The Raft
a big brother like Peter.”
The golden woman laughed with her hand against her throat. “But I
hav'n't a tandem tricycle, and I hav'n't a big brother like Peter.”
Kay knew she hadn't; she wondered what made the golden woman say that,
and---- yes, why she choked at the end of her words.
“Good-by till we come again.”
They rang their bells as a parting salutation. The wheels began to turn.
They disappeared between the hedges down the road, a vision of plunging
legs, bent backs and flying hair.
The man and woman were left alone on the highway between the Haunted
Wood and the town, to both of which these children had such ready
access.
Slowly, slowly the sun was vanishing; once a ball of fire; now the
boldness of sight on which an eye-lid was closing; at last a glory to be
taken on faith and conjecture. The country became vague as though seen
through water. Its greenness had a coolness which was more than color;
which had to be realized by a spiritual sense. The evening dimness, like
the hand of death, removed sharp temporary edges from the landscape and
revealed an expression which was timeless, which had been always there.
Birds had ceased calling. The moon floated out--the soul of the night,
high-lifted and inspired. Trees sought to touch her with their fingers;
she slipped by them, unhurried by their effort.
He had said so much to her in the past with his eager lips and words.
Now, for some time, he had been saying everything, while seeming to say
nothing.
He held her pressed against him. “Ah dearest----”
She stirred. “But I'm not good.”
“You are. But you're not kind to me often.”
“Not often,” she murmured.
He stooped; in the darkness he could say it--the old, old question
which, through repetition, had lost its generosity and splendor. “Am I
never going to make you love me?”
She turned her face away, so that his kiss fell on her neck. “I don't
know, don't know, Lorie? How should I? I don't want to hurt you. You
do believe me when I say that? But I'm fickle. I'm not at all what you
think me. I'm all wrong somewhere inside--cold and bad-hearted.”
He laid his cheek against hers, holding her more tightly. “Little Eve.
Please! You shan't accuse yourself. It wounds.”
She broke away, but only that she might return of herself. She caught
him by the lapels of his coat and tiptoed against him. “But I am.
Harry's quite right to hate me. I send you on long journeys, and you
can't forget me. I won't love you myself, and I keep you from loving
another woman. You offer me your soul, and I allow you to go thirsty. I
torture you, and give you nothing.”
He spoke very gently, for the first time honest. “I can put it in fewer
words: you want to be loved; you won't pay the price of loving. Isn't
that it?”
She pressed her golden head against his shoulder in ashamed assent.
Behind her shuttered eyes she had the vision of a long white road
leading up to a city, of a curly-headed boy and an elfin-girl steering
through the traffic beneath street lamps. She wanted to have the
palm without the dust, to be a mother without the sacrifice of having
children. Seeing the vision of children going from her, and knowing that
he would understand, she whispered, “One day I shall be old--and I shall
have missed all that.”
“Poor little Eve! Poor little girl!”
He picked her up in his arms and commenced to walk through the twilight,
across fields, to the cottage.
She raised her hand and touched his cheek. “You wonderful, strong Faun
Man.”
He halted in his stride and bent over her; then went on into the
shadows.
CHAPTER XXVII--PETER FINDS A FAIRY
At the Faun Man's birth an angel and a witch attended. The angel
brought him the supreme gift of making people love him. The witch made
the gift fatal, by wishing that he might be loved not as a man, but as
a woman is loved--with jealousy. So his friends were all enemies to each
other because they had to share him. Even Canute was like that; he had
to be chained when admirers were calling.
Strange company invaded the Happy Cottage. Women predominated--women who
tried to treat the Faun Man as their property. They wore fluffy gowns
and had fluffy manners; even their voices were fluffy. Their attitude
was that of princesses who had journeyed into the wilderness to borrow
something. They were a little annoyed by the country, and found it
dirty. Very few of them addressed him as Mr. Arran; each invented a
pet-name for him, which seemed to make him hers peculiarly. They were
all consumed with a desire to touch him and to go on touching him,
beating about him like birds about a lighthouse which shines out
hospitably, but permits no entrance. Most of them mingled with their
admiration a concerned and respectful sorrow. His lonely manner of
living moved them to the depths. They formed individual and brilliant
plans for the glorious reconstruction of his future--plans which these
female geographers handed to him boastfully, as though they were maps
of fascinating lands which awaited his exploring. For satisfactory
exploration the presence of the female geographer was necessary.
Peter was usually forewarned that an invasion was in progress by the
crescendo cackling which rushed out from doors and windows into the
basking stillness of the garden. Then he would hear the mild protest of
the Faun Man, “But, my dear lady, my dear lady--but really----” Harry
would meet him by the hedge, his face flushed and his mouth sulky.
Jerking his thumb across his shoulder he would whisper, “The Hissing
Geese! Hark at 'em! Ain't it sickening?” Sometimes he'd call them the H.
G. for brevity. He called them that because of the way in which they sat
round his brother with their necks stretched out, all making sounds. He
hated them unreasonably, and hated them to excess when they tried to
curry favor with him by kissing. And yet, it was silly of him; with a
few years added to his age, he would have found most of them pretty and
quite suitable for loving.
