The Raft
knocked down and walked over, oh, let's say about twenty photographs of
the same lady?”
“Do I remember!” She sniffed a little scornfully. “'Tisn't likely I'd
forget; that was why the Faun Man sent me to a convent.”
She had said rather more than she intended. She was provoked with
herself and with Peter, for the moment, because he had drawn her out.
She twisted round on her chair, so that he could see only her shoulders.
Not realizing that he was being snubbed, he pushed the subject further,
“What an unfair punishment! That doesn't sound like the Faun Man. But,
perhaps, you liked it. What did you do at the convent?”
“Always praying,” she answered, with her shoulders still toward him.
“And, look here, don't you say that the Faun Man was unfair. He wasn't.
He didn't send me away only for breaking his pictures.” And then,
inconsequently, “If it wasn't too childish I'd go and smash them all
afresh.”
Suddenly she swung round, “I know who you are. Hurray! You're Peter. You
see, I remember the name. Shall I give myself away and tell you why I
remember?”
“Do. Do,” he urged.
The answer came promptly. “Because you paid me compliments. You thought
that God said to Himself when He made me, 'I'll make the most beautiful
person I've ever made.'--Hulloa! You don't like that. It wasn't quite
what you expected. What did you expect? Until you tell me I won't speak
to you.”
Compelled by her silence, he confessed, “I did hope that you might have
remembered me for something--something more romantic. You see, we met in
the Haunted Wood, and there was the river, and you were going to drown
yourself. You'd taken off your shoes and stockings as a first step,
which was very economical of you. And I--I saw your feet, and----”
She waved her handkerchief at him, her eyes a-sparkle. “I know. I know.
Very pretty and very foolish!” She rose. “We ought to be going.”
Outside the Red Lion, she turned toward the river; “I left my boat at
one of the landings.”
When they had found it and he had helped her in, she said, “You can row,
I suppose? All right, then, I'll steer; you take the sculls.”
They drifted down with the stream, the gray bridge, spanning the river,
growing more distant behind them; the wooded hills swimming up on every
side to form a green cup, against which the sky stooped its lips. They
floated by lazy craft, in which women lay back on cushions beneath
sunshades and men with bare arms clasped about their knees watched them.
Snatches of laughter reached them, to which the murmur of voices droned
an accompaniment. On green lawns, beneath dreaming garden trees, little
groups of brightly attired people clustered. From houseboats along the
river-bank stole music, one air creeping into another as they passed,
fashioning a medley--coon songs from America, Victorian ballads of
sentiment, a wild scrap of Dvorak and the latest impertinence from
London. Of all that they saw and heard, they alone were constant in the
shifting landscape.
“After four years!” she murmured.
He stopped rowing and gazed at her wonderingly, repeating her words,
“After four years!”
Then a familiar voice leapt out at them from a sky-blue house-boat,
with sky-blue curtains fluttering in the windows and a rim of scarlet
geraniums running round it in boxes. The voice lent the touch of humor
to their tenderness, which saves sentiment from sadness and makes it
ecstatic. It sang to the twinkling tones of a mandolin, struck sharply:
“Come, tickle me here;
For I ain't what you thought me--
I ain't so 'igh and so 'aughty, my dear.
But there's right times for lovin',
And cooin' and dovin',
And wrong ways of flirtin'
That's woundin' and hurtin'--
I'm a lydy, d'you hear?
But just under the neck,
Peck ever so softly--
I allow that, my dear.
Not my lips--you're too near.
Come along, lovey; come along, duckie;
Tickle me, tickle me here.”
CHAPTER XXX--HALF IN LOVE
The Faun Man looked up from his writing. Peter had been with him on
_The Skylark_ for five days--five gorgeous days. He had found to his
surprise that the golden woman was of the party. So far as outward
appearances went, the picture-smashing incident might never have
happened; Cherry conducted herself as a good comrade and the golden
woman called her “dear.” They had to act as friends, since the Faun Man
had taken rooms for them at the same hotel that they might chaperone
each other. The men slept on board the house-boat.
It was nearly six. The last of the Finals had been rowed; the Regatta
was ended. Far up the course one could still hear the distant cheering
from the lawn where prizes were being distributed. The most sensational
race of the afternoon had been the Diamond Sculls, in which Hardcastle
had won by a bare half-length. Peter still tingled with the madness
of the excitement, the splendid grit of the contested fight and the
wildness of the applause. He had seen a slight young hero lifted out of
his shell and carried shoulder-high; he wanted something like that to
happen to himself so that Cherry might approve of him. He had just come
from accompanying her back to The Red Lion; in an hour, when she had
changed for dinner, he was going to fetch her. He had one more night
before him--the gayest of them all, when the crews broke training, and
then----. How often would he see her again? The gray old town would
recover from its invasion, and settle back into routine and eventless
quiet. Would something similar happen to his life? Nevertheless, he had
one more night.
As he climbed aboard _The Skylark_ and entered, the Faun Man looked up.
“Peter, i'm tired of being respectable--I want to be vulgar.”
Peter threw himself into a creaking wicker-chair. “That's not difficult;
it's chiefly a matter of clothes.”
“And accent,” the Faun Man added; “refined speech is the soap and water
of good manners.”
Peter chuckled. “Then don't tub.”
