The Raft
Their virgins had no marriage-songs; and they that could swim did cast themselves into the sea to get to land, and some on boards, and some on other things.
CONTENTS
It was said of Jehane that she married blindly on the re-bound. She herself confessed in later life that she married out of dread of becoming an old maid.
A don’s daughter at Oxford has plentiful opportunities for becoming an old maid. Undergraduates are too adventurously young and graduates are too importantly in earnest for marriage; whether too young or too earnest, they are all too occupied. To bring a man to the point of matrimony, you must catch him unaware and invade his idleness. Love, in its initial stages, is frivolous.
This tragic state of affairs was frequently discussed by Jehane with her best friend, Nan Tudor. Were they to allow themselves to fade husbandless into the autumn of girlhood? Were they too ladylike to make any effort to save themselves from this horrid fate?—In the gray winter as they returned from a footer match, on the river in summer as the eights swung by, in the old-fashioned rectory-garden at Cassingland, this was their one absorbing topic of conversation. Ye gods, were they never to be married!
They watched the privileged male-creatures who had it in their power to choose them: that they did not choose them seemed an insult. When term commenced, they would dash up to their colleges in hansoms and step out confident and smiling. They would saunter through the narrow Oxford streets to morning lectures, arm-in-arm, in tattered gowns, smoking cigarettes, jolly and lackadaisical. In the afternoon, with savage and awakened energy, they would strive excessively for athletic honors. At night they would smash windows, twang banjoes, rag one another, assault constables and sometimes get drunk. At the end of term they would step into their hansoms and vanish, lords of creation, in search of a well-earned rest.
Jehane contrasted their lives with Nan’s and hers. “They’ve got everything; our hands are empty. We’re compulsory nuns and may do nothing to free ourselves. When he comes to my rescue, if he ever comes, how I shall adore him.”
Coningsby Dawson
THE RAFT
THE RAFT
CHAPTER I—A MAN
CHAPTER II—“I’M HALF SICK OF SHADOWS”
CHAPTER III—ALL THE WAY FOR THIS
CHAPTER IV—LOVE’S SHADOW
CHAPTER V—ENTER PETER AND GLORY
CHAPTER VI—JEHANE’S SECOND MARRIAGE
CHAPTER VII—THE WHISTLING ANGEL
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CHAPTER VIII—“COMING. COMING, PETERKINS”
CHAPTER IX—KAY AND SOME OTHERS
CHAPTER X—WAFFLES BETTERS HIMSELF
CHAPTER XI—THE HOME LIFE OF A FINANCIER
CHAPTER XII—THE ‘MAGINATIVE CHILD
CHAPTER XIII—PRICKCAUTIONS
“I?”
CHAPTER XIV—PETER IN EGYPT
CHAPTER XV—MARRIED LIFE
CHAPTER XVI—THE ANGELS AND OCKY WAFFLES
CHAPTER XVII—A HOUSE BUILT ON SAND
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CHAPTER XVIII—PETER TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER XIX—THE CHRISTMAS CAB
CHAPTER XX—THE HIDING OF OCKY WAFFLES
CHAPTER XXI—STRANGE HAPPENINGS
CHAPTER XXII—CAT’S MEAT LOOKS ROUND
CHAPTER XXIII—AND GLORY SAID
CHAPTER XXIV—THE TRICYCLE MAKES A DISCOVERY
CHAPTER XXV—THE HAPPY COTTAGE
CHAPTER XXVI—THE HAUNTED WOOD
CHAPTER XXVII—PETER FINDS A FAIRY
CHAPTER XXVIII—WAKING UP
CHAPTER XXIX—A GOLDEN WORLD
CHAPTER XXX—HALF IN LOVE
CHAPTER XXXI—A NIGHT WITH THE MOON
CHAPTER XXXII—IF YOU WON’T COME TO HEAVEN, THEN——
CHAPTER XXXIII—THE WORLD AND OCKY
CHAPTER XXXIV—THE BENEVOLENT DELILAHS
CHAPTER XXXV—WINGED BIRDS AND ROOTED TREES
CHAPTER XXXVI—THE SPREADING OF WINGS
CHAPTER XXXVII—THE RACE
CHAPTER XXXVIII—A NIGHT OF IT
CHAPTER XXXIX—ON THE RIVER
CHAPTER XL—MR. GRACE GOES ON THE BUST
CHORUS
CHORUS
CHAPTER XLI—TREE-TOPS
CHAPTER XLII—THE COACH-RIDE TO LONDON
CHAPTER XLIII—AN UNFINISHED POEM
CHAPTER XLIV—IN SEARCH OF YOUNGNESS
CHAPTER XLV—LOVE KNOCKS AT KAY’S DOOR
CHAPTER XLVI—THE ANGEL WHISTLES
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CHAPTER XLVIII—AND GLORY
THE END
