Love's Usuries Part 15

"But here we've no second husbands, and no tombs; only a fanciful little wife who has burst the bonds of the matter of fact."

"Was I so prosaic?" She stared at the dancing gnats and flicked at them dreamily with her glove. "Ah, perhaps so--in the days when the pinch of penury forced one to be tough and calculating. You could not imagine, Harry, the fret of blue blood in starved veins. To be poor makes one mean, grasping, heartless; once rich, we can become amiable, virtuous, heroic even."

"And poetic, eh?" he said, flushing at the recollection of transformations that his love and his wealth had wrought for Cinderella.

"Come, we must not forget the Lowthers' dinner, we're due there now."

With this he paddled out from their retreat, carefully--for the dusk was closing round them--into the open river.

All along the banks a misty vapour, rising from the earth, twisted and wreathed till it wrapped the tow-path in gloom. Deep shadows stretched their quaint deformities fantastically across the wave, mingling deceitfully with black clumps of tall reeds, into which the canoe occasionally glided with a dangerous swish.

The distance from the backwater to the Reach was fortunately short.

Coloured lights from the numerous house-boats that were gathered in line to view the morrow's regatta guided them, and from the merry laughter which a.s.sailed their ears they learnt the geographical position of Sir Eustace Lowther's floating fairyland, styled ironically "The Raft."

"We're famishing," roared someone from its balcony.

"So are we," came in duet from the canoe.

"Take care of the ice-box," called another voice from the gloom, as a paddle hit some obstacle in the darkness.

"Fiz cooling," explained a guest, appreciatingly. "Your hand?"

Lady Rolleston gave it, and was escorted up the steps to the feasting place.

It was set out with a studied view to polite vagabondage. Deftly manoeuvred forks, two-p.r.o.nged twigs mounted in silver, and clasp knives with chased and monogrammed handles, garden lanterns in frames of fretted iron, osier baskets bursting with an incongruous burden of river flowers and hot-house fruits, champagne in old Bohemian mugs, ices to be dug from crystal troughs with silver trowels, all these heterodoxies accentuated the bizarrerie which made "The Raft" such an unique and enviable lounging place.

Among the guests were three painters, a peer, a novelist, an actress of note, and one or two women whose beauty was, if not cla.s.sical, at least effervescent and exhilarating. Merry talk prevailed as a matter of course, and bets were freely exchanged on the prospects of the crews.

"I hope to-morrow won't be a pelting day like last year; it was ghastly," said one of the belles to Sir Henry Rolleston.

"I didn't find it ghastly," he chuckled; "but then I wasn't at Henley.

It was my wedding day."

"Lucky is the bridegroom that the rain rains on seems to be your version of the proverb," chirruped his companion.

"We've been lucky enough, sun or no sun," he said, looking across at his wife, whose lovely face wore a decidedly bored expression.

She was being worried by the peer, who, on the "if-you-want-a-thing-well-done-do-it-yourself" principle, was vaunting his own att.i.tude towards the agricultural question.

"I never had such a wretched time," went on the beauty, "we were moored higher up last year, by the island, near where you are now. But it wasn't all the rain, it was poor Kelly's accident--you knew him, Basil Kelly? Drowned, poor fellow, in the dark--canoe washed ash.o.r.e in the morning."

"Hush," exclaimed Sir Harry, looking across the table and lowering his voice. "I never knew the poor fellow, but my wife did; they were boy and girl chums for years. He was master at the Grammar School near her, and a capital oar."

"That's what I couldn't make out. Did you see what the papers said?"

"The papers were purposely kept from us. It was too deplorable a subject to be mooted on our wedding day."

"Did she ever know?"

"Yes, later, and bore it very well. She was indignant at the suggestion of suicide, but has never alluded to the subject since."

"Harry," called Lady Rolleston from the opposite side, "Sir Eustace wants to know why you moored so far up?"

"Oh," he replied, "partly because I was a bit late and partly because we're best out of the thick of it. I enjoy seeing the start almost as much as the finish."

