The Raft
To Peter, who had always been smiled at for his compassion, it was
comforting to find some one as compassionate as himself. It removed the
dread of abnormality. There was a nightingale which used to come every
evening to sing in an apple-tree near the Happy Cottage. They used to
wait for the romance of its silver voice slanting across the velvet
dusk, as though it were a thing to be seen rather than heard. One night
they waited; it did not come.
The Faun Man grew nervous. He could not rest; at last he went in search
of it with Peter. Beneath the apple-tree they found it still warm, with
its wings stretched out. And then the unexpected happened. Kneeling
in the twilight beside the dead singer, as though music had departed
forever from the earth, the Faun Man wept.
And yet the same man could be harsh in anger--that was how Peter found
the fairy. On entering the cottage one afternoon he heard the sound of
sobbing upstairs and a voice protesting, “I didn't mean to do it. She
drove me mad--you and she together. You don't care for me--don't care
for me; and I love you better than anything in the world. Oh, do forgive
me, kind Faun Man.”
A pause. Peter knew she was on her knees before him, kissing his hands.
It was as though he could see her doing it. “But you did mean to do it,
Cherry.” It was the Faun Man speaking deliberately and coldly. “You did
it on purpose. It was stupid and babyish of you. It didn't do her any
harm, and it didn't do you any good. I don't want to see you, and I
don't like you any longer.”
A passionate voice declared, “If you say that again, I'll kill myself.”
Again a pause. The door overhead opened; a wild thing came tearing down
the stairs. Peter had a vision of something in skirts, something with an
intense white face, tragic gray eyes and a mass of black flying hair. He
was bumped into. In stepping backward he tripped against a chair.
When he picked himself up and looked out into the garden she had
disappeared--all he heard was the running of her swift feet growing
fainter and fainter.
He gazed about the room, wondering what he ought to do. Should he steal
back quietly to where he had left Kay and Harry, and pretend that he had
seen nothing? His attention was arrested. So that was what had caused
the disturbance? Every portrait of the golden woman had been torn from
its place on the wall and trampled. While he hesitated, he heard the
Faun Man descending. It was too late to go now.
The Faun Man entered without seeing him. His face was stern; two deep
lines stretched like cuts from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth.
He looked leaner than ever. He was already stooping over the ruined
portraits when Peter addressed him. “Won't you ever forgive her?
Please do. Never to forgive a person, not forever and forever, seems so
dreadful.”
The Faun Man jumped; his eyes, when they turned on Peter, were the eyes
of a stranger. “And where did you come from? And who asked you for your
opinion? You'd better get out.”
When he came to the plank which crossed the little river, Peter halted.
Down Friday Lane he could hear the mouth-organ and, looking, could see
Harry beating time with one hand while Kay danced to it. No, he didn't
want to join them. Harry would laugh at him for paying heed to one of
the Faun Man's moods. And Kay--why, if she guessed that he was unhappy,
of course she'd become unhappy, too----. And that girl--she'd said that
she was going to kill herself. He ran across the meadow to the Haunted
Wood. She must be there. She shouldn't do it.
Just where he entered, he stooped and picked up something white. She had
dropped her handkerchief, so he knew that he was on the right track. He
followed on tiptoe, afraid lest, if he overtook her suddenly, he might
scare her. In the stealth of the pursuit a novel excitement came upon
him. His eyes were glowing. His breath came and went pantingly. He had
removed his cap; his curly hair lay ruffled on his forehead. He went
forward timidly, half-minded to turn back, ashamed lest he might find
her looking at him. As he penetrated deeper, the stillness grew
and magnified ievery sound. Overhead the branches were woven closer
together, shutting the sunlight out. An air of secrecy gathered round
him. Birds, hopping out of his path under bushes, looked back at him
knowingly. They knew what he did not know himself.
Out of sight, beyond him, there was the sound of moving. Leaves rustled;
silence settled down. They rustled again. He followed. Then he heard the
voice of the river--a little voice which grew louder. It sang to itself
softly. It seemed to be trying to say something. Did it sing in lurement
or warning? Now it seemed to be saying, “Turn back, turn back, turn
back”; and now----. But he couldn't make out the words.
He lifted his face above a clump of shrub-oak and found his eyes
peering into hers. She was too startled to jump back from him; she gazed
wide-eyed, with lips parted and one hand plucking at her breast. She saw
a boy, swift and straight as an arrow, a boy who seemed to stand tiptoe
with eagerness, who had the grace and strength of a Greek runner and the
smooth skin and gentle mouth of a girl.
And Peter in looking at her saw a white face, sensitive as a flower's;
and a mouth, red as a cherry, long and drooping and curved; and two
great gray eyes, clear and wistful in expression; and over the eyes,
dark brows, like a bird's wings spread for flight. Her black hair
had broken loose and hung about her shoulders, giving her a touch of
wildness. Across the whiteness of her forehead it brooded like a cloud.
In the green church of the wood she seemed sacred to Peter.
She laughed throatily, breaking the suspense. “Oh, it's only you.”
