The Raft
went busily about their tasks. Clear as a mirror, through the perfumed
stillness of meadows the river ran. Mists curled from ofif its surface
and hung white in tree-tops. Within hand-stretch fish leapt; peering
over the side of the punt, they could follow their retreat through
waving weeds and black willow-stumps. Only a magpie noticed their
passage and became interested, fluttering from bough to bough and asking
them, “What d'you want? What d'you want?” Dragon-flies ventured forth
as the sun's heat strengthened; butterflies and the teeming insect world
rose out of water-lilies and foxgloves--out of the destructible homes
which Nature builds for their brief and perishable existence. He and
she, drifting through the golden quiet with clasped hands, seized their
moment unquestioningly, and were thankful for it.
Ahead they saw swans; then cattle wading knee-deep. Rounding a bend,
they came in sight of a trellised garden, with green tables set out on
a close-cut lawn. Boats swung idly in the stream, tethered to a landing.
In the background was a thatched house, from whose chimney smoke waved
back in a thin plume. When they came near enough they made out a white
post, with a sign swinging from it. On the sign was depicted a brown
bird, fluttering its wings in a golden cage; painted over it were the
words, _The Winged Thrush._ In lifting their eyes to read the sign they
caught sight of the faint moon, weakly smiling, as though saying, “I've
got to go. They won't let me stay. Goodbye, and good luck.”
They landed, leaving their foolish disguises in the punt. Through the
dew-drenched wistfulness of summer roses they approached the inn, and
entered. The room was strewn with sawdust, and stale with the smell
of beer and tobacco. An ostler-like person, with a full-blown face and
little blue pig's eyes, met them. They asked for breakfast. He knew his
business well enough to suggest that missie would prefer to have it in
an arbor.
While they ate he hovered round them, continually inventing excuses to
interrupt their privacy. He reminded them of the magpie in his frank
display of curiosity. He informed them that trade was wery bad. He'd
'arf a mind to try 'is luck in Australy. If it weren't for the young
bloods from Henley, he'd 'ardly take a 'appeny from month to month.
Did they know of anyone, an artist chap for h'instance, who'd like to
combine pleasure with business by tryin' his 'and at runnin' a nice pub?
An artist chap could paint that bloomin' bird out, and call the place
The White Hart or somethin' h'attractive. Whoever 'eard of an inn payin'
which was called The Winged Thrush? People didn't want their meals
messed about by a bloomin' poet. Not but what the sitiyation was so
pleasant that he'd tried to write poetry 'isself--love-poetry for the
most part. His verses allaws came to 'im when 'e were groomin' the
'orses. If things didn't brisk up, 'e'd give Australy a chance, as 'e'd
many times promised.
At last he left them. Cherry gazed out dreamily across the river.
“I wonder, is it true that one has always to pay with sorrow for
happiness?”
Peter shivered. How old she could be when she chose to borrow other
people's disillusions! He tried to restore her to cheerfulness. “What a
pagan notion! It's the old idea of the gods being jealous. You shouldn't
think such thoughts.”
“But happiness does bring sorrow,” she insisted. “We shall have to pay
for this to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.”
Her voice trailed off, giving him a vision of all the tomorrows when he
would be without her. And he wasn't sure of her. She had told him
that she didn't love him. He drew her closer. “But a sorrow's crown of
sorrows is to have no happier things to remember--to be old and never to
have been young, to be lonely and never to have been loved. You mournful
little person, do you think you'd be any happier because you'd never
known happiness?”
“I don't know.” She shrugged her shoulders with a touch of defiance.
“I'm not clever; I can't argue.” Then, her face clearing as suddenly as
it had clouded, “I can't think why you like me, Peter.”
He laughed gladly. “And I can't tell you, Cherry. It's as though I'd
waited for you always, without knowing for whom I was waiting. I was a
kind of winged thrush in a golden cage; but you've opened the door, now
you've come.” His explanation wasn't sufficient. She snuggled her chin
against the back of her hand and watched him seriously, as though she
suspected him of hiding something. “But what is it that you like most
about me?”
He tried to discover; he dug back into his own sensations. What was it
that he liked most about her? For the life of him he couldn't put it
into language. Then he thought he might find out by examining the white
face, with the red lips and tragic eyes, of the girl-woman who had asked
the question. What an uncanny faculty she had for stillness! A sunbeam,
falling from the leaves above, crept up her slender throat and nestled
in her hair.
He shook his head. “It's just you, Cherry. Your voice, your eyes, the
way you walk, the way you try to be sad. It's just you and your
sweetness, Cherry. I think if I didn't love you so much I could say it
better.”
She stood up. “You poor boy, you've said it well enough. I wish I could
feel like that.--And now we should be going.” They had stepped outside
the arbor; they halted at the sound of voices. Coming round the bend
was a scratch eight, the oars striking the water raggedly. The men were
joking and laughing; the cox, a pipe hanging from his mouth, was urging
them to spurt with humorous insults. Having landed, they tumbled
into their sweaters and came strolling through the garden. They were
discussing the previous night in careless voices.
