It was the longest day in June. The room was stifling, filled with greenish light which fell in stripes through the slats of the closed shutters. On the tiled floor water had been sprinkled. Walls were stripped bare. A sheet, dipped in disinfectants, was pinned across the open door. On the other side sat the nun who had come to act as nurse. She sympathized with the jealousy that kept them always at the bedside and only intruded when she was sent for, or to give the medicines. This desperate clinging of flesh to flesh while the soul was outgrowing the body—how often she had watched it! She could not speak their language—didn’t understand anything but the quivering tenderness of what was said. She was a little in awe of these two young Englishmen who seemed so angry with God, and who sat day and night guarding the dying girl lest, in an unheeded moment, God should snatch her from them. Reckless of contagion, they bent above the pillow where the flushed face tossed between the plaits of daffodil hair.
The fight was unequal; it couldn’t last much longer. It had been going on for a week. Had they known in time that it was typhoid——. By the time they knew it was too late for her to be removed. The fishing-village had none of the necessities of nursing; the doctor had to come from Spezia.
Someone had to go for him at this moment; she had had a relapse. Harry looked at Peter. “I’ll go.” He spoke quietly, knowing that she might not be there when he returned.
Peter touched Kay’s hand, attempting the cheerfulness which they had feigned from the first, hoping that it might deceive even Death.
“Kitten Kay.”
She opened her eyes. She had gone back years as her strength had failed. She spoke as she looked, like a slight child-girl far distant from womanhood.
“Belovedest?”
They had been crowding the gentleness of a full life into the words exchanged in those few days.
He started to speak; choked and had to start afresh.
“Harry’s off to Spezia to fetch the doctor—the man who’s going to make you well.”
“Well!”
It was uttered deliberately, with a wise disbelieving smile.
“Harry! Harry!”
Her face grew troubled as she tried to recollect a name that was familiar.
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.
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.
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.
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 sacrifice. Where was the old Riska, impatient of restraint, eager to catch men, with the petulant, fluttering mouth? The passion which should have destroyed had purified, just as his grief which might have embittered had made him more anxious to help.
On the way to England she told him of Hardcastle. “I got so tired of trying and trying to get married. All the men found out something—father, or my shallowness, or something. I don’t blame them. And all the time, ever since I was a little girl, mother talked about the raft and what happened if a girl didn’t escape from it. I grew desperate and frightened. It was anything to catch a man. And then Roy——. He said he’d marry me in Paris; afterwards he put off and put off. When he’d deserted me, I didn’t like to write. After the baby came——. I don’t know, it may be all wrong, but I wasn’t a bit ashamed of myself. I didn’t write then because I couldn’t bear to think of people despising him. If the golden woman hadn’t met me—— Oh, well, I should have gone on somehow, earning money for baby with my hands.——But, dear Peter, I’m so glad you found me. I never understood you till now.”
At Topbury that first night, after a hurried reference to Kay, they didn’t trust themselves to talk about her. They tortured themselves the more by their reticence. Everything spoke so loudly of her absence. Nan sat with Riska’s child in her arms—the child which should have been unwelcome. It seemed to fill a gap in her life; they all knew what was passing behind her eyes. The evening grew late. She and Riska went slowly up to bed.
Peter turned to his father. For hours he had sat grimly watching the landscape by Cuyp, where the comfortable burgher walked forever unperturbed by the banks of the gray canal.
“Father.”
“Yes.”
“We’re not doing right.”
“Right!” He shrugged his shoulders. His gesture accused God defiantly.
“No, father—not doing right. One of the last things she said was that she’d know and be unhappy if we broke our hearts about her. She does know, and—and I think we’ve been making her sad.”
For a long time his father sat brooding. He stretched out his hand, “Your imagination, Peter—you’ve never outgrown it. But—but we don’t want to make her sad.”
The house was hushed. It was some hours since they had climbed the stairs. He crept out of his room into the one that had been hers. It was the same as when, years ago, they two had shared it. He gazed across the lamp-lit gulf to where Hampstead lay shrouded beneath the night. And he remembered: the moon letting down her silver ladder and bidding him ascend; the windows in streets he had never traversed, which had seemed to watch him like the eyes of cats; the mysterious whistling from the powder-cupboard, “Coming! Coming! Coming!”
He tried, as of old, to eliminate barriers by the magic of imagination. It was true, surely, and he hadn’t grown up. Soon he would hear the angel whistle. On the straight unruffled bed he would see the gentle little body, with the tumbled honey-colored hair.
