The Raft
imaginative child. Oh dear no, he's quite well. He'll grow out of it.”
But he hadn't. He stood by her always, as if he were a wall between her
and some threatened danger. He was not happy away from her; his life
seemed locked up in her life. His tenderness for her was beyond his
years--beautiful and mysterious. In the midst of his play he would still
raise his head suddenly, listening and expectant.
He was odd and gentle in many ways; to his mother his oddness was both
frightening and endearing. Cookie shook her head over him and sighed,
“'E's far away from this old world h'already. I doubt 'e'll never grow
up to man-'ood.”
And Grace would reply sharply, “Wot rot!” But she would wipe her eye.
He had a habit of asking questions before guests with startling
directness--asking them with big innocent eyes; they were questions for
which his mother felt bound to apologize: “He's so imaginative; for many
years he was our only child.”
Peter, wondering wherein he had done wrong, would sidle up to her when
the guests were gone, inquiring, “Mummy, what is a 'maginative child?”
His father, when he heard him, would laugh: “Now, Peter, don't be
Peterish or you'll make us all cry.”
So they did not tell him when his cousins were expected.
He was in the garden, on the grass beneath the cedar, with Kay curled
against him. He was telling her stories--his own inventions. On the
wall, partly hidden in creepers, basking in the sunshine, blinking down
on them through slits of eyes, was a great gray tabby. The tabby was the
subject of the story. One day, returning along the Terrace he had found
her. Her bones were poking through her fur: she was evidently a stray.
He had stopped to stroke her and she had followed. After being fed on
the doorstep, she refused to set off on her wanderings again. Whenever
the door opened, she entered like a streak of lightning. She was
determined to be adopted; though cook had broomed her on to the pavement
many times, she was not to be dissuaded by any harshness of refusal.
It was almost as though she knew that Kay and Peter were her eager
advocates.
With a cat so determined there was only one thing to do; take her out
and lose her. So she was captured by feigned kindness and tied in
a fish-basket; Grace was given a shilling and the fish-basket with
instructions to go on a trip to Hampstead and to leave the fish-basket
behind. Now, whether it was that Grace was more kind-hearted than her
statements, or whether it was that she preferred the company of her
policeman to the fulfilling of her errand, the fact remains that the cat
got back before her. An incredible performance if the basket had really
been left at Hampstead! Grace was circumstantial in the account she
gave; there was nothing for it but to accept her word that a cat had
traveled more swiftly than a train.
Stern methods were employed. Doors were closed against the cat; things
were thrown at it. It was encouraged to go hungry. The children were
forbidden to call it.
One morning Peter jumped out of bed and ran to the window attracted by
a strange noise. Looking down into the garden, he saw a flurry of fur
careering across flowerbeds till it was brought up sharply against the
wall with a bang. The bang was caused by a salmon-tin, in which the cat
had got its head fastened while foraging in a garbage-pail. Before
he could go to its rescue, cook came out with her hostile broom and
commenced the chase. The cat, blinded and maddened, by a miracle of
agility climbed a tree, leapt into a neighboring garden and vanished.
A week later it returned, with a ring about its neck where the jagged
edges of the tin had torn it. Such persistence and loyalty of affection
were not to be thwarted. At first the animal was tolerated; then, as its
manners and appearance improved, it was taken into the family. Because
of its adventures, when a name had to be chosen, Peter's father
suggested Romance. When Romance gave birth to kittens, they were named
after various of the novelists.
The history of Romance, where she went and what she did, was a story
which Kay was never tired of hearing, nor Peter of telling. Blinking
down from the wall on this sunshiny morning, Romance listened with
contented pride to the children, much as an old soldier might whose
campaigning days were ended.
“And what did putty say when Gwacie twied to lost her?”
The 'maginative child was about to answer, when his mother came out
under the mulberry: “Peter. Kay. Oh, there you are! Here's your
surprise.”
For a day or two, while the cousins were a novelty, there was nothing
but laughter and delight; but when Peter understood that their visit was
of undetermined length, he began to regard their coming as an intrusion.
Kay and Eustace were of the same age and naturally chose one another
as playmates. Eustace was a fat, dull boy, prone to tears, with his
mother's black eyes and handsome hair, and his father's coaxing ways.
He was only four, but he had it in his power to make Peter, aged ten,
wretched; for Kay developed a will of her own, and cared no more for
Peterish stories now that she could have Eustace for her slave.
So Peter was left to Riska and Glory. His old games for two were
useless; he had to think up fresh inventions in which three might
partake. He had no heart for it; Grace came to the rescue with pious
hints from the Bible.
In the stable by a disused tank, they would enact Jacob's wooing of
Rachel; the tank was the well at which Jacob met her and Romance was the
sheep brought down to be watered--she was, when they could catch her.
But the game nearly always ended in flushed cheeks and protesting
voices. Riska would insist on being Rachel, leaving Glory the undesired
part of Leah, who was sore of eye. Of his two girl-cousins Peter
preferred Glory; Riska was too high-tempered and stormy. So, when he
had served for Rachel seven years and instead had won Leah, he not
infrequently was content to stop, setting Bible history at defiance.
