The Raft
which he was excluded by that hostile back. His eyes followed Friday
Lane: it ran on, trees, sunshine and shadows, tremulous with the wings
of birds, a canopied track, across fields, into the heart of wooded
fairyland. What promises lay over there? A voice of ecstasy kept
calling.
Reluctantly he set his feet against the pedals, glanced across his
shoulder to Kay and was going to have said--
Something that glistened shot down her cheek and swiftly vanished.
Very deliberately he dismounted. Yankee-Doodle, or a tune not unlike
it, was being played at the moment. He thumped the student of the
mouth-organ in the place from which Eve was created. Kay, all legs,
flushed face and blown hair, watched from the back seat of the trike the
novel sight of her brother being violent.
The boy tumbled from his perch, putting the gate between himself and
Peter. Yankee-Doodle ended abruptly--the mouth-organ slipped from his
hand. The freckled good humor of his face changed to an expression of
amused and fierce intelligence. It was his way to be amused when he was
angry or in danger--Kay and Peter were to learn that later. He bobbed
in the grass, recovered his fallen treasure, rubbed it on his sleeve,
stuffed it into his knickerbockers' pocket and grimaced across the rail.
“You're a fresh kid.”
Peter removed his cap; his curly hair fell about his forehead. “You've
made my sister cry,” he said. His hands were clenched.
One leg hopped over the gate; then another. “I haven't,” the boy denied
stoutly.
“You have. You called her 'just anybody.'”
The boy stepped into the road--a pugnacious little figure. “Pshaw! What
of it? Girls cry for nothing.”
Peter drew himself erect. “My sister doesn't.”
The boy raised his eyes and met Kay's. Ashamed of himself, but more
ashamed of showing it, he spoke stubbornly, “She's doing it now.”
There was silence. A small strained voice, which sounded not at all like
Peter's, said, “I never hurt people. I never fought in my life. But if I
did ever fight, I'd like to punch your head. And--and I think I could do
it.”
The boy lost his shame and became happy. “Guess you can't. Anyhow, why
don't you have a shot at it?”
Without waiting for a reply, he commenced to take off his coat and to
roll up his shirt-sleeves. He did it with an air of competence which was
calculated to intimidate. All the while he carried on a monologue. “So
he'd like to punch my head--_my_ head. Why, I could get his goat by just
looking at him. In America I've licked boys twice his size, and they
hadn't curly hair, either.” He faced Peter, doubling his fore-arm, and
inviting him to feel his muscle. “See that. Say, kid, I'm sorry for
you.--Ready?”
Peter nodded; before his nod had ended something hit him on the nose. He
threw up his arms to defend himself, but the something seemed all about
him. Always smiling into his own was the freckled face of a pleasant
looking boy--so pleasant that it was hard to believe that it was he who
was doing the hurting. And Peter--he hit back valiantly; but somewhere
at the back of his brain he kept on seeing pictures of the boy dead. It
was disconcerting; every now and then, when he should have pressed home
his advantage, he shortened his blows intentionally, with the strong
weakness of the humanitarian.
A bird rose twittering out of a hedge. From a meadow across the road,
a cow hung its mild head over, looked shocked, switched its tail
disapprovingly, mooed loudly, swung round and lumbered away uncertainly,
like a distressed old lady with gathered skirts, in a futile endeavor to
bring help.
Peter saw it all. His faculties were unnaturally and desperately alert.
It was odd how time lengthened its minutes--how much he saw and heard:
the deep blue stillness of sky-lagoons, the foam and wash of traveling
clouds, the erect and listening quiet of tree-sentinels and hedges,
and, somewhere out of sight, the sigh-sigh-sighing of wind in distant
country.
There was a cry behind him. How long had he been fighting? He could not
guess. Between himself and the boy rushed a little girl. Her small hands
commenced to beat the boy furiously. She could not speak; she was choked
with sobbing. The boy's arms fell to his side; he let her aim her puny
blows at his impudent face, making no attempt to stop her. Suddenly she
swayed and sank into the flowers at the side of the road. Peter stooped;
his arms went about her. The boy looked on, gazing from these strange
invaders to the waiting trike. It was he who was excluded now. He wanted
to say something--opened his mouth several times and halted. At last he
stumbled out the words.
“I'm--I'm sorry. And you're not just anybody.” And then, “I say, you're
plucky 'uns--won't you shake hands?”
The bird came back to the hedge and dropped into its nest. The cow,
having sought help in vain, looked distractedly into the road and saw
a boy pushing open a gate, while another boy, a little bruised and
battered, pushed an ancient tandem tricycle into a meadow, and a small
girl, with flushed face and blowy corn-colored hair, dabbed her eyes
furtively with the hem of her dress.
The trike had to be hidden. It was unlikely, but always possible, that
it might be coveted by tramps. Friday Lane lay before them. The boy
turned to them with abrupt frankness. “Here, what your names?”
“Mine's Peter, and my sister's is Kay.”
“Well, Peter, I guess I hit harder than I meant. But--but I reckon you
could have punched my head if you'd chosen. Didn't get warmed up to the
work before she stopped us--was that it?”