"We have the Club grounds to go to if we like," explained Lady Rolleston, as they mounted to the balcony where the thrumming of guitars had already commenced.

All the racing visitors were gathered in knots in the blue darkness; companies of performers, n.i.g.g.e.rs, German bands, and banjoists were skimming along from house-boat to house-boat, making music to the guests and indulging in mild badinage with each other. The moon peered out from the heavens through a silvery haze, and one by one the timorous blinking stars grew more audaciously golden as the night became darker.

On "The Raft" most of the company disposed themselves in groups, and boisterously chorused the musical sentiments of a young man who had boarded the boat to recite of love-making on modern methods. Lady Rolleston, exhausted from the fatigue of entertaining the indefatigable agriculturist, sat somewhat apart on a long cane chair. She fanned herself, and from time to time applauded. It was a pleasure to contemplate the boyish zest with which her husband led the roar. Song after song followed, and then came a "breakdown" from a young "Middy,"

whose spirits were infectious. At last, when the rampage had almost ceased, Harry Rolleston became aware of his wife's silence and exceeding pallor.

"It's awfully late, we must be off, or we shall face daylight before we know where we are."

Jovial farewells were exchanged, parting bets quoted, then the pair descended into darkness.

The river was now almost deserted; its face like a black mirror giving forth only exaggerated reflections of such illuminations as still glowed along the length of the Reach. These, however, served well to steer by, and they neared their own house-boat with little difficulty. Outside, though the night was sultry, tiny breezes that came and went fanned the skin like the breath of babes. Under the roof, however, not a whiff of air could penetrate, and, within the room, the atmosphere seemed hot and asphyxiating.

Maud Rolleston, as she threw off her gown, complained.

"The air here is stifling, I should like to sleep on deck."

"Impossible," her husband said, "you would have the sun routing you in an hour or two."

"Then we must keep the door open. I don't suppose there are burglars about."

"Burglars? I'd like to catch them--but damp--one can't fight that."

"It is too hot to be damp," she a.s.serted, laying a hand on the frilled pillows of her tiny bunk.

"But dangerous mists rise up from the river," he argued, warningly.

"I am not afraid of mists," she said, and in her long silk bedgown she tripped to the outer door, opened it, and returned to fling herself in abandonment of fatigue upon her tiny couch.

As accompaniment to her slumbers the lapping of the tide against the house-boat steps made a soft, incessant music, while the swishing of reeds by the river bank sighed a sweet response to the whispered endearments of the wind. On the air still floated drowsily the sound of strings from guitars, and the m.u.f.fled echo of voices that sang in other house-boats farther down the stream. Then by degrees, within the s.p.a.ce of an half-hour, came a greater hush--the hush of a sleeping world worn out with laughter and laziness.

And Maud Rolleston, dreaming, grew paler under the moonbeams that peered through the lace shroudings of the narrow window. She sighed sometimes in her sleep, now and again lifting her head upon an elbow, as though to look out on the expanse of water that purled almost silently to its inevitable future. Her eyes were open, expressionless, but tearful. In the crystal seemed a reflection of the water's suddenly ruffled surface which the moon was dappling with points of silver....

By and by she put her feet to the ground, hesitatingly at first, and then gliding through the open door, she stood on an old Moorish prayer-carpet that covered the head of the steps. Two nautilus sh.e.l.ls holding their burden of giant mignonette shielded her from the air; but it broke at times fragrantly from the scented forest of blossoms.

With a lily in her hand, backgrounded thus by stars and midnight, she might have represented a virgin saint on a missal, but her arms were bare and extended, and she seemed rather to be a prophetess, a sybil, uttering invocation.

Her lips scarce moved, but they sighed a name, "Basil."

The ruffled waters, at the steps of the boat, swayed and parted. The visage of a dead man looked out from the depths to her. His hair hung lank about his brow, the tide washed it along in pa.s.sing, as it washed the weeds from the face of the lilies.

"Basil," she murmured.