The Raft
his mother's parlor-maid soon after he left Cassingland. She was a
beautiful creature and very modest; because she felt herself unworthy of
the brilliant Mr. Barrington, she made it a condition of their marriage
that it should be kept secret. Then she got it into her head that she
was spoiling his promising career, and----- Well, she died suddenly--of
gas. After she was dead, a volume of poems was discovered--love
poems--and published anonymously; my mother attributes them to Bacon and
my father used to attribute them to Shakespeare. Then father found out,
but he's never dared to tell mother; she was always so positive about
it.”
Nan had stared at her friend while she was talking. Could this be the
serious Jehane? What had happened? At the end she broke into a peal of
laughter. “It won't do, old girl; you're stuffing. Billy hasn't got a
mother.”
“And he isn't married,” he said; “and he doesn't want to be married yet.
Now are you content?”
Jehane was not content. As they drifted through Mesopotamia with its
pollard-willows, sound of running waters and constant fluttering of
birds, she kept hearing those words “And he doesn't want to be married
yet.” Did men ever want to be married, or was it always necessary to
catch them? _Catch them!_ It sounded horrid to put it like that,
and robbed love of all its poetry. As a girl with a Pre-Raphaelite
appearance, she had liked to believe all the legends of chivalry: that
it was woman's part to be remote and disdainful, while men endangered
themselves to win her favor. But were those legends only ideals--had
anything like them ever happened? And supposing a woman wanted to catch
Barrington, how would she set about it?
The roar of water across the lasher at Parsons' Pleasure grew louder,
drowning the conversation which was taking place in low tones at the
other end of the punt. As they drew in at the landing, Jehane
bent forward and heard Barrington say, “I believe you'd have been
disappointed if I had been married”; and Nan's retort, “I believe I
should. You know, it does make a difference.”
Nan turned to Jehane, “What are we going to do next? There's hardly time
to go further.”
“Oh, don't go back yet,” Barrington protested; “let's get tea at Marston
Ferry.”
“But who'll take the punt round to the ladies' landing? Ladies aren't
allowed through Parsons' Pleasure, and I hardly trust you to come round
by yourself.” Nan eyed him doubtfully. “You may be a good pub, but
you're a rotten punter.”
“Dash it all, you needn't rub it in. If the worst comes to the worst, I
shall only get a wetting.”
“You're sure you can swim?”
“Quite sure, thanks.”
“Well, good-by, and good luck. I should hate to lose you after all these
years of parting.”
As they struck out along the path across the island and the screen of
bushes shut him from their view, Jehane felt her arm taken.
“Don't you like him, Janey?”
“What I've seen of him, yes.”
“I was afraid you didn't.”
“Whatever made you think that?”
“Because he thought it. I could feel that he thought it.”
“But I did nothing.”
“You wore your touch-me-not-manners, Janey. You looked so tragic and
black. I had to talk my head off to fill in the awkwardnesses.”
“I know you did; but I wasn't sure of the reason.”
Nan glanced up quickly and her eyes filled; the blood surged into her
face and throat; her lips trembled. She pressed her cheek coaxingly
against the tall girl's shoulder. “You foolish Jehane; you're jealous.
Why, Billy and I use to eat blackberries out of each other's hands.”
Then Jehane relented. Drawing Nan to her with swift, protecting passion,
she kissed the wet eyes and pouting mouth. “You dear little Nan, I _was_
jealous. You're so sweet and gentle; no one could help loving you. I was
angry with myself--angry because I'm so different.”
“So much cleverer,” Nan whispered.
“I don't want to be clever; I'd give everything I possess to look as
good and happy as you.”
“But you are good. If you weren't, we shouldn't all love you.”
“_All?_ It's enough that you do.”
When Barrington rounded the island, he found them standing oddly near
together; then he noticed a moist ball of handkerchief crushed in Nan's
free hand--and he guessed.
CHAPTER III--ALL THE WAY FOR THIS
Jehane had been granted her wish and she was frightened. The river
stretched before her, a lonely ghost, glimmering between soaked fields
and beaten countryside. The rain-fall must have been heavy in the
hills, for the river was swollen and discolored: branches, torn from
overhanging trees, danced and vanished in the swiftly moving current.
With evening a breeze had sprung up, which came fitfully in gusts,
bowing tall rushes that waded in the stream, so that they whispered
“Hush.” In the distance, above clumped tree-tops, the spires of
Oxford speared the watery sky; red stains spread along white flanks of
clouds--clouds that looked like chargers spurred by invisible riders.
The man of whom she knew so little and whom she desired was standing at
her side. She was terrified. She had gained her wish--at last they were
alone together.
Behind them, up the hill, the cosy inn nestled among its quiet arbors.
Across the river the ferryman sat whistling, waiting for his next fare
to come up. Moving away through misty meadows on the further bank a
white speck fluttered mothlike.
“She'll get home all right, don't you think?”
“Why not? She always does.”
“But it'll be late by the time she reaches Cassingland. She's got to
catch the tram into Oxford, to harness up and then to drive out to the
rectory. It'll be late by the time she arrives.”
