The Raft
The night quickened; the ghostly feet of a little breeze tiptoed across
the tree-tops, causing their leaves to rustle. From the far distance,
the throb of belated traffic reached him like the beat of a muffled
drum. He heard London marching to the martial music of struggle; his
heart was stirred. Life was a fight--well, what of it? When his time
came, he must be ready. He looked again at the stars, remembering what
his father had said. One need not be frightened. And then he looked away
into the blackness; somewhere over there the houses ended and the wide
peace of the country commenced. Somewhere over there was Cherry.
He waited impatiently for his next half-holiday, when he would be free
to tricycle out. When he went, she was not in the Haunted Wood; nor the
next time, nor the next. He wanted to ask the Faun Man, but postponed
through shyness; he was afraid his secret would be guessed. He was
always hoping and hoping that he would find her behind the green wall
of leaves, where the little river ran. One afternoon, when tea was ended
and Kay and Harry had gone out, he asked, “Does the girl who broke your
pictures never come here now?”
The Faun Man looked up sharply and stared, trying to guess behind the
question.
“I wasn't very decent to you that day, was I? And I was beastly to her.”
“I think she was sorry,” said Peter softly. “I wish you'd let her----.
Does she never come here now?”
The Faun Man leant forward across the table, with his face between his
long brown hands. “Did you like her, Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Very much?”
Peter lowered his eyes. “Very much.”
When he dared to glance up, he found that the Faun Man wasn't laughing.
He reached out his hand to Peter. “You're young,” he said. “Fifteen,
isn't it? Well, she's a year older. It's dangerous to like a girl very
much--especially a little wild thing like Cherry. I'm a man and I know,
because I, too, like some one very much; and it doesn't always make
me happy. You'll like heaps of girls, Peter, before you find the right
one.” He felt that Peter's hand had grown smaller in his own and was
withdrawing. “You think it isn't true?” he questioned. “You think it
wasn't kind of me to say that? And you want to see her?” Peter gazed out
of the cottage window to where sunlight fell aslant the Haunted Wood.
Why should he want to see her more than anyone in the world? But he did.
And he knew that because he was so young, most people would consider
his desire absurd. But the Faun Man, who found so much to laugh at, was
regarding him seriously. “And you want to see her?”
Peter whispered, “Yes.”
The Faun Man's eyes filmed over in that curious way they had. He said:
“I want you to trust me. There are reasons why you can't see her. I've
sent her away because I think that it's best. I can't tell you why or
where I've sent her; or what right I have to send her. But I want you to
know that I don't smile at you for liking her. It doesn't matter how old
or young we are; when love comes, it always hurts. And it seems just as
serious whether it comes late or early. But some day I'll let you see
her. To you at fifteen, some day seems very far from now. But if you
wait, and still think you care for her, I'll let you see her when the
time comes. I don't think we ought to speak of this again till then.
We'll keep it a secret which we never discuss; but we'll each remember.
Is that a bargain?”
Peter had no other choice than to accept. They shook hands.
Shortly after this Kay and Peter went away to a farm in North Wales
for their summer holidays. Their first intention on their return was to
visit the Faun Man and Harry. On going to the stable, they found that
the tricycle was no longer there. Their father was very mysterious and
unconcerned when they told him; evidently he knew what had happened.
“All right,” he said, “just wait a day or two. You'll see--it'll come
back.”
And one morning it did come back, ridden by a man with a face all
smudges, who presented a bill for payment. It had entirely transformed
itself, like a widow-lady who had been brisked up by an unexpected offer
of marriage. From a sober, old-fashioned tricycle it had taken on an
appearance almost modern and festive. Its handle-bars had been replated;
its framework re-enameled; its tall wheels cut down; its solid tires
removed and replaced by pneumatics. It sparkled in the sun, as though
defying butcher-boys to jeer at it. The man, with the face all smudges,
wheeled it through the stable into the garden; he left it beneath the
mulberry-tree, and there the children, on arriving home from school,
found it.
“Why, it's a new tricycle!”
Peter looked it over, “No, it isn't, Kitten Kay. It's the old one
altered.”
Their mother, hearing their shouts, came out into the garden, nearly as
excited herself. They had visions of spinning out to the Happy Cottage
at the breakneck speed of eight miles an hour. While they clambered on
to it, examined it and spotted new improvements in the way of a lamp and
saddles, she explained to them how it had happened. “It's your father's
doing. He meant it as a surprise. He thought the old tires made it too
heavy, so----.”
Kay interrupted. “Oh, Peter, do let's take it out on to the Terrace and
try it.”
As they wheeled it down the gravel path between the geranium beds, they
chattered of how they would surprise Harry. But Harry was fated never
to see it. On the Terrace, when they had mounted, while their mother
watched them from the window, they found that everything was not well.
The man with the face all smudges had been wise in demanding his money
before his handiwork was tested. He had cut the wheels so low that,
where the road was uneven, the pedals bumped against the ground.
Life had, indeed, become serious for Peter; through his father's
well-intentioned kindness, his means of communication between reality
and fairyland had been annihilated. For a time it looked as though so
small an accident as the indiscreet remodeling of a tricycle had lost
for him forever the new friendships formed at the Happy Cottage.