One evening his father, walking beneath the pear-trees, heard voices in
the empty stable. “I won't. I won't,” in stubborn tones. “But you shall,
you shall,” in a passionate wail.
He opened the door in the wall quietly. Glory was sitting on the ground,
placid eyed, watching a hot-faced little boy who held off a small
girl-cousin, fiercely determined to embrace him. When matters had been
sullenly explained, Barrington drew his son to him: “If a lady asks you
to kiss her, you should do it. It's Peterish not to. But polygamy always
ends in a cry. It's better not to play at it.”
Then came the inevitable question: “What is polgigamy, father?”
Grace was asked for a fresh suggestion; the result was Samson and
Delilah. To Peter's way of thinking Riska was quite suited to the rôle
of Delilah. Too well suited! In revenge, before he could stop her, she
cut off Peter's hair at the game's first playing.
During her stay at Topbury she committed many such offences. She was a
lawless little creature, strong of character, a wilful wisp of a child,
and extraordinarily like Jehane. Her fragile eager face, with its coral
mouth and soft dark eyes, could change from demure prettiness to a
flame of anger the moment she was thwarted. Yet, smiling or stormy, her
small-boned body and long black curls made her always beautiful--a wild
and destructive kind of beauty. From the first she claimed Peter as
her sole possession, and Peter---- Well, Peter did his best politely to
avoid her.
Glory was his favorite, though he often seemed to ignore her. She was
the opposite to her half-sister in both appearance and temper. She had
nothing of Jehane in her; nor did she resemble her soldier father. She
was oddly like to Kay and to a man whom her mother had desired with all
her heart. It was strange.
She was gray-eyed and her hair was of a primrose shade. She was tall for
her age--taller than Peter--and carried herself with sweet and subdued
quietness. She said very little and had submissive ways. Her actions
spoke loudly for anyone she loved. They spoke loudly for Peter; but he
scarcely observed them. His eyes were all for Kay. Glory was like his
shadow stealing after him across the sunlight through that month of
June. Her hand was always slipping shyly into his from behind. And she
understood his love for his sister, accepting it without question.
She would go to her small half-brother, “Come along Eustace; Glory wants
to show you something.”
“But Eustace wanth to play wiv Kay.”
“Eustace can play with Kay directly. Just come with Glory, there's a
dear little boy.”
She would nod to Peter knowingly, and smile to him, leading Eustace away
and leaving him alone with Kay.
He could fill her eyes with tears at the least show of irritation; her
persistent following did irritate him sometimes. Once, cross because she
followed, he told her to sit on the stable wall and not to move till he
said she might. Tea-time came and there was no Glory. They searched
the house for her and went out into the garden, calling. Not till Peter
called did she answer; then he remembered why. He remembered years after
the forlornness of that tear-stained face. It was Peterish of him to
forget Glory, and to remember her almost too late.
Nan, sitting sewing in the quiet sunlight, would often drop her work
to watch the children. She noticed how they kept together, yet always
a little separate, acting out the clash of temperaments which they had
inherited from their parents. And she noticed increasingly something
else--something which she never mentioned and which explained Jehane to
her: that astonishing likeness of Glory to Kay, as though they had been
sisters.
She would call Glory to her and, as the child sat at her feet, would
say, “Do you like Peter, darling?”
The honest eyes would be lifted to her own in affirmation.
“Very much?”
“Very much, Auntie.”
The girlish hand would slip into her own and presently a faltering voice
would whisper, “But he doesn't like me always. I worry him sometimes.”
Nan would call to Peter, “Glory's tired of sitting with mother. She
wants her little tyrant.”
As they wandered away across the lawn, she would follow them with her
eyes.
“I hope Jehane's good to her,” she said to Barrington. “Seems to be, in
her jealous way.”
“She's a nice child.”
“Nicer than Riska or Eustace. That's thanks to Captain Spashett.”
“Ah, yes,” Nan would say.
Mr. Waffles, having moved his belongings to Sandport, came to fetch the
intruders. Peter watched them depart with a sense of relief; now things
would settle back into their old groove.
In July the house at Topbury was closed and the Barringtons went for
their holiday to North Wales. The servants were sent to their homes,
with the exception of Grace. Summer holidays were ecstatic times of
fishing-rods and old clothes, when parents put aside their busy
manners, broke rules and played truant. This particular holiday was
made additionally adventurous by a tandem tricycle, on which Peter was
allowed to accompany his father when his mother was too tired, trying to
catch the pedals with his short legs or riding on the pedals away from
the saddle, when his father was not looking.
He was his father's companion many hours of each day, for Nan was often
tired. His father had plentiful opportunities for judging just how
'maginative was his child.
One morning, on going down to bathe, the sea was rough and Peter,
reluctant to enter and still more reluctant to own it, made the excuse
that he was frightened of treading on a dead sailor.
Peter, after hearing a sermon at the village chapel, grew profoundly
sorry for the Devil. It seemed so dreadful to have to burn for ever and
ever. He made a secret promise to God that he would take the Devil's