The Raft
it might be barrel-loads of fun to be a girl in Oxford.”
“Well, I tell you that it isn't. You're always wanting and
wanting--wanting the things that men have, and that only men can give
you. But they keep everything for themselves because they're like you,
Mr. Barrington--they've never thought about it.”
“I'm not sure that I understand.”
“Bother! Why d'you force me to be so explicit? Take the case of
Nan--she's one of thousands. She's got nothing of her own--no freedom,
no money, no anything. She's always under orders; she's not expected to
have any plans for her future. She creeps to the windows of the world
and peeps out when her father isn't near enough to prevent her. Unless
she marries, she'll always be prying and never sharing. She's a _Lady of
Shalott_, shut up in a tower, weaving a web of fancies. She hears life
tramp beneath her window, traveling in plume and helmet to the city.
Unless a man frees her, she'll never get out.--Oh, I oughtn't to talk
like this; I never have, to anyone except to Nan. Why do you make me?
Now that it's said, I hate myself.”
“Don't do that.” He spoke gently. “I'm glad you've done it. You've made
me see further. We men always look at things from our own standpoint.--I
suppose we're selfish.”
He waited for her to deny that he was selfish.
“There's no doubt about it,” she affirmed.
They paddled on in silence till they came to the lasher. Together they
hauled the punt over the rollers--there was no one about. When it had
taken the water on the other side, Jehane stepped in quickly; while his
hands and thoughts were unoccupied, she was afraid to be near him. He
stood on the bank, holding the rope to keep the punt from drifting; his
head was flung back and he did not stir. Through the network of branches
moonlight drifted, making willows, gnarled and twisted, and water,
rushing foam-streaked from the lasher, eerie and fantastic. He was
thinking of Nan and the meaning of her crying.
“Miss Usk, it was very brave of you to speak out.”
She laughed perversely; she was so afraid of revealing her emotion. “You
must have queer notions about me. I've been terribly unconventional.”
They drifted down stream through Mesopotamia, pursued by the
sandal-footed silence. When Barrington spoke to her now, it was
as though there lay between them a secret understanding. What that
understanding was she scarcely dared to conjecture. Here, alone with him
in the moon-lit faery-land of shadows, she was supremely at peace with
herself.
At Magdalen Bridge they tethered the punt; it was too late to return to
the barges.
Outside her father's house they halted. Through the window they could
see the high-domed forehead of the Professor, as he sat with his
reading-lamp at his elbow.
“You'll come in? You had some business with father that brought you down
from London?”
“But it's late. If you don't mind, I'd prefer to see him to-morrow.”
“Are you staying for long in Oxford?”
“I hadn't intended.”
“But you may?”
“I may. It all depends.”
“Good-by then--till to-morrow.”
Professor Usk sank his head as she entered, that he might gaze at her
above his spectacles. “Home again, daughter? Been on the river with Nan,
they tell me! It's late for girls to be out by themselves.”
She answered hurriedly. “Mr. Barrington was with us.”
“Ah, Barrington! Nice fellow! Did he say anything about my book?”
She was on tenterhooks to be by herself. “He'll call tomorrow.”
“Have you been running, daughter? You seem out of breath. I've a minute
or two to spare; come and sit down. Tell me what you've been doing. Did
Barrington say whether that book of mine had gone to press?”
She backed slowly to the threshold and stood with the handle in her
hand.
“I've a headache, father.”
She opened the door and fled.
Locking herself in her room, she flung herself on the bed and lay rigid
in the darkness, shaken with sobbing. Pressing her lips against the
pillow to stifle the sound, she commenced in a desperate whisper, “Oh
God, give him to me. Dear God, let me have him. Oh God, give----”
CHAPTER IV--LOVE'S SHADOW
When Barrington called on the Professor next morning, he did not see
Jehane. She had stayed in bed for breakfast, to keep out of his way.
She did not trust herself to meet him before her parents because of her
face--it might tell tales. She was strangely ashamed that anyone should
know of her infatuation. And yet she longed to meet him that she might
experience afresh the sweet tingling dread lest he should touch her. Ah,
if she were sure that he returned her love, what a different Jehane he
should discover....
Though she did not meet him, she espied him the moment he turned into
the street. Peering stealthily from behind the curtain, she was glad to
notice that he glanced up, as though conscious that her hidden eyes were
watching. Listening at the head of the stairs, she heard his voice. She
heard him inquire after her, and tried to estimate his disappointment
and anxiety when her father answered casually, “The daughter has one of
her headaches.... No, nothing much. She may not be down this morning.”
After he had left, she was angry with herself for her cowardice. She
ought to have seized her opportunity. Perhaps he was returning at once
to London, where he would quickly forget her. She might never see him
again.
By a kind of necromancy she tried to arrive at certainty as to whether
or no he would marry her. If she could count a hundred before a cart
passed a particular lamppost, then he would become her husband. When the
cart went too fast for her counting, she skipped numbers and cheated
in order to make the test propitious. Sitting in her bedroom, partly
dressed, with the brilliant summer sunshine streaming over her, she
invented all kinds of similar experiments.