“She'd have been later if she'd returned by river with us.--See, she's
waving at the stile.--Girls have to do these thing's for themselves, Mr.
Barrington, if they have no brothers.”
He stroked his chin. “Girls who have no brothers should be allotted
brothers by the State.”
She faced him daringly. “I should like that. I might ask to have you
appointed my brother.”
“You would, eh! Seems to me that's what's happened.--Funny what a little
customer Nan is for making her friends the friends of one another: she
was just the same in the old days. One might almost suspect that she'd
planned this from the start--bringing us out all comfy, and leaving us
to go home together.--But, I say, can you punt?”
“I can, but I'm not going to.”
He stepped back from her involuntarily and eyed her. There was a thrill
of excitement in her clear voice that warned and yet left him puzzled.
She filled him with discomfort--discomfort that was not entirely
unpleasant. While Nan was present, she had been watchful and silent; now
it was as though she slipped back the bars of her reticence and stepped
out. He tingled with an unaccustomed sense of danger. He weighed his
words before expressing the most trifling sentiment. Usually he
was recklessly spontaneous; now he feared lest his motives might be
mistaken. What did she want of him? She had gazed down from the window
and beckoned him with her eyes--him, a stranger. Whatever it was, Nan
knew about it, and had cried about it the moment his back was turned. He
distrusted anyone who made Nan cry.
Silence between them was more awkward than words--surcharged with subtle
promptings that words disguised; he took up the thread of their broken
conversation.
“If you're not going to punt, how are we going to get back? I'll do my
best, but you've seen what a duffer I am.”
“We'll sit in the stern and paddle. With the current running so
strongly, we could almost drift back.”
He followed her down the slope. She walked in front, her head slightly
turned as though she listened to make sure that he followed. He noticed
the pride of her handsome body, its erectness and its poise--how it
seemed to glide across the grass without sound or motion. He summed her
up as being abnormally self-conscious and wilfully undiscoverable. He
wondered whether her restraint hid a glorious personality, or served
simply as a disguise for shallowness of mind.--And while he analyzed
her thus, she was scorning herself for the immodesty of her fear and
dumbness.
Kneeling down on the landing to unfasten the rope, he pieced his words
together. “I ought to apologize for what I implied just now. It must
have sounded horribly ungallant to suggest that you should work while I
sat idle.” She did not answer till they were seated side by side in the
narrow stern. Taking a long stroke with her paddle, she shot a searching
glance at him; the veil drew back from her eyes, revealing their
smoldering fire. “That's all right. I don't trouble. You needn't mind.”
Though she had not blamed him, she had not excused him.
Night was falling early; outlines of the country were already growing
vague. Edges of things were blurred; from low-lying meadows silver mists
were rising. In the great silence grasses rustled as cattle stirred
them, the river complained, and a solitary belated bird swept across the
dusk with a dull cry.
It was dangerous and it was tempting--he could not avoid personalities.
He tried to think of other things to say, but they refused to take
shape. His perturbation seemed the rumor of what her mind was enacting.
Several times inquisitive inquiries were on the tip of his tongue;
he checked them. Then her body lurched against him; their shoulders
brushed.
“You have a beautiful name.”
“Indeed! You think so?”
“For me it has only one association.”
Again she brushed against him. He caught the scent of her hair and, in
the twilight, a glimpse of the heavy drooping eyelids.
“I mean that poem by William Morris--it's all about Jehane. You remember
how it runs: 'Had she come all the way for this'----?”
“You're frightened to continue. Isn't that so?” Her tones were cold and
quiet. “'Had she come all the way for this, to part at last without a
kiss?'--I remember. It's all about dripping woods and a country like
this, with a river overflowing its banks, and a man and a girl who were
parted forever 'beside the haystack in the floods.' Jehane was supposed
to be a witch, wasn't she? 'Jehane the brown! Jehane the brown! Give us
Jehane to burn or drown.' There's something like that in the poem---- I
suppose I make you think only of tragic things?”
“Why suppose that?”
“Because I do most people.”
“In my case there's no reason for supposing that. I oughtn't to have
mentioned it.”
“Oh yes, you ought. You felt it, though you didn't know it. It's
unfortunate for a girl always to impress people as tragic, don't you
think? Men like us to be young. You're so young yourself--that's your
hobby, according to Nan.--But if you want to know, you yourself made me
think of something not quite happy--that's what kept me so quiet on the
way up.”
“I thought I'd done something amiss--that perhaps you were offended with
me for the informal way in which I introduced myself.”
She gave him no assurance that she had not been offended.
“Here's what you made me think,” she said:
“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.”
“Rather nice, isn't it, to find that we've had such a cheerful effect on
one another?”
“But--but why on earth should I make you think of that?”
She left off paddling and glanced away from him; a little shiver
ran through her. When she spoke, her voice was low-pitched but still
penetrating.
“Let me ask you a question. Do you think that it's much fun being a
girl?”
“Never thought about it.”
“Well, it isn't.”
“I should have supposed that, for anyone who was young and good-looking,