Strong sunlight streamed across the foot of his bed. Below, in the
quad, he could hear the clatter of breakfast-dishes being cleared away.
Fumbling beneath his pillow, he pulled out his watch. Ten o'clock! Time
he dressed and got to work! Less than a fortnight till his Finals, and
he'd lost a day already!
A sound of running on the stairs! Someone was entering his outer room.
“Hulloa! I'm still in bed. Who is it?”
The bedroom door flew open. Harry stood panting on the threshold,
holding a London paper in his hand. For all his haste, he didn't say
a word. He simply stared--stared rather weakly and stupidly, as though
he'd forgotten what he'd come about. His lips quivered. The twitching of
his fingers made the paper crackle.
Peter raised himself on his elbow. “Got back all right, old man. Why--.”
He saw Harry's face clearly; it was drawn and ghastly. “Don't look like
that. What is it? For God's sake, tell me.”
“Dead.”
“Dead?”
He threw back the clothes, leapt out and snatched the paper. Standing in
the sunlight he caught the head-line, TO SAVE OTHERS. His eyes skipped
the matter below it, gathering the sense: “At the crowded hour--in Hyde
Park yesterday afternoon--lost control of his horse, Satan--bolted to
where children were playing--swerved aside--rode purposely into an iron
fence--thrown and broke his neck.”
The paper fell from his hand. He picked it up and reread it. Some
mistake! He wouldn't believe it. The Faun Man dead! He'd been so
brimming with life. Never again to hear his mandolin strumming! Never
again to hear his gallant laughter! To walk through the roses at
Tree-Tops--and he would not be there!
Peter sat down on the edge of the bed, clenching his forehead in his
hands. The voice, the gestures, everything--everything that had been so
essentially the Faun Man he wanted to recall before he could forget.
“If yer gal ain't all yer thought 'er
And for everyfing yer've bought 'er
She don't seem to care-----”
He could see him bending over the strings slyly smiling. He had been of
such high courage that he could coin humor, out of his own unhappiness.
Then, like a minor air played softly, “Lorie, he loves you. If he asks
you again---” and the golden woman's broken assent, “If he asks me.”
She had kept him waiting too long. He had asked her for the last time
that morning. He couldn't ask her again, however much she desired
it--couldn't. She'd blamed him for his first neglect of her--had made it
an excuse for her own unfaithfulness. He hadn't met her. His neglect of
her had been simply that he was dead.
Word came two days later--they had brought him home to Tree-Tops. That
evening Peter gained leave of absence.
_Whitesheaves!_ The name was embroidered in geraniums on the velvet of
the close-cut turf. The train halted long enough for him to alight, then
pulled out puffing laboriously. It seemed an affront that people should
be journeying when across the fields the Faun Man lay, his journey
forever at an end. Only one other passenger got out--a young chap, in
flannels and a straw-hat, who was instantly embraced by a radiant-faced
girl. They sauntered arm-inarm to where a dog-cart was standing and
drove away into the evening stillness, their heads bent together, their
laughter floating back in snatches.
Peter set out reluctantly by a short-cut through wheat-fields. He didn't
want to prove to himself that it had happened. He was trying to imagine
that he had come on one of his surprise visits. He would find the Faun
Man dreaming, sprawled like a lean hound in the twilight of the terraced
garden.
The sun hung large and low in the west. A breeze swept the country with
a contented humming, bowing the heads of the corn. In the distance,
above Curious Corner, chiseled in the greenness of the hill the white
cross glistened. Through trees a spire shot up. Beneath boughs thatched
roofs of the village showed faintly. He rounded a bend; the house to
which he was going gazed down on him. It hadn't the look of a house of
death. Its windows shone valiantly above the pallor of the rose-garden,
out-staring the splendor of the fading west.
He climbed the red-tiled path--came to the threshold. The door was
hospitably open. Like birds hopping in and out of a hedge, the breeze
and the fragrance of flowers came and went. He knocked. No one answered.
He tiptoed in. A breathless silence! Mounting the stairs, he came to the
door with the iron latch, which gave entrance to the Faun Man's bedroom.