He forgot his promise not to break his heart about her. Throwing himself down, he knelt beside the pillow, with his empty arms spread out.
A sound! Someone was holding him—someone who, coming on the same errand, had discovered him. “Peterkins! Peterkins, don’t cry.”
His arms went about her neck. “Little mother, it’s long since you called me that. I’m so tired—tired of pretending to be brave and trying to be a man.”
They sent for Jehane next day and the next; at last they had to go and fetch her. Her heart was hard because of the disgrace of what had happened. She spoke with bitterness of her children. Glory’s joining her stepfather at The Winged Thrush she construed as an act of treachery. “A daughter of mine,” she said, “serving in a public-house!” She had given up all hope that Eustace would ever ask her to come to Canada. His infrequent letters had given her to understand tacitly that she was not wanted. Only Moggs was left—a subdued child, a little like Glory. Against disappointment from that quarter Jehane forearmed herself by taking disappointment for granted. Her sense of injustice centered in the paradox that Ocky was happy, despite his mismanagement, while she, after all her painstaking rectitude, was sad.
Throughout the journey to Topbury she insisted vigorously that she would never take Riska back. As she entered the hall of his house, Barrington heard the last repetition of her assertion. “We don’t want you to,” he said; “she and her child are going to live with us.” Then Jehane saw Riska, and recognized the change; promptly she turned her accusals against herself. She had been unwise. She had spoilt her life both as wife and mother. Her calamities were her own doing. She needed Riska—wanted her. “You’ll come with your mother, won’t you?”
Riska shook her head gently—so gently that for a minute she looked like Glory. “Mother dear, I can’t. I would if it were only myself; I’ve baby to consider. You’d do for him just what you’ve done——. You couldn’t help it. I’m going to stay here with Aunt Nan and learn—learn to be like her—like Kay.”
Jehane covered her face with her hands. “I’m a bitter woman—yes, and jealous. But that my own child should tell me—and should be able to say it truly!”
She looked up. “If I were to try to be different, if I could prove to you that I was different——.”
Riska put her arms about her mother’s neck, “That’s all in the future. But, oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry. I know you’ve done your best.”
“My best!” Her voice was full of self-despisings. “Oh, well——!”
She had lost her last illusion—her faith in her own righteousness. Barrington, watching the disillusioned woman, tried to trace in her features the eager face, tell-tale of dreamings, that had beckoned to him from a window on a summer’s afternoon in Oxford. He found no resemblance.
He turned to Riska, who had played life’s game so recklessly, plunging off the raft of maidenhood, swimming and drifting on chance-found dÃÆébris to the land of maternity, about which her mother was always talking.
In searching Riska’s face he found Jehane’s dreamings come true—self-fulfilment and mastery. Sacrifice, by the road of sin, had accomplished them. He recollected how he had said of her, “Ripe fruit—ready to fall to the ground.” He smiled wisely, remembering his own unwisdom.
He was late. It didn’t matter; no one had been warned of his coming.
He punted down the last stretch of river. It had been Peterish, yet appropriate of him to choose this means of travel. He had arrived in Henley that morning. Had he gone by road, he could have been at The Winged Thrush for lunch. Now, full behind him, spying beneath the bent arm of a willow stooped the setting sun.
All day he had had the sense of things watching—memories, associations of the past, hopes and dreads which had lost their power to help or harm him. A new hope had become his companion; he gazed back, taking a farewell glance at the old affections.
As he stole down the streak of silver, through ash-gray autumn meadows, he had many thoughts. Cherry and the last time he had made that journey! The Faun Man and himself—the way in which men mistake their love! Withered reeds rustled with the motion of his passing. Fallen leaves, scarlet and brown and yellow, starred the water’s surface. Thrusting himself forward, he sang and hummed,
“I’ve been shipwrecked off Patagonia,
Home and Colonia,
Antipodonia-.”
He broke off, smiling whimsically. In a figurative sense his own autobiography—almost a fulfilled prophecy! A brave song! He liked it—it paid no heed to regret and recorded only the joy of pressing on.
Letting the punt drift, he stared back into the evening redness. It took courage to learn what things to remember and how to forget. For some weeks he had been trying to learn—this river-journey was the testing.
He rounded a bend. Ahead swans sailed placidly. Cattle stood knee-deep in water. In the stream, tethered to a landing, boats swung idly. On a close-cut lawn green tables were set out in the shadow of trees. Everything stood hushed and huddled in the gilded quiet.