But one evening a dinner was given by Mr. Barrington to a famous man
whose work he was anxious to publish. Kay and Peter were allowed to see
him after dessert.
The moment Peter's head appeared round the door the famous man rose up
and shouted, “Hulloa, young 'un, so at last I've found you! Where the
dickens have you been hiding?”
Mr. Barrington lay back in his chair, his arms hanging limp on either
side, the image of amazement. He heard his son explaining: “It was the
tandem trike. Father wanted to be kind to us and----. Well, after he'd
had it improved, it wouldn't work. And so, you see, there was no way of
getting to you.”
The Faun Man spread out his long legs, laughing uproariously; until the
appearance of the children, he'd been most scrupulously conventional
and polite. “But, Peter, an immortal friendship like ours cut short by a
tandem trike! You little donkey, why didn't you write?”
Kay rose up in her brother's defence. “He isn't a little donkey. We
were all to be pretence people, don't you remember? We didn't know your
address.”
The Faun Man stroked his chin and lengthened his face. “If you'd left
me alone much longer,” he said, “you wouldn't have found me; I'm moving
into London.”
Then their parents began to ask questions; the story of Friday Lane and
the mouth-organ boy came out.
That evening, after Lorenzo Arran had said good-by, he turned back to
his host, just as the door was closing.
“Oh, I say! One minute, Barrington. That matter we were discussing
yesterday--let's consider it settled.”
Barrington watched the tall, lean figure go striding down the Terrace.
He was so taken up with watching, that he didn't know that Nan had
stolen up behind him until she touched his hand. He turned; his mouth
was crooked with amusement. “Did you hear that? He agrees--I'm to
publish for him. And it's Peter's doing. One never knows where that boy
won't turn up.”
And Peter, snuggled cosily in bed, was wondering whether, now that he'd
found the Faun Man, he'd refind Cherry. He reflected that when life
could play such tricks on you, a lifetime of it wouldn't be half bad. He
was no longer frightened to remember that, whether he liked it or not,
he must grow up.
CHAPTER XXIX--A GOLDEN WORLD
And he refound her, when he had almost forgotten her. In those four
long years, which stretch like a magic ocean between the island of
boyhood and the misty coasts of early manhood, it is so easy to forget.
Those years, between fifteen and nineteen, are the longest in life,
perhaps.
They had been spent by Peter among books, watching, as in a wizard's
crystal, the dead world-builders at work; they had risen from their
graves in the dusk of his imagination, stretched themselves, gathered
strength and marched anew to the downfall of Troy and the conquest of
befabled empires. How real those poignant religions were, telling of
the loves of ruffianly gods for perishable earth-maidens--so real to him
that he had paid little heed to the present.
In his outward life nothing had much altered; things were called
by different names. They spoke of him as nearly a man now--servants
addressed him as “sir”; they had never doubted that he was a boy once.
Kay stood a few inches higher on her legs. Romance had retired from
active business, leaving to her children the unthankful task of having
kittens.
Just as Peter was said to be nearly a man and hadn't changed, so the
nursery was said to be his study, though it was almost the same in
appearance. A student's lamp had replaced the old gas-jet. Shelves,
which had held fairy-tale volumes in which truth was depicted with a
laughing countenance, now supported serious lexicons from which truth
stared out with austerity. But his study retained reminders of those
tremulous days when it was still a nursery, and hadn't grown up--when it
was the dreaming place of a girl whose arms were empty, in whose heart
had begun to echo the patter of tiny footsteps. The tall guard stood
before the fireplace, as though it feared that the long youth, who sat
continually poring over a book with his eyes shaded by his hand, might
shrink into the curly-headed urchin who hadn't known that live coals
burned. The laburnum still leant her arms upon the window-sill and
tap-tap-tapped, shedding her golden tassels; she gazed in upon him with
the same indiscretion as when he was a newcomer, with ungovernable arms
and legs, who had to be tubbed night and morning. And she saw the same
mother, who had sung him to sleep, peer in at the door on her way to
bed, tiptoe across the threshold, ruffle his hair and whisper, “Peter,
darling, you can't learn everything between now and morning. Won't you
get some rest?”
He had exchanged tandem tricycles for lexicons as a means of locomotion
to the land of adventure. His little sister could no longer accompany
him; but the desire for wisdom had left room for the heart of
tenderness. When his lamp shone solitary in the darkened house, he
would straighten his shoulders and listen, fancying he heard the angel's
whistle.
In four months he was going up to Oxford, to live in gray cloisters
where boys at once become men. His father shared his anticipation
generously. “You're going to recover my lost chances. Lucky chap!”
It was summer. He had risen early and sat by his study window reading
the Iliad. The house was full of lazy morning sounds--bath-water
running, breakfast being prepared, doors opening and shutting, footsteps
on the stairs. Outside in the garden the sun dropped golden balls, which
tumbled through the trees and rolled across the turf. Birds, hopping in
and out the rose-bushes, were industriously foraging. Tripping up the