They were up to their knees in the meadow-world; the air was full of
kind new fragrances. Peter's eyes were dreamy. The boy rambled on,
leading deeper into the avenue of oaks, so that already the first
straggling fringe of woods commenced. “My brother's like that. In
Alaska, when the dogs took to fighting, he'd just stand still and laugh
and holler at them. Then, all of a sudden, when he saw that they were
eating one another, he'd go clean mad and wade in among 'em and lay 'em
out with the butt of his rifle. He's a wonder, my brother.”
“I'm sure he is,” said Peter, and Kay, trotting closely by his side,
repeated his words to show her interest.
The boy, flattered by the attention of his audience, with the treachery
of the born story-teller, sharpened their appetite by suspense. He
wagged his head mysteriously. “I could tell you heaps about him if you
were to come here often.”
He waited to see what effect that would have. Kay had been hiding behind
her brother, clinging to his hand. Now she came level with him, bending
her face across him so that she could meet the eyes of the boy. She
asked, “May we, Peter? Do you think we can?”
“Not often,” said Peter guardedly; “but as often as we can.”
The boy held out a further inducement. “One day I might show him to you.
He's like that with dogs and--and especially with girls: laughs at 'em,
hollers at 'em, and then-----. He's the most glad-eyed chap that ever
came down the pike, I reckon. That's what gives me all my trouble.”
Neither Kay nor Peter knew exactly what was meant. So Peter said,
“You've been everywhere, haven't you? And we--we just tricycle out
and----”
The boy had drawn his mouth-organ from his pocket and was playing,
stamping his feet and swaying his body. Suddenly he stopped and his
voice took up the air:
“I've been shipwrecked off Patagonia,
Home and Colonia,
Antipodonia;
I've shot cannibals,
Funny looking animals,
Top-knot coons;
I've bought diamonds twenty a penny there,
I've been somewhere, nowhere, anywhere--
And I'm the wise, wise man of the
Wide, wide world.”
They gazed at him wide-eyed in the hushed summer woodland. Then they
beat their hands together, crying, “Oh, again, again, please.”
The boy smiled tantalizingly. “Can you climb?” He shot the question out.
The next moment he was scrambling up a tall oak. Sometimes his body
was lost in leaves. Sometimes it sounded as though he were tumbling,
tumbling through the branches to the ground. At last, from a bough high
up where the sky commenced, his impish face gazed down on them. First
they heard the mouth-organ, then the voice, singing of somewhere,
nowhere, anywhere--of the splendidly imagined No-Man's-Land through
which every child has longed to wander.
And they believed his song, as though it were autobiography. In a
picture-flash they saw the world, beautiful, tumultuous, full of
terrors--saw it as a vast balloon, swimming through eternal clouds,
painted with the dreams of young desire: islands in sun-drenched seas,
where palms stood motionless, pointing to the skies with silent hands;
countries of yellow men, small and crafty, who lived in paper houses and
fed on flowers; enfeebled cities, dazzlingly white, whose eyes had
been burnt out by the door of hell left open in the iron heavens; and
snow-deserts where the frost carved Titans with his breath.
This freckled pugnacious master of the mouth-organ,
This pugnacious master of the mouth organ, caroling a street song in the
tree-turrets of Friday Lane, became for them the embodied soul of
adventure.
The boy came slithering down. Kay watched him, how he dangled by
his arms, caught on with his legs, dug in with his toes, got himself
completely dirty and always saved himself at the last moment from
falling.
He dropped breathless at their feet. “It's fine up there. Different from
down here. Up there it belongs to anybody.”
Kay wasn't quite sure that she approved of him. He had ripped his coat,
and it didn't seem quite kind to give his mother so much work. She spoke
reproachfully. “D'you like tearing your clothes?”
He gazed at her out of the corners of his eyes with a sly expression.
“I don't mind. Don't need to mind--my clothes are magic. They mend
themselves.”
“Mend themselves!” She tugged at Peter, to see in what spirit he was
accepting this amazing assertion. “Why, how wonderful!” And then,
reluctant to show doubt, “But--but how can they?”
The boy grinned broadly. “Not really, you know--just pretence. I--I mend
them myself. I'm an awful liar. Come on now.”
Confession had made him self-conscious; he darted ahead. Kay and Peter
followed slowly. He turned. “Aren't you coming?”
It was Peter who answered. “But to where?”
“To where I live--the Happy Cottage.”
Was this also pretence? The name sounded too good to be true--and yet it
was the kind of name you tried to believe, despite yourself.
The boy left the grassy avenue and broke into the undergrowth of woods.
He went in front, parting the branches for Kay. He explained to them,
“Friday Lane's shorter, you know; but this other way's heaps jollier.”
Presently above the rustle of their passage they heard a little singing
sound. Sometimes it grew quite loud and near them; sometimes it died
away into the merest breath.
It was like someone who was almost asleep, humming over and over the
first two notes of a tune that refused to be remembered. Kay snuggled
her hand into Peter's; she was a little scared. Everything was so dark
and eerie. The sound drew near and seemed to slip away from under her
very feet. She cried out; it was as though someone had touched her and
had vanished before she could turn round.
The boy heard her cry and looked back. He nodded reassuringly. “It's
always doing that--plays no end of pranks. You needn't be frightened; it
won't hurt you.”
“But what is it? What won't hurt you?” Peter asked almost angrily.
The boy laid his finger on his lips. “The wood's haunted. That's the