The Raft
They were nearing Cassingland. Ambushed in trees, rising out of
somnolent lowlands, the thin, tall spire of a church sunned itself. Like
toys, tumbled from a sack, about which grass had grown up, cottages
lay scattered throughout the meadows. As they came in sight of the
triangular green, with the tidy rectory standing, high-walled, on its
edge, their conversation faltered.
He offered her his hand to help her out. She held back for a second,
then took it with ashamed suddenness. He raised his eyes to hers with a
boy's enthusiasm.
“Miss Usk, it's awfully decent of you to have listened to me.”
“It's you who've been decent. You make everything so easy. You seem...
seem to understand.”
He was puzzled. “I've done nothing but talk at unpardonable length
about myself. As for making things easy, it's you--you're so rippingly
sensible.”
She winced. No man falls in love with a woman for her sanity. It was as
though he had called her middle-aged or robust. She wanted to appeal
to him as weak and clinging. When people are in love they are far from
sensible; she knew that she was anything but sensible at present. If he
had told her she was capricious and charming, she would have shown him a
face exultant.
Nan came tripping to the gate. “This _is_ jolly--both of you together!”
Her coming was inappropriate; for the next few months all her
appearances were to prove ill-timed so far as Jehane was concerned. And
yet, what was to be done? Professor Usk's house was too subdued in
its atmosphere to be congenial. Moreover, the Professor invariably
monopolized a man who was his guest--especially when the man was a
publisher. Then again, Jehane was painfully aware that she was awkward
in the presence of her parents, and did not create her best impression.
So she did not encourage Barrington to call on her in Oxford. Naturally
she turned to Cassingland, where you had the wide free country, and
no one suspected or watched you because you were friendly with a man.
Cassingland furnished an excuse for both of them: Nan was her friend;
Mr. Tudor had been his tutor. Mr. Tudor, with his honest, farmer-like
appearance and frayed clericals, lent an air of propriety to
proceedings. And Nan--she helped the propriety; but she never knew when
she was not wanted. She spoke of Barrington as Billy. She took his arm
and snuggled against him with a naive air of mischief, leading him to
all the spots along the river, in the garden and scattered through the
fields, which years ago had formed their playground. Jehane resented her
innocent air of belonging to him. So, very frequently when Barrington
came down from London and she drifted out, as if by accident, to the
rectory, she wore the mask of reserve and sullenness, and did not show
to best advantage.
Barrington, for his part, was always equal in his temper--too equal
for Jehane. With Nan he was gay and frivolous; to her he was grave and
deferential. She wished he would display more ardor and less caution.
If it had been in her nature, she would have made the running; she was
pained by his unvarying respect.
All summer love's shadow had rested on her. It was September now; the
harvest lay cut in the fields ready to be carried. Nan had sent Jehane a
message that morning that Barrington was expected; so here she was once
more at the rectory, spending the week-end.
They had gone up to bed, leaving the men to smoke; suddenly Nan put on
her dress, saying that she heard her father calling. Jehane prepared for
bed slowly; by the time she was ready to slip between the sheets Nan had
not returned. She blew out the candle; the room was instantly suffused
with liquid moonlight and velvet shadow. In the darkness, as often
happens, her senses became sharpened--she heard a multitude of sounds.
Somewhere near the church, probably from the tower, an owl was hooting.
In the distance a dog barked. She could hear the wash of the river among
its rushes, and the padding of a footstep on the lawn. Romance in her
was stirred.
Going to the window, she leant out; she was greeted by the strong
fragrance of roses. Sheaves, standing in rows throughout the fields,
looked like a sleeping camp. Trees, save where mists thumbed them, were
etched distinctly against the indigo horizon. The white disc of the
moon, like a paper lantern, hung balanced between the edges of two
clouds. Its light, streaming down the sky, was like milk poured across
black marble. Nature seemed to have blinded her eyes and to hold her
breath.
Across the lawn from the open study window, a shaft of gold slanted,
making the darkness on either side intense by contrast. As Jehane
listened, she heard what seemed a panting close to the wall beneath her.
She leant further out and discerned a blur of white. She was about to
speak when the red glow of a cigar, thrown down among the bushes, warned
her.
“At last! You've never given me a chance to be alone with you. I've
wanted you all summer, little Nan.”
His arms were round her. As he stooped above her, her face was blotted
out... He was speaking again.
“Your father saw it. That's why he called you.... If I'd had to wait
much longer, I should have asked you before her. Why--why would you
never let us be alone together?”
Nan's voice came muffled beneath his kisses. “Because, Billy darling, I
wanted to play fair.”
“Fair?”
An answer followed, so softly whispered that it did not carry--a
surprised exclamation from the man.
Jehane had tiptoed from the window.
With her black hair tumbled about her, her hands pressed against her
mouth, she lay sobbing. The night had lost its magic....
Nan entered the room stealthily. She glanced toward the bed. Thinking
Jehane was sleeping, she did not light the candle, but commenced to
fumble at her fastenings, undressing in the dark. A sob refused to be
stifled any longer. Nan paused in her undressing and stood tense; then
ran and bent above the bed. Seizing Jehane by the shoulders, she tried
to turn her face toward her.
