The Raft
Grace wouldn't hear of it. “None o' that, young gen'lemen. Cruelty ter
h'animiles. The keb 'olds 'im h'up.--Where to?”
The Gilded Turtle was mentioned.
For all that there were four on the roof and six inside, Cat's Meat
never made an easier journey--that was due to the singing mob of
undergraduates who lent a hand. And Mr. Grace--he reflected that it
wasn't for naught that he had repainted his growler. He was the proudest
cabby in London that night--he was going to be prouder.
At the Gilded Turtle he was seated next to Peter and treated as an
honored guest. He had a misty impression that the waiters were stowed
away beneath tables and that their places were taken by Peter's friends.
He believed and asserted to the day of his death that he made the speech
of the evening--something reminiscent about “prick-cautions,” which
meandered off into moral reflections about a person named Kiss-Me-Quick
and flower-girls in general. He distinctly remembered that, more than
once, he turned his pockets inside out, asking plaintively, “What lydy
done this?” Then the gentleman whose ears moved like a dog's sang a
nonsense-song about Peter. They all joined in a rousing chorus, clinking
glasses:
“He kissed the moon's dead lips,
He googed the eye of the sun;
But when we've crawled to the end of life,
We'll wonder we ever begun.
CHORUS
“And Peter was his name--
So Peterish was he,
He wept the sun's eye back again,
Lest he should never see.”
“He fought the pirate king,
Where stars fall down with a thud;
But we, we even quake to hear
Spring rhubarb break into bud.
CHORUS
And Peter was his name, etc.
“He sailed the trackless waste
With hair the colour» of blood;
But we, we tramp the trampled streets
With souls the colour of mud.
“ And Peter was his name--
So Peterish was he,
He wept the sun's eye back again,
Lest he should never see.”
Where was Peter? Where were Harry and the Faun Man? He was out in the
streets--only the wildest of the young bloods remained with him. It
didn't matter to this cab-driving Falstaff if they all went away and
only Cat's Meat stayed, he was going to make a night of it.
Hardcastle was complaining that he'd never been arrested and taken
to Vine Street. He insisted that it ought to happen to every English
gentleman at least once. They drove back to Leicester Square to see
if they could find a policeman who'd make up this deficiency in their
education. They found three, only they chose the wrong side of the
Square and discovered that they were being taken to a less aristocratic
station. Then they explained their mistake, and their captors, being,
as the Faun Man would have said, “very human fellows,” accepted
compensation for wasted time, called them “My Lords,” and allowed them
to escape.
It was Mr. Grace who provided the final entertainment. They had grown a
little tired of his constant enquiry as to “What lydy done this?” Being
unwilling to lose their esteem as a humorist, he drove them down side
streets to a second-hand shop, which he had promised “never no more to
visit.”
The house was in complete darkness. He threw down the reins and stood
up, his whip clasped against his breast, his eyes lifted to the white
moon sailing in silence over sulky chimney-pots. Singing ran in his
family; it was from him that Grace inherited her talent. What his voice
lacked in sweetness it made up in volume. He startled the stillness
lustily:
“Oh,
Mister Widow, though
A murderer you be,
You're
Sure, a very nice man--
A good enough pal for me.”
If Mr. Widow had been a sportsman, he would have felt flattered that the
winning Oxford crew should take the trouble to greet him thus musically
at two o'clock in the morning. He wasn't. A night-capped head appeared
at a window. The singing grew more hearty. The head vanished. The street
door opened. A gentleman, very hastily attired, carrying a pair of
white spats in his hand, shot out on to the pavement. A voice from the
darkened shop pursued him, “'Ad enough of you. A man is known by 'is
friends.”
The door closed as suddenly as it had opened.
Mr. Grace hailed the new arrival, “'Ulloa, duckie! Been lookin' for you
h'everywhere.”
“I wish you hadn't,” growled Ocky.
Cat's Meat shivered in his harness. Mr. Grace, aware that he was somehow
in error, picked up the reins. “Well, good night, young gen'lemen. Me
and Mr. Waffles is goin' 'ome ter bed. Kum up, Cat's Meat.”
But Cat's Meat didn't come up; he lolled between the shafts, listless
and dejected. Mr. Grace climbed down from the box to examine him. “Wot's
matter, old pal? Got a 'eadache?”
He stretched out his hand to pat him. Cat's Meat shivered again, lolled
over a little farther and crashed to the ground. He flickered his
eye-lid just once, wearily and reproachfully, saying as plainly as was
possible for so dumb an animal, “Old man, we've been and gone and done
it.”
A hat was passed round. When its contents were presented to Mr. Grace he
pushed it away from him. He was sobbing. “H'it's not that; it ain't the
money. 'E were the only man 'as ever understood me. 'Is h'intellergence
wuz a thing to marvel h'at. A wonder of a 'oss, 'e were. I've often said
h'it. 'E'd bring me 'ome as drunk as a lord and as saife as a baby. 'E
wuz a reg'lar mother ter me, 'e were.”
