there. The folding doors into the sitting room from
Speaker 1: which opened the bedroom where I had seen them last night,
Speaker 1: were shut, but they were squeezing through the cracks of it,
Speaker 1: and dropping one by one through the keyhole, elongating themselves
Speaker 1: into mere string as they passed, and growing fat and
Speaker 1: lumpy again. On emerging, some as if exploring, were nosing
Speaker 1: about the steps into the passage at the end of
Speaker 1: which were Inglis's rooms. Others were crawling on the lowest
Speaker 1: steps of the staircase that led up to where I stood.
Speaker 1: The landing, however, was completely covered with them. I was
Speaker 1: cut off, and of the frozen horror that seized me
Speaker 1: when I saw that I can give no idea in words.
Speaker 1: Then at last a general movement began to take place,
Speaker 1: and they grew thicker on the steps that led to
Speaker 1: Ingliss's room. Gradually, like some hideous tide of flesh, they
Speaker 1: advanced along the passage, and I saw, the foremost visible
Speaker 1: by the pale, gray luminousness that came from them, reach
Speaker 1: his door. Again and again. I tried to shout and
Speaker 1: warn him in teror all the time that they would
Speaker 1: turn at the sound of my voice and mount my
Speaker 1: stare instead. But for all my efforts, I felt that
Speaker 1: no sound came from my throat. They crawled along the
Speaker 1: hingecrack of his door, passing through as they had done before,
Speaker 1: and still I stood there, making impotent efforts to shout
Speaker 1: to him, to bid him escape while there was time.
Speaker 1: At last the passage was completely empty. They had all gone,
Speaker 1: and at that moment I was conscious for the first
Speaker 1: time of the cold of the marble landing on which
Speaker 1: I stood barefooted. The dawn was just beginning to break
Speaker 1: in the eastern sky. Six months after I met missus
Speaker 1: Stanley in a country house in England. We talked on
Speaker 1: many subjects, and at last she said, I don't think
Speaker 1: i've seen you since I got that dreadful news about
Speaker 1: Arthur Ingliss a month ago. I haven't heard, said I. No,
Speaker 1: he's got cancer. They don't even advise an operation, for
Speaker 1: there is no hope of a cure. He is riddled
Speaker 1: with it. The doctors say. Now, during all these six months,
Speaker 1: I do not think a day had passed on which
Speaker 1: I had not had in my mind the dreams or
Speaker 1: whatever you like to call them, which I had seen
Speaker 1: in the villa Kascana. It is awful, is it not,
Speaker 1: she continued, And I feel I can't help feeling that
Speaker 1: he may have caught it at the villa, I asked.
Speaker 1: She looked at me in blank surprise. Why did you
Speaker 1: say that, she asked, How did you know? Then she
Speaker 1: told me in the unoccupied bedroom, a year before there
Speaker 1: had been a fatal case of cancer. She had, of course,
Speaker 1: taken the best advice, and been told that the utmost
Speaker 1: dictates of prudence would be obeyed as long as she
Speaker 1: did not put anybody to sleep in the room, which
Speaker 1: had also been thoroughly disinfected and newly whitewashed and painted,
Speaker 1: but and of caterpillars.