“Did you hear about Hardcastle?--When he isn't in training he's always
like that. Ugh! At six o'clock a hero--by midnight a swine you wouldn't
care to touch.”
The voices passed out of earshot.
Cherry turned to Peter, “And I let him touch me. I'd have known by
instinct if I'd been nice. Oh, Peter, you mustn't love me.”
When he attempted to kiss her she refused to allow it, saying, “I'm not
your sort.”
Paddling back between flowering banks, where trees cast deep shadows
and birds sang full-throatedly, she again became tender. “Life's just
a yesterday, Peter--a continual bidding good-bye and coming back from
pleasures.”
Her sadness hurt him. She knew it; she told herself that it would always
hurt him. He didn't want ever to say good-bye to her. And she, she felt
sure that their comradeship would be always finding a new ending.
“Cherry, darling,” he reproached her, “don't go in search of
unhappiness. Life's a to-morrow as well as a yesterday; it's full of
splendid things--things which aren't expected. We've all the to-morrows
before us.”
She trailed her hand in the water, snatching at the lilies, as if by an
effort so slight she could delay their progress and prolong the present.
She didn't lift her eyes when she whispered, “I was thinking of that--of
all the to-morrows before us.”
Again her words brought a vision of the long road of future days, down
which he would walk without her. There was nothing to be said. Surely
she would learn to love him! Reluctantly he paddled forward to their
place of parting.
CHAPTER XXXII--IF YOU WON'T COME TO HEAVEN, THEN----
The train swung down the shining rails and rumbled into Paddington.
Passengers pulled down their parcels from the racks, jumped out and
disappeared in the crowd. Peter sat on. This carriage at least had known
her; she had looked in through its window and had waved her hand. Out
there in the stone-paved wilderness of London there was nothing they had
shared.
A porter looked in at the door. “Train don't go no further, sir. Lend
you a 'and? Want a keb?”
In the cab, Peter closed his eyes, shutting out the cheerful grime
of streets, the nipped impertinence of Cockney faces, the monotonous
anonymity of the ceaseless procession--the stench of this vast human
stable where lives were stalled and broken. He was trying to get back to
green banks, to a river molten in the sunset, and to a redlipped girl.
Was she thinking of him? If they thought of one another at the same
moment, could their thoughts meet and interchange?--But she didn't love
him. Oh, the things he had left unsaid--the things he would say to
make her love him now, if she sat beside him!--She had spoken
truly--happiness had to be paid for with sorrow. His share of the paying
had commenced, and hers----? Would she dodge payment by forgetting? The
law of change was cruel; it diminished all things, even the most sacred,
to mere incidents in a passing pageant. A pigmy charioteer, with the
futile hands of imagination, he was making the old foolish endeavor to
rein in Time's stallions.
He pictured himself as painted on a frieze with her in the moment of
their supreme elation--the moment when attainment had been certain,
just before it was realized. The frieze should represent a meadow in
the early morning, a river with mists rising from off it, and a boy,
stooping his lips over the naked feet of a girl. Someone else had
uttered the same fancy:
“Fair Youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet do not grieve!
She cannot fade-”
_She cannot fade_. Already it seemed that the sharp edges of his
memories were lost to him. How was it that her face lit up? How did
her voice shudder and slur from sudden piping notes into tenderness?
How----? Things grew vague--he had meant to treasure them so poignantly.
Like a dream from which, against his will, he was waking, Illusion
gathered in her skirts from his clutching hands, growing faint against
the background of reality.
The waking had commenced before he left Henley. On his return to _The
Skylark_ he had found a note waiting him. It had been forwarded from
Topbury. His name and address were printed, evidently to disguise the
hand of the sender. Inside, on a half sheet of note-paper, was scrawled:
“_For God's sake meet me. Seven o'clock at the bottom of the Crescent.
I'm lonely.”_
It was signed with the initials, O. W.
So he was out of jail! Looking at the date of the postmark, Peter had
discovered that for two nights the man who was lonely had waited. In the
four and a half years since he had vanished from the living world his
name had been scarcely mentioned. At Topbury the effort had been made to
blot out disgrace by forgetting. Jehane, when she had left Sandport,
had purposely dropped her old acquaintance and had passed among recent
friends as a widow. The fiction had been so earnestly cultivated that
it had seemed almost true that Ocky Waffles was dead--true even to Peter
and Glory. Now, like the remembered tragedy about a death-bed, when the
hands had been long since folded, flowers placed upon the breast and
the coffin carried out, the dead man had come back to die afresh. To say
that Peter resented his return would be an exaggeration. But he shrank
from the intrusion of the sordid past upon the golden poetry of
the present--shrank from it as he would shrink from meeting someone
hideously marred in a gay spring woodland.
The cab wheels caught in the tram-lines and jerked him into
consciousness of his whereabouts. They had turned into the High Street.
In three minutes they would be at Topbury Cock, and then----. Already in
the distance he could see where the plane-trees in the Fields commenced.
What should he do if his uncle were standing there? His father's house?
No. He raised the trap in the roof. “When you come to the bottom of the