The Raft
cloud--the Misses Jacobite. They lived in an old-fashioned house in
Topbury and kept no servants. Peter got to know them because they smiled
at him coming in and going out of church. There was Miss Florence, who
was tall and reserved; and Miss Effie, who was little and talkative; and
Miss Madge, who was fat and jolly; and Miss Leah, a shadow-woman,
who sat always in a darkened room with pale hands folded, crooning to
herself.
People said “Poor thing! Oh well, there's no good blaming her now. She
wouldn't thank us for our pity; after all, she brought it on herself.”
Or they said. “You know, they were quite proud once--the belles of
Topbury. Two of them were engaged to be married. Their father was alive
then--the Squire we called him. But after Miss Leah----” They dropped
their voices till they came to the last sentence, “And the disgrace of
it killed the old chap.”
Even Grace, when she took Kay and Peter to visit them, left them if she
could on the doorstep. Her righteous mood asserted itself; she flounced
her skirt in departing, shaking off the dust from her feet for a
testimony against them. “Scand'lous, I calls it. If I wuz to do like
'er, yer ma wouldn't let me touch yer. But o' course, it's different;
I'm only a sarvant-gal. And they 'olds their 'eads so 'ighl Brazen,
I calls it. Before I walked the streets where a thing like that 'ad
'appened in my family, I'd sink into my grave fust--that I would. I 'ate
the thought of their kissing yer, my precious lambs.”
Peter was always wondering what it was that Miss Leah had brought
upon herself. Whatever it was, it stayed with her in the room with the
lowered blinds at the back of the house. She never went out; callers
never saw her. Her eyes were vague, as though she had wept away their
color. She spoke in a hoarse whisper, as in a dream; and her attention
had to be drawn to anything before she saw it. But it was her singing
that shocked and thrilled Peter, making him both pitiful and frightened.
Her song never varied and never quite came to an end; she repeated it
over and over. You could hear it in the hall, the moment you entered;
it went on at intervals until you left. She sang it with empty hands,
sitting without motion:
“On the other side of Jordan
In the sweet fields of Eden
Where the Tree of Life is growing
There is rest for me.”
Where were the “sweet fields of Eden”? Peter liked the sound of them and
would have asked her, had not something held him back. She must be very
tired, he thought, to be singing always about rest. Yet he never saw her
work.
He had been there many times and had only heard her, until one day, as
he was scampering down the passage with Miss Madge pursuing, the door
opened and a woman with dim eyes and hair as white as snow looked
out. She gazed at him without interest; but when Kay toddled up to her
fearlessly, she stooped and caught her to her breast.
Several things about the Misses Jacobite struck Peter as funny. They
divided the visit up, so that each might have a child for part of it
entirely to herself. Each would behave during that time as though she
were a mother famished for affection, returned from a long journey, and
would invent secrets which were to be shared by nobody but the child and
herself. Kay and Peter were carried off into separate rooms, and there
played with and cuddled by a solitary Miss Jacobite. Though the Misses
Jacobite were obviously poor, the children always went home with a
present; often enough it was a toy from the dusty, disused nursery.
When they met Kay and Peter on Sundays and people were watching, they
pretended to forget the other things that had happened.
“I wonder you let your children go there,” people said.
Nan smiled slowly and answered softly, gathering Kay and Peter to her.
“Poor things! They were robbed of everything. I have so much I don't
deserve. I can spare them a little of my gladness.”
“But, Mrs. Barrington, that's mere sentiment. How does your husband
allow it?”
One day Nan's husband spoke up for himself. “Did you ever hear of the
raft? I thought not. Well, Nan and I have.”
CHAPTER X--WAFFLES BETTERS HIMSELF
It was the month of June. A breeze blowing in at the open window
fluttered out the muslin curtains and shook loose the petals of roses
standing on the table. A milk-cart rattled down the Terrace, clattering
its cans. Sounds, which drifted in from the primrose-tinted world, were
all what Peter would have described as “early.” The walls of the room
were splashed with great streaks of sunlight, which lit up some of the
pictures with peculiar intensity and left others in contrasting shadow.
One of those which were thus illumined was a Dutch landscape by Cuyp,
hanging against the dark oak paneling above a blue couch; it represented
a comfortable burgher strolling in conversation with two women on the
banks of a canal. Barrington liked to face it while he sat at breakfast;
it gave him a certain indifference to worry before the rush of the day
commenced. But this morning, to judge by his puckered forehead, it had
not produced its usual effect. He glanced up from the letter he was
reading and tossed it across to Nan. “What d'you make of that?”
She bent over it, wrinkling her brows. The letter was in a man's
handwriting and the postscript, which was of nearly equal length, was in
a woman's.
“I don't know; if it was from anyone but Ocky----”
“Precisely, Ocky's a fool. He's always been a fool and he's growing
worse; but Jehane ought to have sounder sense. It's beyond me why she
married him. I never did understand Jehane; I suppose I never shall.”
“You're not a woman, Billy; or else you would. She was sick and tired of
being lonely and dependent; she wanted someone to take care of her. Ocky
was the only man who offered. But that's eight years ago--I'm afraid
she's found him out; and she's doing her best to persuade herself that
she hasn't. Poor Jehane, she always admired strong men--men she could
worship.”
