The Raft
me, you wouldn't see too much of her! Why not? I've been feeling--well,
rather sorry for her.”
“You have, have you?” Harry laughed tolerantly. “Sorry for her! Pooh!
People who begin by feeling sorry for Eve end by being sorry for
themselves. She always starts her affairs like that, by getting
people sorry for her. Don't you know what's the matter with her? She's
selfish--a lap-dog kind of woman, born to be petted, but of no use
whatever in the world. She wants everyone to love her, and gives nothing
in return. She doesn't play the game, Peter; she expects to have a man
always toddling after her, but she won't marry him because----. I don't
know; I suppose it would disturb her to have children.” Harry paused,
waiting for Peter to argue with him. When his remarks were met without
challenge, he continued, “She doesn't mean any harm--her sort never
does; but she's a jolly sight more dangerous than if she were immoral.
She gambles like an expert as long as luck's with her; the moment she
loses, she pretends to be a little child who doesn't understand the
rules. So she wins all the time and never pays back. She's kept my
brother feverish for years, loving him, and then, when it comes to
the point, not knowing whether she really loves him. Gives her a nice
comfortable sense, when anything goes wrong with her investments, to
feel that he's always in the background. I'm sick of it. She's a ship
that's always setting sail for new lands and never coming to anchor.
Lorie's too fine a chap to be kept dawdling his life away by a vain
woman. Some day she won't be quite so pretty--she dreads that already;
it's part of her shallowness. Then she'll run to cover, if any man'll
have her.---- You don't believe me. Suppose you think every woman's wild
to be married?”
“I don't think that.” In this particular Peter flattered himself that he
had had more experience than Harry.
Harry took him up shrewdly. “If you don't think it, you wish you did.
You'll see, if you live long enough. There are heaps of well-bred
women like Eve, with the greed of chorus-girls and the morals of
refrigerators. And here's something else for your protection--Eve can't
bear to see any woman loved except herself. Lorie knows all this, and
still he's infatuated--plays Dante to her Beatrice. She isn't worth
it. She tells him she isn't worth it; that makes him think she's noble.
She--she sucks men's souls out for the fun of doing it when she isn't
thirsty, and flings them in the gutter like squeezed oranges.”
Peter's case was so nearly similar to the Faun Man's that he couldn't
bear this conversation. It was as though Harry was describing and
accusing Cherry. _She sucks men's souls out and flings them in the
gutter like squeezed oranges_. And Cherry hadn't been thirsty either;
she had pretended that she hadn't wanted to do it.
“But Cherry,” he said, “do you know where she is and anything about
her?”
Harry looked at him squarely, a little pityingly. He sat down and
crossed his legs. “Yes. We took her abroad with us and dropped her at
the convent-school. She's---- I don't know. She's got a queer streak in
her--she's an exotic.” And then, “I suppose you know that she thinks
she's in love with Lorie?”
Peter bit his lip; he drew his knee up with his hands clasped about it.
“I know that. And the Faun Man, does he care for her?”
Harry laughed. “On that score you don't need to be jealous. He wishes
she wasn't such a little donkey. He's bored by it. It complicates
matters most frightfully; he's her guardian. We had a most awful job in
shaking her. That's why we left her at the convent. Had a rotten scene
in Paris--tears and hysterics. She'd planned to make a third in our
party. We weren't on for it, you can bet your hat.”
Peter grew impatient at Harry's way of talking. He spoke shortly. “So
you know where she is? You can give me her address?”
“I can't.” The grin of the mouth-organ boy, poking fun at everything,
accompanied the refusal. “The kid made us promise not to tell you. She
has her own idea of playing fair. Wish Eve had.” He yawned. “By George,
time I was off to bed. I've got to be up bright and early to-morrow to
call on Mr. Thing--the tutor-bird.”
Left alone in the stillness, Peter did not stir. In the street, below
his window, footsteps echoed at rare intervals. Now and then, as
men parted in the quadrangle, laughter burst on the night and voices
shouted. Then, again, he heard the bells, high up and spectral, telling
him that time was passing. He thought about Harry, envying him the
cavalier cloak of indifference behind which he hid his sensitiveness. He
thought about the Faun Man, with his fine faculty for loving wasted all
these years by an undecided woman. And he thought of Eve and how she had
misled him, letting him believe that the Faun Man had deserted her. Why
had she done it? And then he thought of Cherry, poor little Cherry, who
was keeping out of his way that she might play fair.
But he would make her love him. He would work day and night to make
himself splendid. He was nothing at present--had nothing to offer her.
But, one day----. And so, with the invincible optimism of youth, he
pulled himself together. He was a knight riding out on a quest, wearing
his lady's badge to bring her honor.
Had he cared, he might have pictured to himself the other adventurers
he had known, who had ridden out in the same brave belief that life was
romantic: Jehane, who had looked from the window across the street and
had beckoned with her eyes, only to give a husband to another woman;
Ocky Waffles, who had come to her as the feeble substitute for the
nobility she had coveted; his mother and father for whom, despite its
kindness, life had proved a pedestrian affair. But, on his first night
in this city of dreamers, he saw, stretching away below him, wide
landscapes of illusion. There was so much to do, so much to experience,
so much to dare. The spreading of wings had brought him to a crag from
which he viewed, not the catastrophe of sunsets, but the riot of
morning boiling up against cloud-precipices and pouring ensaffroned
and clamorous across the world. He saw only the glory of its challenge,
nothing of its threat.