The revelers melted into the night down the shuttered street, leaving
Mr. Grace with the disregarded hat of money, the dead horse sprawled
across the broken shafts and a gentleman, from whose hand a pair of
white spats dangled, contemplating the ruin disconsolately.
CHAPTER XLI--TREE-TOPS
Tree-Tops stood half-way up the hill, looking out across a terraced
garden. At the foot of the hill lay a plain, where hamlets nestled
beneath the wings of trees, and meadows washed about the shores of
yellow wheat-lands like green rivers in flood. In blue pastures, beyond
the edge of the horizon, white clouds wandered like browsing sheep.
The windows of Tree-Tops were latticed. The roof was thatched. It was
no more than a converted cottage. It blinked at you as though it wore
spectacles.
Behind it ran a Roman road, buried deep in the leaves of centuries. On
the brow of the hill was a legionaries' camp. To show where the road
ended a white cross had been cut, by turning back the sod from the
underlying chalk. Gathered about the camp in a half-circle, spreading
back for miles through uplands, was a beech-forest whose leaves
fluttered like green butterflies crucified on boughs of silver. Clouds
trailed slowly over it, or hung snared in its topmost branches.
Over the shoulder of the hill, immediately behind the Faun Man's house,
lay a golf-course with vivid squares of close-cropped turf from which
red flags waved angrily as poppies. Across the valley shone fields of
mustard, like sunlight falling in sudden patches.
The Faun Man puzzled Curious Corner. The village might have been named
in prophecy of his advent, with such extraordinary oddness did he
conduct his household. Like birds hopping in and out of a hedge,
his visitors came and went without knocking. Nobody tried to explain
anybody; no one at Tree-Tops thought explanation necessary.
The women were young and dashing; certainly they were not married to the
men. If they were wicked--which was never proved--they were decidedly
light-hearted.
By day they played golf and rode horseback. By night they sat in the
terraced garden, where fragrances wandered like old, sweet memories;
there, to the tinkling of banjos and mandolins, they sang till dusk had
brimmed the valleys and the moon sailed solitary. When their laughter
had grown tired, a light would spring up in a room beneath the thatch
where the Faun Man worked. Sometimes it would outstay the dawn. The
villagers watched these doings from a distance. They wagged their heads.
But if Tree-Tops had the reputation for being wild, there could be no
doubt that its master had money. He drove a four-in-hand from Oxford to
London. He rode a horse called Satan, which no one could manage; it had
killed two men already. And the money! He coined it with his pen--so it
was reported.
But the inhabitants of Curious Corner never guessed the motive of
all this frivolity: that the Faun Man wasn't really living--was only
distracting himself, till a woman with golden hair should nod, when life
would commence.
And the golden woman! Peter saw her often: in Oxford; when he cycled
out with Harry to Tree-Tops; during his vacations in London. He couldn't
believe what Harry told him--that she was cold and selfish. Everything
that she did was tender, from the caressing way she had of speaking to
the childish frankness with which she slipped her hand into his own
when she was happy. She made everyone love her and everyone forgive
her--everyone except Harry and Cherry. She had studied the art of
appearing adorable, so that what in others were faults in her took on
the glamour of attractions. She was so fond of the Faun Man--why didn't
she marry him? Peter didn't know. He gave it up--shrugged his shoulders.
Somewhere underground, as in his own life, the body of love lay buried.
In the stillness, did he listen, he could hear jealousy gnawing--gnawing
like a rat in the coffin of a dead princess. Once, in reading one of the
Faun Man's books, he came across a jotting in the margin, the thought of
which had no bearing on the text. It was as though thwarted longing had
cried aloud, suddenly becoming aware of its own tragedy. The sentence
read: “Life is slipping away from us. I have tried to make you love me.
And yet----.”
The bond of sympathy which existed between himself and the golden woman
increased in strength and knowledge. He could talk to her of so many
things concerning which he was silent to other people. Being in love, he
had to talk to someone. She was so wise in the advice she gave him. By
the patience with which she listened, she seemed to tell him that she
herself had endured the same indifference. How that could be he did not
understand. She encouraged him to make confession. It became a habit.
Perhaps the trust which he placed in her flattered her. It may have been
that his capacity for being so sheerly young tantalized her--she desired
above all things to be always young herself. Without doubt his implicit
faith in her goodness helped to silence her self-despisings.
But she was not above using their friendship as a means of provoking the
Faun Man. She would slip her arm about Peter's neck and say, “No chance
for you now, Lorie.”
Her lover's eyes would rest on her broodingly and film over, hiding his
thoughts, “Oh, well, I have Cherry.” Even though Cherry knew that it was
said in pretence, her face would grow radiant. It hurt Peter. He would
willingly have given the best years of his life to make her care for him
like that. It was then that he listened, and heard within himself the
gnawing of the rat of jealousy.
Cherry--he made no progress with her. She seemed to like him, and she
held him off. She avoided being left alone with him. In company there
were times when she treated him with intimacy--times when she ignored
him. While all his actions told her plainly that in his life she was the