The Raft
Harry's eyes filled with tears. He went on his knees beside her,
pressing her hand to his lips.
“Kay, don't you know me--your mouth-organ boy?”
The puzzled look melted. A low laugh came to her parched lips. “My dear,
dear mouth-organ boy!”
At the door he gazed back longingly. Peter caught him by the arm. It was
the struggle not to be selfish--it had been going on through seven days.
“You stay. Let me go.”
Harry shook his head. “She was yours before she was mine.”
He slipped out. His footsteps faded down the stairs.
In the house there was no sound--only her weary sighing. Everything was
hushed and shuttered. Outside waves dragged against the sand and broke
in long sparkling ripples. A pulley creaked as a fisherman hoisted sail.
Across the bay came the panting of the steamer from Lerici. It drew in
against the pier; boys' laughter sounded and splashing as they dived for
money. Again the panting, wandering off into the distance. It rounded
the headland.
441
Silence----. So much of life in the world and none to spare for her! And
this had come at a time when her father was ill, so that neither he nor
her mother could come to her.
She threw back the sheet which was spread above her slender body. Her
hand groped out. “Peter, Peterkins, you hav'n't left me?”
“I'll never leave you, and when you're better----.”
Again the incredulous smile! He' could get no further. Her voice, quite
near to him, reached him remotely. “If I should die---.”
He spoke quickly. “You're not going to.”
“But dearest, if I should----. You won't be bitter--won't break your
heart about me? If you did, I should know. I shouldn't be happy. Promise
that you'll still trust God and be happy.”
Against his belief he promised.
He thought her sleeping. Her lips moved. “God! No man hath seen----.
Beloved, we hav'n't, have we?”
He was shaken with sobbing. He had to wait. “Dear little heart, you've
been God to me and--and to everybody.”
“Hold my hand, Peter.” He was holding it. “I'm so tired. It's night.
Light the lamp. I want to see you.”
He unlatched the shutters. Across the dazzling blue of the gulf the sun
stared luridly, swinging low above the sea-line.
Her brain began to wander. She spoke unforgettable things--unforgettable
in their tenderness. It seemed that behind the confusion of her words
her spirit was preparing him. It was as though she turned the pages of
memory haphazard, chancing on phrases which summed up her short eighteen
years of existence.
“Peter in a Christmas cab!” There was what he had called the laughter of
birds in the way she said it. “Oh, it must be something splendid.”
She came to a winter when she had nearly died--when Peter had been sent
for hurriedly from Sandport. “Peter! Peter! Peter!” She wailed his name
childishly. Then, as though she snuggled warmly against one she trusted,
“He's never going to leave me. I shall get well now.”
For some minutes she was silent. Of a sudden she sat up, crying, “I
don't want to be a dead'un. I don't want to be a dead'un.”
It all came back--his boyish attempt to explain heaven to her, and her
terror because there was no means of escape by trains or trams. As then,
so now, he failed to console her. She sank on the pillow exhausted by
her panic.
During those brief minutes while the sun fell lower, she re-enacted all
the joys and bewilderments which had been their childhood. Now they were
playing in the garden at Topbury. Now riding out to the Happy Cottage
on the tandem trike. Once it was a flowered meadow; she was trying
to whistle. His startled question of long ago went unspoken. Only her
tearful protest gave the clue to her wandering, “I never heard it,
Peter--truly--never. I made it up out of my own head.”
For one thing which she said he had no picture, “Not on my lips. They're
for the man I marry.”
He buried his face. It was intolerable. “My God, I can't bear it.” Love
and marriage--she spoke of them; she would never know them.
Lying there so stilly, while death crept through her body, she seemed
uncannily sensitive to all that happened in his mind. She knew that
something she had said had hurt him.
Her delirium went from her. “Softy me, Peter, like you used to; I shan't
be afraid then.”
He leant his face against her hair, his cheek touching hers. She lifted
her hand and stroked him comfortingly.
Was she wandering? He couldn't tell. Her eyes were wide, gazing into a
great distance. “In heaven they are all--all serious.” Feeling him touch
her, she was filled with a wistful regret. “Beautiful warm flesh and
blood.”
She tried to turn her head. He raised himself over her.
449
It seemed that her sight had returned. He forced himself to smile lest
she should take fright at his crying.
“In heaven they are all--all----.”
He listened for her breath.
With unexpected strength, she fastened her arms about his neck and drew
herself up.
“Listen. Listen.”
She was staring through the open window to where a red spark smoldered
on the edge of the sea-line----. A sighing of wind across water! From
far away, whistling--a little air, happy and haunting, trilled over and
over! It was like a shepherd calling.
Her lips broke into a smile. “Beloved, I hear----.”
She drooped against his breast. The whistling grew fainter. The red
spark was quenched. The longest day was ended.
CHAPTER XLVII--“THEIR VIRGINS HAD NO MARRIAGE-SONGS; AND THEY THAT COULD SWIM----”
In the first stabbing sense of loss he hoped that he had caught the
contagion and might die. Life without her was unthinkable. Then, through
very excess of grief, his feelings became blunted. It seemed impossible
that he would ever again fear or expect.