In the weeks that followed his belief in the marvelousness of mere
living was quickened. The head and shoulders of the marvel were that,
for the first time, he was lord of his own existence. Like God, he could
create himself. Mr. Thing, the tutor-bird, advised him, in a sneering
tone of voice, that he had a chance of a first in Honor Mods. Mr. Thing
had become embittered by past experience with other brilliant students.
“If you don't take to drink and to yowling like a cat of nights, you may
do it, Mr. Barrington. But I expect you'll run wild like the rest.”
Peter was claimed by Roy Hardcastle, the captain of the boats. His
breadth and height, and slightness of hip marked him as a potential
oarsman. Every afternoon he ran down through the meadows to the barges,
there to be tubbed and sworn at by the coaches. He rowed in the Junior
Fours as stroke and won his race. He was chosen as stroke for the
Toggers--after that his career as an athlete was settled. Calvary men
began to prophesy a rowing future for him. He noticed that men, not
of his own college, paused on the bank to watch his style as his eight
swung by.
The keenness of Oxford life awoke him to his powers; the contempt in
which slackers were held spurred him forward. He had never been called
upon to test his personality in competition with others. The experience
took him out of himself, but beneath externals he remained the same
simple-hearted, compassionate idealist. He was different from other men,
and other men knew it. Perhaps it was that he was uncivilized, as
the golden woman had told him--uncivilized in the sense of being
unsophisticated and intense. Perhaps it was that his standards were
pitched high, and that he was chivalrous in his attitude of cleanness
toward himself. At all events, it never entered his head that the sowing
of wild oats was a legitimate employment. Men stopped talking about
certain adventures when he was present.
Even Mr. Thing, the tutor-bird, felt it--this subtle atmosphere of
robust innocence, which Peter carried about with him, an innocence which
bore no resemblance to the lily-white priggishness of a Sir Galahad.
Mr. Thing was rather surprised; he had always felt virtue in a man to be
offensive and had compared it to a prim little maid attired for a party,
refusing to romp with bolder children for fear she should spoil her
dress.
Mr. Thing was a don of the old school, a two-bottle man; not
infrequently about midnight he was intoxicated. It was said that under
the influence of wine his scholarship was ripest. He would recite
rolling speeches from Thucydides in the language of Athens, working
himself up into fervor and tears, declaiming in a voice which trembled
with humanity and trumpeted with valor. But when, after drinking to
excess, he met Peter beneath the stars in the shadowy quads, he
seemed conscious that an excuse was necessary. He invented a lie, this
gray-haired scholar, beneath which to hide his shame from clear-eyed
youth. It was reported that he was getting ready for the Judgment Day,
that he might be letter-perfect in his apology to his maker.
“Been to the fun'ral of a dear fr'end, Mr. Barrington--a very dear
fr'end. Been taking the sharp edge off my grief. You haven't losht a
dear fr'end--not so dear as I have. So don't you do it.”
He showed drunken concern lest Peter should do it, and had to be
reassured many times. At last, shaking his head sceptically, he would
permit Peter to pilot him to his room. The boy's erectness hurt him; it
accused him. It caused him to look back and remember another lad, who,
beyond the waste of misspent years, had been not unlike him. One night,
made carelessly sentimental by an extra bottle, he told the truth.
“Wasn't always like this, Mr. Barrington. I was something like you--only
a little reckless. She said she'd wait for me, and then----. So that's
why. Now you know it.”
Cakes and ale in the imagination of young Oxford are usually associated
with licence. To be abstemious is to be unpopular and entails persistent
ragging. Peter believed whole-heartedly in the consumption of cakes and
ale, so long as it wasn't carried to the point of gluttony. He was eager
to taste life, and took part in all the fun that was going; only always
at the back of his mind lay the thought of Cherry--he must make himself
fine for her, so as to be worthy.
He got into frequent adventurous scrapes. He was present at the Empire
with Harry when a young lady, whose stockings were the most conspicuous
part of her clothing, came to the footlights and sang a song, each verse
of which ended with the question,
“Will you risk?
I'd risk it.
Wouldn't you?”
Harry couldn't bear that she should go away unanswered. The courtesy
of the 'Varsity was jeopardized. Moreover, she was pretty and only
the musicians separated him from the stage. The theme of the song was
kissing. He leapt the orchestra-rail, splashed his foot on the key-board
of the piano, seized her hand and hauled himself up beside her,
shouting, “Yes, I'll risk it.”
She hadn't intended her invitation to be taken so seriously. With
becoming modesty she broke away from him, just as he was about to prove
his assertion that he'd risk it. Harry followed her, in one wing and
out the other, to and fro across the stage. The theatre rose yelling,
watching this amorous game of hide-and-seek. Of a sudden the cry,
“Proggins! Proggins!” went up. The Proctor and his bulldogs entered.
Harry jumped from the stage into his seat. Some considerate person