The Raft
something evil had happened. Even Canute had vanished.
They stole round the house and at last crossed the threshold. Everything
was as they remembered it, even to the mandolin lying across the
chair. They listened. Voices! Yes, certainly. Then laughter, clear and
pleasant; it broke off in the middle, as if someone paused for breath.
It came from the Faun Man's room overhead, which Harry had never invited
them to enter. Hand-in-hand they' climbed the stairs--steep and narrow
stairs, which ended abruptly in a white door. They tapped. A man
answered. Peter raised the latch.
The ceiling sloped down from the centre, giving to the room the
appearance of a tent. There were two lattice-windows, on opposite sides,
which opened outward on to the thatch. Against one of them stood a desk,
littered with papers, from which a rush-bottomed chair had been pushed
back. A pen, lying on a sheet of partly written foolscap, had rolled
across it, leaving blots, as if the writer had put it down and turned
hastily at the sound of someone's entrance. In one corner of the room
there was a high-peaked saddle and on the walls a strange collection of
memories and travel--a study of a girl's head by Rossetti, old Indian
muskets used in frontier warfares, a pair of sabres, a college oar with
the names of the crew gilded on it, and everywhere the faces of women.
Among them one face occurred often--Peter had noticed its frequence on
the walls downstairs. And now he saw the living woman before him.
She was dressed in white, lying on a rose-colored couch, stretched out
carelessly full-length, with her small feet crossed. Her age might have
been anywhere from twenty upward. It didn't matter--one forgot years
and only thought of youth in looking at her. Was not Helen past mid-life
when two continents went to war for her beauty? Somehow she reminded one
of Helen--was it the way in which experience mixed with artlessness in
her expression? The mind went back. Dr. Faustus might have addressed his
sonorous lines to her:
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss:
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies:
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips.”
She was golden, splendidly negligent of what was happening about her,
insolently languid with a lazy ease that seemed to take all the world
into her confidence and actually shut all the world out. She was a
lonely tower of snow and ice, rosy in the sunlight, luring, cold and
inaccessible. Her eyes were intensely blue and innocent. She had fine
teeth and an almost childish mouth, which was contradicted by the
powerful molding of her chin and throat, and the capability of her
hands. One wondered what difference it would make to her if she were
ever to be roused by love or anger. She was built on heroic lines,
long and full and gracious, yet she seemed to prefer to be treated as
a plaything. One arm was curled beneath her golden head, the other hung
down listlessly and was held by a man who was pressing the hand to his
mouth. Peter noticed in a flash how the woman paid no attention to what
the man was doing. And the man----
Peter had never seen anyone quite like him. He was tall and strong and
slender. Even though he was kneeling, Peter knew that he must be of
great height. His face was smooth, lean and tanned. His lips were
thin--unusually red and delicate for a man's. His nose was straight and
arched at the nostrils. His ears were set far back and pointed. But it
was by his eyes that Peter recognized him as the Faun Man. They were
brown and filmed over with blue like a dog's, showing scarcely any
white. They had a dumb appeal in them, a hunger and melancholy because
of something which was never found, which the eager happiness of
the rest of his appearance disguised. They had a trick of veiling
themselves, of becoming dull and focusless, as though the spirit, whose
windows they were, had drawn down the blinds and lay drugged with
sleep and satiety. Then suddenly they would flash, become torches, all
enthusiasm, crying out that there was no truce in the forward march of
desire. At such times the face became extremely young--as young as his
long fine hands. Only the black hair, brushed straight back from the
forehead without a parting, betrayed his age by the gray which grew
about the temples.
The golden woman withdrew her hand from his, and raised herself on her
elbow at the children's entrance. She gazed at them doubtfully, like a
young pantheress disturbed. Her red mouth pouted. Her blue eyes feigned
a laughing shyness. Only one small foot, tapping against the other, told
of her impatience. “Oh, it isn't---- I thought it was Harry. Who are
they, Lorie?”
Her voice was soft and caressing. She spoke in the “little language”
which mothers learn in the nursery. In her way of talking there was a
guttural quality which marked her foreign parentage.
The Faun Man, unabashed by the unexpected company, bent toward her and
kissed her arm. “I don't know,” he laughed. Then he turned with a smile
that was all courtesy and kindness, “Won't you tell us? Who are you?”
Peter didn't answer at once. He was fascinated. He had never seen a
man's ears move like that. As the Faun Man had asked his question, his
ears had pricked up as a dog's do when he pays attention. And then there
was something about his voice---- It was so sad and intense.
It hurt by its longing. It didn't seem right to meet this man in a
house. Peter both distrusted and liked him--the way we do nature.
The white room became a blur as he gazed into the soft brown eyes. Woods
and meadows, seen distant in the sunlight, became flat like painted
canvases hung across the windows. Real things grew vague, or took on the
aspect of artificiality. The question came again. “Tell us, little chap.
Who are you?”
Peter's brain cleared. “If you please, we're friends of Harry, the boy
with the mouth-organ.”