The Faun Man stood up and stretched himself. “I haven't. I've written
a love-lyric that never saw a nailbrush. It's called _The Belle of
Shoreditch_. When I've sung it to you I'll tell you why I wrote
it. Isn't this a ripping tune?” He tinkled it over; then sat down
crosslegged on the floor and commenced to drawl the words out:
“My bloke's a moke
And 'e cawn't tell me why;
But the fust time 'e spoke
'Twas no more than a sigh.
Says I, 'Don't mind me; we'll soon be dead.'
Says 'e, 'If yer dies, I'll break me 'ead.'
Says I, 'Why not yer 'eart instead,
Yer quaint old moke?'
“For yer cawn't be 'appy when yer 'alf in love--!
Yer must taik one road or the other;
Yer can maike o' life an up'ill shove,
Or marry a bloke wot ain't yer brother.”
“Chorus, Peter. Pick it up.”
The Faun Man nodded the time, swaying from the hips and rolling his
head.
“For yer cawn't be 'appy when yer 'alf in love.”
He laid his mandolin aside. “Catchy, isn't it? There mayn't be much soap
about the dialect, but there's plenty of philosophy in the sense. More
than one person in this party is half in love. Take example from me,
Peter; don't make a fool of yourself.”
Peter's face went red. He didn't think he'd been so obvious. To escape
further pursuit, he turned the corner rapidly, “When are you going to
start being vulgar?”
“Ah, yes!” The Faun Man came back. He struck a pose, his left hand
resting on his hip, his right beating against his breast. “To-night,”
he said. “To-night I lose my identity. I cease to be Lorenzo Arran and
become Bill Willow, with his performing troupe of eccentric minstrels.
I wear a red nose. My clothes might have been picked out of any
ash-barrel.”
Peter interrupted. “From where do you get the eccentric minstrels?”
The Faun Man grabbed him by the shoulder, as though he feared he might
dash away when the full glory of the project was divulged. “My boy,
you're one of them. You operate upon a bun-bag folded over a hair-comb.
You wear--let me see? You wear a sheet, with holes cut in it for your
eyes and mouth. Your nose may remain incognito; I've seen better. In a
word, you play the ghost to my Hamlet.”
“And Harry and the girls?”
The Faun Man passed his hand over his forehead and reflected. “Let me
see! Harry blacks his physiognomy; the mouth-organ disguises the rest of
him--it always does. And as for the girls--they hang their hair before
their faces and sing through it. Believe me, nothing alters a woman's
appearance so much as letting down her hair; that's why all divorces
occur after marriage. Now, with me it's different; I look my best in
bed. Of course I can't ask anyone to see me there--that's why I'm a
bachelor.--But to get back to vulgarity; we start to-night in a punt.
We'll wait till it's dusk, and we'll have lanterns. We'll collect money
for the private insane asylums of Alaska. I'll make a little speech
explaining our philanthropy. Young feller, Bill Willow and his minstrels
are going to make this Old Regatta rememberable for years to come.”
“You mean it?”
The Faun Man grinned; all the boy in him was up.
“Peter, don't look so pop-eyed; of course I mean it--I mean it just as
truly as Martin Luther did when he said, 'Here I take my stand, because
I've got nowhere to sit down.' A profound utterance! I'm tired of
watching all these people spooning under trees, wearing Leander ties,
comparing their girls' eyes to the stars and being afraid to touch each
other. They're too much of ladies and gentlemen; even we are. To-night
I'm going to be a ruffian. Cut along and fetch the girls. I've got to
write another song and it's almost time for rehearsal.”
“A dress rehearsal?”
“In spots,” said the Faun Man.
When Peter broke the news to the golden woman she covered her face and
laughed through her hands. She had a trick of treating Cherry and Peter
like children, although she looked no more than twenty herself. She put
her arms round their shoulders, drawing their faces close together, on
either side of hers. She was so happy and beautiful it would have been
difficult not to love her. “My Loo-ard!” she said, “I'd do a skirt-dance
to-night if it wasn't for the water under the punt. I'm all against
getting wet, aren't you, Cherry?”
Peter looked knowing. “The first thing she'd do if she knew she was
going to drown, would be to take off her shoes and stockings.”
The golden woman pinched the girl's cheek. “Hulloa! Secrets
already!--But I don't like Lorie's idea for disguising us. Let's see
what we can do with five minutes' shopping.”
When they rowed up to _The Skylark_ they were met by a mysterious
silence. Lifting out their parcels, they tiptoed into the cabin. Harry
was bending over a table-cloth, with a tooth-brush in his hand and a
bottle of blacking at his elbow. The Faun Man was melting the bottoms of
candles and making them stick to the bottoms of empty jam-jars.
“What are you doing?”
They both looked up.
“I'm getting the illuminations ready,” said the Faun Man.
“And I'm making our flag,” said Harry, scrubbing hard at the
table-cloth. “Blacking's awful stuff; it's so smudgy.” They crowded
round him to inspect his handiwork and read:
BILL WILLOW'S
IMPROMPTU TROUPE OF ECCENTRIC MINSTRELS
NO FUN WITHOUT FOLLY ENVY THE POOR MAD
The Faun Man affixed his last candle. “Now, then, you crazy people,
rehearsal's in five minutes. Let's fortify our tummies.”