At last she grew impatient of her own company and came downstairs to
lunch. Her dreamy mother, who usually noticed nothing, embarrassed her
by remarking that her face was flushed as though she were sickening for
something. She turned attention from herself by inquiring the result of
her father's interview with Mr. Barrington.
Her father was annoyed because his book had been delayed in
publication--quite unwarrantably delayed, he said. She could not get him
to state whether Barrington had gone back to London. The conversation
developed into an indictment of the innate trickiness of publishers.
Mrs. Usk had never been able to reconcile the place she occupied in the
world of letters with the smallness of her royalty-statements. It
almost made her doubt the financial honesty of some persons. Jehane
had listened with angry eyes while these two impractical scholars,
comfortably interrupting one another across the table, swelled out the
sum of their grievances. Now she took up the cudgels so personally and
so passionately in the defense of publishers in general, and Barrington
in particular, that she was moved to tears by her eloquence.
Her parents peered at her out of their dim eyes in concerned silence.
When the tears had come, they nodded at each other, bleating in chorus,
“She is not well. She is flushed. She is certainly sickening for
something. She must go to bed. The doctor must be summoned.”
Jehane pushed back her chair. “You'll do nothing of the kind. I'm quite
well.”
After she had made her escape, it was discovered that she had eaten
nothing. In a few minutes she reappeared in her out-door attire and
announced that she was going to Cassingland.
“But, my dear, you can't,” her mother protested; “not in your state. You
may give it to Nan; it may be catching. And then, think how Mr. Tudor
would blame us.”
Jehane tapped with her foot impatiently. “Don't be silly, mother. I'm
going.”
And with that she departed. Only one of the witnesses of this scene
conjectured its true cause--Betty, the housemaid, who on more than one
occasion had watched these same symptoms develop in herself.
At the stable where her father's horse was baited Jehane ordered out the
dog-cart. She did not know why she was going to Cassingland. Certainly
she did not intend to make Nan her confidant--the frenzy of love is
contagious. But Nan must know many pages of Barrington's past, the whole
of which was a closed book to her. Without giving away her secret, they
might discuss him together.
As she drove along the Woodstock road and turned off into the leafy
Oxford lanes, she laid her plans. She would affect to have found him
dull company in the journey back from Marston Ferry; she would be
surprised that anyone should think him interesting. Then Nan, with her
sensitive loyalty to friends, would prove the splendor of his character
with facts drawn from her own experience.
Down the road ahead a man was striding in the direction in which she
was driving. At the sound of wheels he turned and, standing to one side,
raised his hat. Blood flooded her cheeks. Her instinct was to dash by
him. She could not endure his attitude of secure comradeship. He must be
everything to her at once or nothing. Her eyes fell away from his, yet
she longed to return his gaze with frankness.
“I'm in luck. When I called this morning, the Professor told me you were
unwell.”
“I'm better.”
“I'm glad. I've been blaming myself for not taking sufficient care of
you.”
Had he chosen, he could have crushed her to him then; she was made so
happy that she would not have protested. But how was he to judge this
from the proud, almost sullen face that watched him from the dog-cart?
He looked up at her cheerfully. “Bound for the same place, aren't we?
I'm tired of pounding along by myself; if you don't mind, I'll jump in
and let you drive me.”
She nodded ever so slightly and he swung himself up. “Going to Nan's?”
“To Cassingland,” he assented. “I want to see for myself the lady in her
tower. D'you know, I can't get that out of my head--all that you told me
about girls.”
“Really.”
She spoke indifferently and flicked the horse with the whip, so that it
started forward with a jerk.
“You're not very curious. You don't ask me why I can't forget.”
“Why?”
“Because, with other conditions, it's equally true of men.”
“I don't believe that.”
“You will when I've told you. To get on nowadays a fellow's got to work
day and night.”
“You're ambitious?”
“Of course I am. I want to have power. I've not had a real holiday for
years. Of course I've money, which you say girls don't have; but I've
responsibilities. I know nothing of women--I've had no time to learn.
That's why I'm so grateful to you for yesterday. With me it's just work,
work, work to win a position, so that one day some woman may be happy.
So you see, I have my tower as well as Nan, where I'm doomed to spin my
web of fancy.”
“But men choose their own towers--build them for themselves.”
“Don't you believe it. Some few may, but so do some few girls. I wanted
to go to Oxford and to write books and to be a scholar, instead of which
I publish other men's scribblings and do my best to sell 'em.”
“I never thought... I mean I thought all men... But you're strong:
if any man could have chosen, you would have done it. Tell me about
yourself.”
And he told her--his dreams, anxieties, small triumphs, and incessant
round of daily duties. He was very fine and gentle, speaking with
touching eagerness, as though confession were a privilege which he
rarely allowed himself. Yet Jehane was not content; she knew that
in love the instinct for confession is coupled with the instinct for
secretiveness. When she touched him, he was not disturbed as she was;
his voice did not quiver--he did not change color. She told herself that
men were the masters, so that even in love they showed no distrust of
themselves. But the explanation was not convincing.