“Oh, Janey, I did, I did play fair. I told you every time he was
coming.... Say you'll still be friends.”
But Jehane said nothing.
Next morning she greeted Barrington with her accustomed mixture of proud
restraint and sullenness. “We've been expecting this all summer. We
wondered when it would happen. I hope you'll be very happy.”
After that she came less frequently to Cassingland. The lovers had long
walks, uninterrupted, unaccompanied. Once he told Nan, “I can't believe
it, Pepperminta. I'm sure you were mistaken.”
“But I wasn't.” She shook her curly head sadly.
They rarely mentioned Jehane. They knew that she was troubled; but they
knew of no way in which to help.
At Christmas, when snow lay on the ground, they were married.
Nan, who had never feared spinsterhood greatly, had escaped from it.
Jehane retired to the isolation which she sometimes called her tower,
and at other times her raft. She often told herself savagely that, had
it not been for her shyness in instancing Nan instead of herself on that
journey down from Marston Ferry, she might have been the bride at that
wedding. Secretly, she was bitter about it; outwardly, she kept up her
friendship--otherwise she would have seen no more of Barrington.
CHAPTER V--ENTER PETER AND GLORY
Barrington did everything on a large scale--he knew he was going to
be a big man. He arranged his surroundings with an eye to his expanding
future. It was so when he bought his house at Topbury.
It had more rooms than he could furnish--more than a young married
couple could comfortably occupy. But he intended to spend his entire
life there, hanging the walls with memories and associations of
affection. It would be none too large for a growing family. That was
Barrington all over; he planned and looked ahead.
The house stood high in the north of London; it was one of twenty in a
terrace--all with porches and areas in front, and long walled gardens
at the back. To-day the octopus suburbs, throwing out tentacles of small
mean dwellings, have crept across the broad views and strangled the
rural aspect. But when Nan and Barrington went to live there, they
looked out from their back-windows uninterrupted across the Vale of
Holloway to Gospel Oak and the Heath at Hampstead. The approach to
Topbury Terrace was through quiet fields where sheep were grazing. The
oldest inhabitants still talked of a group of shops as Topbury Village.
Many of the roads were private; traffic was kept back by gates or posts
planted across them.
The house was a hundred years old, spacious and lofty. It had the sturdy
look of Eighteenth Century handiwork. Though standing in a terrace, it
retained its own personality and seemed to hold itself aloof from its
neighbors. Once link-boys had stood before its doors and coaches had
rumbled through Islington Village out from London, bringing its master
home from routs and functions. Probably he was a portly merchant,
accompanied by a dame who wore patches.
Adjoining its bedrooms were powder-cupboards; its lower windows were
heavily grated against attack. All the entries were massively screened
and bolted. It seemed to boast its privacy. In the garden were
pear-trees, a mulberry and a cedar. At the bottom of the garden was a
stable with stalls for three horses.
At first Nan was rather awed--she did not know what to do with it.
Many of the rooms remained unfurnished. That was to be done slowly, by
picking up old and rare articles--pictures and tapestries as they could
afford them, a piece here and a piece there: this was to be their hobby.
She was frightened by so much emptiness, and clung to her husband,
puzzled and proud. Then, gradually, she began to understand: they were
planning for the future greatness which they were to share. She was no
longer frightened; she was glad.
There was one room in which they often sat. Sometimes they would visit
it separately and surprise one another. When they entered, they became
strangely bashful and childlike--it was holy ground. They left all their
cruder ambitions on the threshold. They stopped talking or conversed in
whispers, holding hands. It was on a halfstory, between the first
floor and the second, and looked into the garden. Up the wall outside
a magnolia clambered; against its window a laburnum tapped and shed
its golden tassels. Everything was waiting for someone who was some day
coming. A high guard stood about the hearth to prevent someone, when he
began to toddle, from falling into the fire and getting burnt. A little
bed was ready--a bed so tiny that you could lift it with one hand. On
the floor toys lay scattered. Everything had been thought out for his
reception long before he warned them of his coming. To bring home new
toys and leave them there for Nan to discover was one of Barrington's
absurd ways of telling her how much he loved her.
It was in that room that they kissed after their first quarrel. It was
there she told him that the little hands were being fashioned that were
to be held so fast in theirs.
And he came one bright February morning, when crocuses were standing
bravely above the turf and a warm spring wind was blowing. Nan hugged
him to her breast, smiling and crying--she was so glad he was a man.
They called him Peter--after the house his father said, because the
house was Peterish and old-fashioned. William was sure to be contracted
to Bill or Billy; one Billy was enough in any family-----
It was shortly after the birth of Peter that Jehane caught her man.
It was said that she married him on the rebound, for she never ceased
loving Barrington. She did it more to get off the raft, and to show that
she could do it, than for anything.
Captain Bobbie Spashett had seen her portrait in a friend's house. He