Surliness on these occasions gave Harry a strong sympathy for Canute.
If he had been a dog and unrestrained by chivalry, nothing would have
pleased him better than to have bitten the ladies' legs. He felt that it
was unjust to chain Canute up as a reward for his loyalty. So usually,
when Kay and Peter had arrived, the three of them would sneak round
the cottage to the kennel and attempt a rescue. Then came the exciting
escape through the garden, crouching low and stealing behind the flowers
so as not to be observed, holding on to the collar of the Great Dane for
fear he should break away and glut his anger. Sometimes they were heard
above the rattle of tea-cups and the ladies would bunch themselves in
the cottage window, like a nosegay, with the Faun Man in their centre.
Then would follow a series of high-pitched questions and exclamations,
fired off for the sake of noise. “What dear children! Is that your
sister? Are they both your brothers? What a perfectly sweet dog!”
The “perfectly sweet dog” would growl and show his fangs, as much as
to say, “Leave me out of it. Look after your legs. I wish I had half a
chance of showing you how perfectly sweet I am.”
Where did they all come from, these amorous butterfly excursionists?
Harry kept his mouth shut. He wasn't going to tell, only---- Well, he
hinted that they might be insincere experiments of the golden woman,
sent to supplant her--sent because she knew they couldn't do it. “And
jolly good care she takes not to send the right one. Trust her.” Harry
said it in a growl which he copied from Canute.
It wasn't until they had entered the Haunted Wood and the green wall of
bushes and make-believe had shut out intruders, that his ruffled spirit
regained its levity. Then he'd light a fire, and play at Indians who had
taken their revenge in scalps. Presently, if the Faun Man had been lucky
in getting rid of his worries, he would join them. They would boil a
kettle and have tea in the open, after which the Faun Man would light
his pipe and smoke it, lying flat on his back. They knew what to expect.
Soon he would sit up, press his tobacco down with a lean finger, pluck a
twig out of the fire and use it as a match. Then, very deliberately, he
would begin, “I remember, once upon a time.”
What a lot of magnificent things had happened once upon a time that he
could remember! He had chased cattle thieves across the border and had
come up with them, intending to shoot if necessary, only to find them
such human fellows that he'd parted friends. “Human” was his word for
describing the kind of people he liked, many of whom were disreputable.
One night, when camping in the Canadian Rockies, a hundred miles from
anywhere, a stranger had crept from the forest and shared his supper and
blanket. They had talked of London, London street-songs and Leicester
Square, till the stars were going out. Next morning he was wakened by a
member of the North West Mounted Police who was hunting a murderer. The
fugitive had already vanished. “A pity he'd killed some one,” said the
Faun Man; “he was one of the most charmin' chaps I ever met. Oh yes, he
was caught and hanged.”
The Faun Man had played hide-and-seek with death in many quaint
corners of the world--getting his “liver into whack,” he called it,
and gathering “local color.” What local color might be, and why anyone
should want to gather it, Peter didn't understand. But he learnt that
its gathering took you down into Mexico in search of secret gold, where
Indians hid behind rocks and potted at you with poisoned arrows, and
that it took you up to Fort Mackenzie with dogs to the very edge of the
Arctic. While he listened to these stories of adventure, the shadows of
the Haunted Wood lengthened, the river sang more boldly, evening fell,
and the fire, from a pyramid of leaping flames, became a hollow land of
scarlet which grew slowly gray, fluttering with little tufts of ashen
moss and ashen feathers, until it at last lay charred and dead.
The Faun Man captured Peter's imagination and affections. He filled
him with strange new longings. He sent his spirit reaching out after
unattainable perfections, whose lure and desire are both the glamour and
torture of childhood. He made Peter want to be a man, so that he might
be like him. The Faun Man was a stained-glass window which, when looked
through, tinted and intensified life's values. Peter was going through
the experience of hero-worship which comes to most boys when sex is
dawning, and they have not yet realized that its sole and splendid
meaning is that woman shares the same world.
And yet there were moments when Peter almost feared his friend; his
character was a sand-desert in which the track followed yesterday was
soon wiped out. One day he would cry, “Ah, I know him!” and the next,
“I know nothing.” The whole passionate urgency of a child's heart in
friendship is to know everything.
But the Faun Man was too big and elusive to be known by one person.
Four walls could not contain him. He came into a house like a half-tamed
animal--but where had he been, where had he come from? He had tricks,
curious tricks, which linked him to the creatures which make their
homes in the leaves and holes of the earth. He seldom sat on chairs, but
huddled himself on the floor while he talked to you. He could sit for an
hour, saying nothing. In the middle of a conversation he would jump up
and go out without apology, as if he heard a voice which you had not
heard. And he had. The sound of the wind told him something, the altered
note of a thrush, the little shudder, scarcely perceptible, that ran
through the flowers; to him they all said something. If you asked him
what they said, he could not tell you. So it was no good wanting him to
belong to you; he belonged out there.