He stepped out and strolled up through the trellised garden. Finding no one, he wandered round the inn to the back. From the stable-yard came the splashing that water makes when a brush is plunged into a bucket; then a droning sound, punctuated with the hissing of an ostler. Peter laughed inwardly.
“Whoa there, boy! You ain’t a patch on Cat’s Meat. Call yerself a ‘oss?—- Ah, would yer! Shish-shish-shish.
Oh Peter wuz ‘is nime,
So Peterish wuz ‘e,
‘E wept the sun’s h’eye back agen
Lest ‘e should never see.”
“Hulloa, Mr. Grace!”
The old man started and overset his bucket. “Ho, me tripe and h’onions, wot a fright yer did give me!—- Why, Master Peter, ‘oo’d ‘ave thought ter see you ‘ere. Thought yer’d forgotten h’us and wuz never comin’. H’I wuz just a-singin’ about yer. H’I h’orften does when h’I’m a-groomin’ of a ‘oss. Sorter soothes ‘im—maikes ‘im stand quiet.”
“Where’s Uncle Ocky?”
“Gone ter ‘Enley, white spats and h’all.”
“And Glory?”
Mr. Grace caught the tremble in the question and glanced up sharply. “And Glory!” He passed his hand in front of his mouth, “Miss Glory, she——. H’it’s lonely for ‘er, a bit of a gel, with two old codgers, like me and yer h’uncle. We does our best, but——. Ho, yes! Where is she? On the river, maybe, a-dreamin’. If yer’ll wite till h’I’ve finished with this ‘ere ‘oss——
“On the river!” Peter spoke quickly, to himself rather than to his friend. “Couldn’t have passed her. Must be lower down.”
He was turning away. Mr. Grace called after him, “‘Alf a mo’! Got somethink ter tell yer.” Peter halted. “H’it’s abart me darter, Grice; h’unexpected like she’s——” Peter waved his hand and passed out of ear-shot. Mr. Grace winked his eye at the horse. “Ho, beg parding!”
The sun had sunk behind the trees; the moon was rising. A little breeze shook the brittle leaves, laughing softly among them as they broke from their anchorage and swooped like bats through the dusk. On the edge of the lawn, overhanging the river, a white post stood ghostly. As he untied his punt, Peter looked up and read the legend,The Winged Thrush. On the sign was depicted a brown bird, fluttering its wings in a gilded cage. He pushed off into the stream, creeping sharp-eyed between misty banks through the twilight.
And Glory!Until the last few months his world had consisted of other people—people who had seemed so important—and Glory. But now—now that he could no longer follow the shining head of his little sister, he had halted. Looking back, all through the years from childhood he seemed to hear Glory, tiptoeing behind him. He had noticed her so rarely. He remembered the time when he had told her to remain seated on the garden wall, had forgotten her, had missed her and had recollected her only to find her still waiting for him, crying in the darkness. The terror seized him that to-night he might have remembered too late—might have lost her.
Something tapped against the side of his punt. He leant out—a floating oar! The stream was beginning to quicken; ahead rose the low booming of water rushing across a weir. He gazed about him. Down the shadowy river, darkly a-silver in moonlight, a black thing, like a log, bobbed in the current. As he came up with it, a figure huddled in the stern, called nervously to him, “Oh please, I’ve dropped my oars; do help me.” He maneuvered alongside. “Why, Peter! Dear Peter——!”
There was no time for talking. From bank to bank ahead of them the stream leapt palely, like the white mane of a plunging horse. Putting his arm about her, he lifted her rapidly into his punt. The empty boat hurried on into the darkness. Working his way upstream, he ran into safety in a bed of rushes.
“Glory, if I’d lost you!”
She shook her head laughing, “You couldn’t.”
He knelt beside her, clasping her hands. “But how——? What were you doing?”
“Dreaming. Just wondering. While I drifted, they slipped from the rowlocks.”
“Dreaming!” He stooped his face. “Of what—of whom?”
Her voice sank. “Must I tell?”
From his sky-window the man in the moon drew aside the curtain; he peered out knowingly.
Peter had her in his arms. His lips touched hers in the dusk. His eyes met hers—Kay’s eyes; even in the darkness he knew them.
“And you do care?—— You really want me?”
She drooped her head against his shoulder. “Oh, dearest, I always wanted——. But I’m a girl, Peter; I didn’t dare——.”