Peter stepped out of the underbrush. Then he saw that she had removed
her shoes and stockings, and was standing on the edge of the little
river. Her feet were wet and as small as her hands. They looked cold as
marble in the green dusk. Why was it? More than anything else, the sight
of her feet made him unhappy for her, made him want to care for her,
made him want to bring a smile to her mouth.
“Yes, it's only me,” he said; “but--but I wish it wasn't. I'm sorry.”
She tossed her head, as though she were indignant with him for being
sorry, but she looked at him slantingly, curiously and kindly. “Why
should you be sorry? You don't know who I am? You're not sorry; you only
say that.”
He protested. “But I am. I didn't mean to overhear; but, you know, I
heard what you said---- I was afraid you'd do it.”
She sat down, trailing her feet in the water. She was smiling now,
secretly and to herself, as if she didn't want him to know it. “It's too
little,” she pouted. “I couldn't drown in that.”
Peter seated himself at her side, with his knees drawn up to his chin.
When he spoke, it was with an air of grave confession. “I'm awfully glad
it was too little.”
She turned her head, looking at him from under her long lashes
provocatively; but he was staring straight before him with vacant eyes,
as if something very sweet and awful were happening. She reached out
her hand and touched him; she noticed how he trembled. “And if it hadn't
been too little, it wouldn't have mattered--not to you.”
He didn't answer her immediately. When he spoke it was slowly, as if
each word hurt as he dragged it out. “It would have mattered, because
then you wouldn't have been in the world.”
“But you didn't know that I was in the world this morning.”
He shook his head, as much as to tell her that her objection was quite
beside the question. “I know that. But I think I should have missed you
just the same, without knowing exactly what I was missing.”
She laughed outright, swaying against him and burying her hands in the
green things growing. “You are funny--yes, and dear. I never met a boy
like you. You didn't really think----?”
He gazed at her wonderingly. Each time he looked at her, he found
something new that was beautiful. It was her throat this time, long
and delicate like a Lent lily. As he watched it, he could see how the
laughter bubbled up inside it; he longed, with the instinct of a child,
to lay his fingers on it.
“You didn't really think----?”
He nodded. “That you were going to kill yourself? Yes--and weren't you?”
She ceased laughing. “I don't think so. I'm such a coward. And then,”
she commenced laughing again, “killing yourself is such a worry--you
can only do it once and, if you're not careful, you don't look pretty. I
always want to look pretty. Do--do you think I'm pretty?”
He choked and swallowed. His mouth was dry. He couldn't bring his voice
to the surface. She drooped her face away from him, pretending to take
offense. “You don't. I can see that. You needn't tell me.”
His words came with a rush. “I do! I do! I think, when God made you,
He must have said to Himself, 'I'll make the most beautiful person--the
most beautiful person I ever made.' It was something like that He said.”
His quivering earnestness made her solemn. She hadn't meant to stir him
so deeply. “What an odd way of saying things you have. I don't suppose
God cared much about my making. He just had me manufactured with the
rest.”
A warm hand slipped into hers and a shy voice whispered, “He made you
Himself. I'm certain.”
She gazed at him, at the narrow sloping shoulders and the shining curly
head. She felt very much a woman at the moment--years older than the
handful of months which at most must separate them. She laid her cheek
against his and slid her arm about him. “I'm so glad you're not a man.”
He stared straight before him. “I shall be soon.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen next birthday.”
She drew him nearer to her. He was so young as that! “How old d'you
think I am?”
He searched her face, trying to make her as near his own age as
possible, and not to be mistaken. “Sixteen?” he suggested.
“Almost seventeen,” she said; “I'll soon be twenty, And then----”
“And then,” he interrupted, “I'll be eighteen--almost a man.”
She withdrew her face from his. “Stupid. I don't want you to be a man.
When you're a man, I shan't like you; you'll become hard and masterful
like... like the rest.”
“I shan't.”
She relented. “No. I don't think you will. But then it'll be all
different.”
Yes, it would all be different. Peter had been a child when, in the
early summer, he had stumbled on the Happy Cottage. Until then he would
have been perfectly contented to have gone on living at Topbury and
to have been fifteen forever. It had scarcely occurred to him that
childhood was a preparation which would soon be ended. He had never
looked ahead--never realized that he, with all the generations of boys
who had lived before him, must one day be a man. In a vague way he had
known that once his father and mother had been young and protected,
as he and Kay were young and protected. But it had seemed a fanciful
legend. And now the great change, which formerly he would have dreaded,
he yearned for. The ignorance and inexperience of being young, the habit
grown people had of treating him as a person of no serious importance,
galled him. It had begun with the Faun Man and his desire to be like
him. It was ridiculous when he imagined his own appearance, but
he wanted to be respected. These longings had not come home to him
before--they had been a gradual growth of weeks and months. It was
contact with a vitalizing personality that had done it, and listening
to talks of strange lands and the doings of strong men. And now this
girl----. To her he was no more than amusing. She could do and say to
him things that she would never do or say to men. Yes, when he was older
it would all be different. She had wakened him forever from the long
and irrecoverable sleep of childhood. He might dose again, but he could