Flowers! He had always loved flowers. They were strewn on a bed
unnaturally white and unruffled. An unnatural peace was everywhere. The
sheet was turned back from the face; the brown slight hands stretched
straightly down. Each was held by a woman who knelt beside him with her
head bowed. The attitude of the women was tragic with jealousy.
How long and graceful he looked in death! How gaunt and tired! All
the striving, the brave pretending, the famished yearning which he had
disguised showed plainly now. A smile hung about the corners of his
mouth--a little mocking perhaps, yet tender. A bruise was on his
forehead. He had the look of one who, having been puzzled, understood
life at last and was content.
Peter felt that he had intruded. He had no right to stay there. Those
bowed heads reproached him. He felt what men often feel when death
is present: the body had been put out to usury; at the end of the
trafficking it belonged to women, as it had belonged to a woman before
the trafficking commenced.
He wandered out into the garden. Twilight weakened into darkness. His
feet were always coming back to the window; he stood beneath it, looking
up to where she knelt. If it were only for a moment, surely she would
come to him. Again he entered. No stir of life in the house. He peered
into the bedroom. She had not moved since he left.
Beyond her was the door which led into the Faun Man's study. Noiselessly
he stole across to it and raised the latch.
The room was in darkness. Set against the open window was a desk.
Moonlight drifted in on it. A chair was pushed back from it. A pen lay
carelessly on the blotting-pad, waiting for the master to return. Here
it was possible to believe that the mind still lived and worked.
A movement! He stretched out his hand. Someone rose. Into the shaft of
moonlight came the face of a man. “Oh--oh, it's you, Harry!”
He struck a match and lit the lamp. They talked softly, in short
whispered sentences. On the floor, on tables, on chairs, books and
manuscripts lay scattered. The breeze blowing in at the window turned
pages, as though an invisible person were searching. A sheet of paper,
lying uppermost on the desk, fluttered across the room to where Harry
sat. He stooped, picked it up, ran his eye over it and handed it to
Peter. “The last thing he wrote. Thinking of her to the end.”
Peter took it and read,
“She came to me and the world was glad--
'Twas winter, but hedges leapt white with May;
With snow of flowers my fields were clad,
Madly and merrily passed each day,
And next day and next day--
While all around
By others naught but the ice was found.
'O ungrateful heart, were you ever sad?
She was coming to you from the first,' I said.
She turned to me her eager head,
Clutching at what my thoughts did say.
“She went from me and the world was sad--
'Twas spring-time and hedges were all a-sway;
With snow of winter my fields were clad,
Darkly and drearily passed each day,
And next day and next day--
While all around
By others naught but spring-buds were found.
'O foolish heart, were you ever glad?
She was going from you from the first,' I said.
She turned to me her eager head,
Clutching at what my thoughts did say.”
“Like his life--an unfinished poem.” Peter leant out to return it to
Harry, but found that he had fallen asleep in his chair.
The lamp burnt itself out. The chill of dawn was in the air. Through the
window the sky was gathering color, like life coming back to the
cheeks of the dead. The door opened slowly. Stiff with long sitting he
staggered to his feet. “Cherry!”
Pressing her finger against her lips, she motioned him to be silent.
Glancing at Harry she whispered, “The first sleep in two days, poor
fellow.”
As he followed her across the dusk of the bed-chamber, a pool of gold
caught his attention; it glittered on the pillow by the face of the Faun
Man. The golden woman lay crouched like a pantheress beside the body,
her eyes half-shut and heavy with watching.
In the pallor of the rose-garden Cherry halted. She gave him both her
hands. “We can never be more to one another. Since this--I'm quite
certain now. I always wanted to be only friends.”
The heart of the waking world stopped beating. His hope was ended.
Clasping her hands against his breast, he drew her to him. She gave him
her cold lips. “For the last time.” She turned. He heard her slow feet
trailing up the stairs.
As he walked to the station through rustling wheat-fields the sun lifted
up his scarlet head, shaking free his hair, like a diver coming to the
surface at the end of a long plunge. Birds rose singing out of corn
and hedges, proclaiming that another summer's day had commenced. But
Peter--he heard nothing, saw nothing of the gladness. He saw only the
final jest--the smile, half-mocking, half-tender, that hung about the
Faun Man's mouth; and he heard Cherry's words, “I always wanted to be
only friends.”