He moved as in a shadow-world. Time had no significance. Days slipped
by uncounted. He was trying to understand life, searching behind the
external show for its secret meaning and purpose. Up till now, with
the gay generosity of a child, he had shared himself with those whom
he loved and by whom he was loved, concentrating and intensifying his
affections. Now, dimly at first, he began to view existence from the
angle of responsibility, as a river ever broadening and growing more
adventurous, pouring down from forgotten highlands to the conjectured
sea. It was not his journey that counted; it was the direction and
journey of the total river. If he suffered and had been glad, there
were multitudes who were glad and had suffered. What was the meaning of
it--this alternating sorrow and gladness? For the first time he asked
himself how other people thought, felt, endured--people like Jehane and
Riska, like the golden woman and Glory.
A month ago, had anyone told him that his sister would be taken from
him, he would have defied God by turning infidel. But now----. He
realized reluctantly how his very passion for her might have crippled
her, shutting out the natural and fine things that belong to every man
and woman. In giving her too much, he might have deprived her of what
was most splendid, giving her ultimate curtailment. How near he had come
to doing this he had learnt from Harry.
Her words were continually recurring in his memory, dragging him back
from despondency. “You won't be bitter--won't break your heart about
me? If you did, I should know. I shouldn't be happy.” The shame that
he might be paining her was always with him. He had the sure knowledge
that, though he could not see her, she still lingered in the house.
Sitting with closed eyes, especially at twilight, he believed he could
hear her moving--moving gladly. The sound was always behind him, even
when he turned his head. He placed flowers about her room, pretending
she was alive; he liked to picture her surprise when she found them. A
white wraith of laughing mist, he imagined he saw her stoop above them.
In his mind he heard her voice, “Oh, Peterkins, how good you still are
to me!” The wind touched his cheek; it was her mouth.
While her body remained in the house his grief was inconsolable. Yet
peace came to him even before the mortal part, long and lily-white, was
borne through the sun-swept village to the garden on the hill gazing out
to sea, cypress-shadowed and quiet.
Through the first long night he sat beside her, fixing her features,
everything that had been her, indelibly in his mind. The swathed feet,
immobile as marble beneath the tall candles, brought back her saying,
“The joy goes into my feet when I'm glad.”
Wearied by watching, he slept. Again she was dying. He could hear her
voice, trying so hard to be patient. Someone entered, bringing a new
body, exactly like the old one but well. She rose and slipped into it,
just as if she were trying on a new dress. She caught him by the hand,
laughing excitedly. In their gladness, as they left the room, neither
of them remembered to look back to the bed; they had no pity for the
abandoned fleshly garment.
----And was death no more than that to the dead--clothes cast aside,
outworn by the spirit? What a little to make a fuss about!
Through the open window dawn was breaking. In a chair Harry slept, his
chin fallen forward. Peter rose to his feet and tiptoed over to the
still face lying on the pillow, framed in the golden hair. He stood
gazing down. The morning wind walked the sea, like the feet of Jesus
bringing peace to sinful men. Far back he remembered another early
morning when Kay's eyes had been closed and he had heard those same feet
walking--snow had lain on the ground. Another girl, strangely like her,
with the same bowed mouth and penciled brows, had been stretched beside
her. While Kay's eyes were shuttered, the other eyes had opened.
As the days went by, the desire grew strong within him to see Glory--he
wanted to trace Kay's likeness in the living features. And yet he
postponed.
It was September. Harry had left for London, called back by work.
Letters from Topbury implored his own return. He was afraid to abandon
scenes familiar; in losing them he might lose the sense of Kay's spirit
presence.
Then to him, as to Harry, came the imperative cry of the need of the
world.
A telegram sent from Paris and forwarded on from Topbury reached him. Of
all persons it was from the golden woman. It bade him urgently to join
her. He took no notice. Another, saying that it was not she who wanted
him but someone whom he could help. A third, still more insistent. The
first he had suspected; this last was too pleading for insincerity. He
packed up and left.
In Paris she met him; even then she refused to tell him why she had
sent for him. She was a different golden woman, grave and quiet. The day
after his arrival, she took him out to a gray Normandy village. On the
train journey she had little to say; only once did she explain herself.
A flight of swallows was passing over a meadow going south, moving
steadily as a cloud. She met his eyes.
“Yes, I'm different. The stork knoweth her appointed times, and the
turtle and the crane and the swallow, but----You remember the passage. I
didn't know mine. I waited too long. Foolish! Foolish!---- The winter
came. My appointed time went by me.” And a little later, “Don't let that
happen to you, Peter.”
They walked down a white road and came to a cottage. She knocked. A
voice, which he ought to have recognized, told her to enter. Sitting in
a low chair, her foot rocking a cradle, was Riska. She rose, overcome
with surprise, lowering her face, awaiting his judgment. As he pressed
her to him, the baby began to cry. She stooped, picked him up and held
him out to Peter.
“Isn't he sweet?”
The first words she had spoken--spoken without shame or apology, almost
with pride! It seemed impossible that a sin which had made a thing
so beautiful could need excusing. He met her eyes, reading in them