The golden woman leant forward, resting her hand intimately on the Faun
Man's shoulder. She was interested and her face became gentle. “Harry's
friends! But we're in disgrace with Harry. He's run away with Canute
because--because he's jealous. He wants his big brother all to
himself---- What shall we do with them, Lorie? I think we'll have to
make them our pals.”
Kay had been hiding behind Peter in the doorway. She looked round him
timidly, still ready for escape. “But--but will Harry come back?”
The concern in her voice made the woman clap her hands. “He always comes
back. Men always do come back, don't they, Lorie?” She slipped her feet
off the couch and came across the room. “What a dear little girl!”
Kay looked up at her, willing to be frightened. Then her arms reached up
and the woman stooped over her. “You're nice,” she said.
“Have you been here often?” It was the Faun Man speaking.
Peter thought. He tried to reckon. “Not often, but several times.”
The Faun Man took him by the shoulders, looking down on him. Seen that
way, from below, he seemed tremendously high. “You needn't be afraid,
young 'un; I'm not angry. You won't get Harry into a row. Where d'you
come from?”
“Come from!” Peter laid his fingers on the thin brown hand. “Would you
mind very much if I didn't tell? You see, Harry doesn't know. It's such
fun--we're just pretence people. We tricycle out from--from nowhere on
a tandem, Kay and I. And then we meet Harry and leave the trike behind
a hedge and go into the Haunted Wood together. You see, if Harry doesn't
know who we are, it's almost as though we were fairies, and as though he
were a fairy, and we---- You know what I mean: we meet in fairyland, and
can do what we like with the world.”
The Faun Man turned his head. “Eve, did you hear that? He wants to do
what he likes with the world. He's one of us.”
But Eve had Kay on her lap and her lips were in her silky hair.
Something had happened to her--something difficult to express. She
had melted. With the child pressed against her bosom, she looked a
mother--very young and good. As the Faun Man watched her, his eyes
became tender--oddly tender.
“Eve. Eve.”
He went over to her and took her hand. She lifted her face to his. “If
you hadn't kept me waiting----” He got no further.
There was a pause.
“I was thinking the same,” she said; “and yet----”
“And yet?” he questioned.
She drew Kay nearer to her. “Where's the good of talking. We've talked
so often--so often.”
He went to the open window and stared out. A butterfly flew in and
alighted on his forehead. He took no notice; he stood rigid like a man
of stone. A little muscle in his cheek kept twitching; his arms hung
straight down and the fingers worked against the palms of his hands.
Seen on either side of him, in two narrow strips, was the basking
unimprisoned country, which rolled on marvelously, this visible
landscape building into the next, and the next into all the others that
lay beyond the horizon, continents, seas and wonderlands, like a carpet
of ever-changing pattern wrapped about the world for his feet to tread.
And he, without bonds, was a prisoner.
He swung round. To Peter's surprise he was laughing. His dark face was
narrow in mockery. “Come on, young 'un,” he said; “let's get out.”
He had to double himself up to pass down the low-ceilinged stairway.
Peter followed; in leaving the room, he glanced back. The golden woman
had raised her eyes--the eyes of a child who has been selfish and has
wounded itself. She was fondling Kay, as though she thought that her
kindness to the little girl would atone for her unkindness to the man.
As he crossed the living-room, the Faun Man picked up the mandolin from
the chair. He did not walk through the garden; he walked into it. That
was his way with everything. Leaving the path, he pressed waist-deep
through roses and fuchsias, scattering their blooms and petals. Like
soldiers approving his lawlessness, sunflowers swayed their golden heads
and nodded. Swarms of winged insects, whose homes he had disturbed,
rose up in busy protest. His face was wrinkled with determination to be
glad--to be glad whatever might lie in the future. In the heart of the
fragrant nature-world he halted, and sat down on the hard-baked earth.
He looked like a great supple hound with his legs crouched under him.
Through the walls of their house of leaves and blossoms they could see
the window of the room they had left.
The Faun Man commenced to tune his mandolin. “Ever been in love, Peter?”
The boy reddened. He didn't know why he reddened. Perhaps he was proud
that he should be asked such a question. Perhaps he was a little angry
because--well, because everyone he had ever met seemed a little ashamed
of love--everyone except the Faun Man. So he answered, “Only with my
little sister.”
The man laughed. “That isn't what I meant. That's different. Love's
something that burns and freezes. It fills you and leaves you hungry. It
makes you forget all other affections and keeps you always remembering
itself. It makes you kindest when it's most cruel. It demands everything
you possess; and you're most eager to give when it gives you nothing
back. It's hell and it's heaven. No, I'll tell you what it is. It's a
small child pulling the wings off a fly, and then crying because it's
sorry, and didn't know what it was doing. Ah, Peter, Peter, you haven't
met love yet.” He bent forward and tapped him on the arm. “Be wise. Run
away when you see love coming.”
Peter felt embarrassed. The Faun Man closed one eye and watched
him--watched how the sun splashed through the creeping shadows and fell