“That explains but it doesn't excuse her. She had a strong man in
Captain Spashett; the hurry of her second marriage was indecent. I never
did approve of it. I said nothing at first because I thought she might
help Ocky to grow a backbone.--And now there's this new folly, which she
appears to encourage.”
“But, dear, is it so foolish? Perhaps, she's given him a backbone and
that's why he's done it.” She laughed nervously. “They both say that
this is a great opportunity for him to better himself.”
“Bah! The only way for Ocky to better himself is to change his
character. He's a balloon--a gas-bag; he'll go up in the air and burst.
The higher he goes, the further he'll have to tumble. You think I'm
harsh with him; I know him. Jehane's done him no good; she despises him,
I'm sure, though she doesn't think she shows it. She's filled his head
with stupid ambitions and before she's done she'll land him in a mess.
She's driven him to this bravado with private naggings; he wants to
prove to her that he really is a man. Man! He's a child in her hands. It
hurts me to watch them together. Why can't she be a wife to him and make
up her mind that she's married a donkey?”
“It's difficult for a woman to make up her mind to that--especially a
proud, impatient woman.”
He paid no attention to his wife's interruption, but went on irritably
with what he was saying.
“So he's giving up a secure job, and he's going into this harum-scarum
plan for buying up the sands of Sandport for nothing and selling them
as house-plots for a fortune. Even if there were anything in it, who's
going to finance him? Of course he'll come to me as usual.”
“But he says he's got the capital.”
“That's just it--from where? His pocket always had a hole in it. When
he says he's got money, I don't believe him; when he's proved his word I
grow nervous.”
Barrington leant across the table, rapping with his knuckles. “Ocky's
the kind of amiable weak fellow who can easily be made bad--especially
by a woman who refuses to love him. Once a man like that's gone under,
you can never bring him back--he's lost what staying quality he ever
had.”
Nan rarely argued with her husband. Pushing back her chair, she went and
knelt beside him, pressing her soft cheek against his hand. “You are a
silly Billy, dearest, to be so serious on such a happy morning. There's
no danger of Ocky ever becoming bad; and, in any case, what's this got
to do with the matter? I know he's foolish and his jokes get on your
nerves; but it isn't his fault that he's not clever like you. You
shouldn't be gloomy just because he's going to be daring. I don't wonder
he's sick of that lawyer's office. And it's absurd to think that he's
going to be bad; look how Peter loves him. You like Ocky more than you
pretend, now don't you?”
“If liking's being sorry. I'm always sorry for an ass; and I'm angry
with Jehane because she knows better. She's doing this because she's
jealous of you--that's why she clutches at this bubble chance of
prosperity.”
“Ar'n't you a little unjust to her, Billy? Since our marriage, you've
always been unjust to her. You know why she's jealous--she wants her
husband to be like you.”
Her voice sank away to a whisper. “Oh, Janey, I did, I did play fair,”
she had said that night at Cassingland; in her violent assertion of
fairness there had been an implied question which Jehane had never
answered. Both she and her husband knew that they had never been
acquitted.
Barrington drew Nan's head against his shoulder. “Poor people.” Then he
kissed her with new and eager gladness.
“And it isn't only pity you feel for Ocky?” She persisted. “Now
confess.”
He pulled out his watch hastily and, having replaced it, gulped down
his coffee. “When I was Peter's age, we were brought up like brothers
together. I loved him then; I'm disappointed in him now. And yet I'm
always catching glimpses in him of the little chap I played with. You
see, at school I was the stronger and had to protect him. I was always
fighting his battles. And one whole term, when his hand was poisoned,
I had to take him to the doctor to get it dressed---- No, it isn't only
pity, Pepperminta: it's memories.”
As he was going out of the door she called after him, “Then, I suppose,
I can write and say we'll have them?”
“While they're moving--the children? Yes.”
“Jehane doesn't say how many.”
“She means all, I expect. There's the garden for them--it'll be fun for
Kay and Peter.”
A week later, Jehane traveled across London to Top-bury Terrace,
bringing with her Glory, aged nine, Riska, aged six, and her youngest
child, Eustace, who was the same age as Kathleen. Jehane was now in her
thirty-seventh year, a striking brooding type of woman. As her face had
grown thinner and her cheeks had lost their color, the gipsy blackness
of her appearance had become more noticeable. She still had a fine
figure, so that men in public conveyances would furtively lower their
papers to gaze at her. There clung about her an atmosphere of adventure,
of which she was not entirely unaware. She was unconquerably romantic,
and would spin herself stories in the silence of her fancy of a love
that was crushing in its intensity. No one would have guessed from the
hard little lines about the corners of her eyes and mouth that this
imaginative tenderness formed part of her character.
Since the birth of Eustace her hair had fallen out in handfuls and she
had adopted a style of dressing it that was distinctly unbecoming. She
had had her combings made up into an affair which Glory called “Ma's
mat.” It consisted of half-a-dozen curls, sewn together in rows like
sausages, which she pinned across the top of her head so that they made