Simon Called Peter by Robert Keable

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"Yes, but I do not know your friend yet," he heard the girl say, and saw
she was being introduced to Pennell. She held out a decently gloved hand
with a gesture that startled him--it was so like Hilda's. Hilda! The
comparison dazed him. He fancied he could see her utter disgust, and then
he involuntarily shook his head; it would be too great for him to
imagine. What would she have made of the story he had just heard? He
concluded she would flatly disbelieve it....

But Julie? He smiled to himself, and then, for the first time, suddenly
asked himself what he really felt towards Julie. He remembered that first
night and the kiss, and how he had half hated it, half liked it. He felt
now, chiefly, anger that Donovan had had one too. One? But he, Peter,
had had two.... Then he called himself a damned fool; it was all of a
piece with her extravagant and utterly unconventional madness. But what,
then, would she say to this? Had she anything in common with it?

He played with that awhile, blowing out thoughtful rings of smoke. It
struck him that she had, but he was fully aware that that did not
disgust him in the least. It almost fascinated him, just as--that _was_
it--Hilda's disgust would repel him. Why? He hadn't an idea.

"Monsieur le Capitaine is very dull," said a girl's voice at his elbow.
He started: Louise had moved to the sofa and was smiling at him. He
glanced towards his companions, Alex was standing, finishing a last
drink; Pennell staring at Louise.

He looked back at the girl, straight into her eyes, and could not read
them in the least. The darkened eyebrows and the glitter in them baffled
him. But he must speak, "Am I?" he said. "Forgive me, mademoiselle; I was
thinking."

"Of your fiancee--is it not so? Ah! The Capitaine has his fiancee, then?
In England? Ah, well, the girls in England do not suffer like we girls in
France.... They are proud, too, the English misses. I know, for I have
been there, to--how do you call it?--Folkestone. They walk with the head
in the air," and she tilted up her chin so comically that Peter smiled
involuntarily.

"No, I do not like them," went on the girl deliberately. "They are
only half alive, I think. I almost wish the Boche had been in your
land.... They are cold, la! And not so very nice to kiss, eh?"

"They're not all like that," said Pennell.

"Ah, non? But you like the girls of France the best, mon ami; is it not
so?" She leaned across towards him significantly.

Pennell laughed. "_Now_, yes, perhaps," he said deliberately; "but after
the war ..." and he shrugged his shoulders, like a Frenchman.

A shade passed over the girl's face, and she got up. "It is so," she
said lightly. "Monsieur speaks very true--oh, very true! The girls of
France now--they are gay, they are alive, they smile, and it is war, and
you men want these things. But after--oh, I know you English--you'll go
home and be--how do you say?--'respectable,' and marry an English miss,
and have--oh! many, many bebes, and wear the top-hat, and go to church.
There is no country like England...." She made a little gesture. "What do
you believe, you English? In le bon Dieu? Non. In love? Ah, non! In what,
then? Je ne sais!" She laughed again. "What 'ave I said? Forgive me,
monsieur, and you also, Monsieur le Capitaine. But I do see a friend of
mine. See, I go! Bon soir."

She looked deliberately at Peter a moment, then smiled comprehensively
and left them. Peter saw that Alex had gone already; he asked no
questions, but looked at Pennell inquiringly.

"I think so, padre; I've had enough of it to-night. Let's clear. We can
get back in time for mess."

They went out into the darkening streets, crossed an open square, and
turned down a busy road to the docks. They walked quickly, but Peter
seemed to himself conscious of everyone that passed. He scanned faces,
as if to read a riddle in them. There were men who lounged by, gay,
reckless, out for fun plainly, but without any other sinister thought,
apparently. There were Tommies who saluted and trudged on heavily. There
were a couple of Yorkshire boys who did not notice them, flushed, animal,
making determinedly for a destination down the street. There was one man
at least who passed walking alone, with a tense, greedy, hard face, and
Peter all but shuddered.

The lit shops gave way to a railed space, dark by contrast, and a tall
building of old blackened stone, here and there chipped white, loomed up.
Moved by an impulse, Peter paused, "Let's see if it's open, Pennell," he
said. "Do you mind? I won't be a second."

"Not a scrap, old man," said Pennell, "I'll come in too."

Peter walked up to a padded leather-covered door and pushed. It swung
open. They stepped in, into a faintly broken silence, and stood still.

Objects loomed up indistinctly--great columns, altars, pews. Far away a
light flickered and twinkled, and from the top of the aisle across the
church from the door by which they had entered a radiance glowed and lost
itself in the black spaces of the high roof and wide nave. Peter crossed
towards that side, and his companion followed. They trod softly, like
good Englishmen in church, and they moved up the aisle a little to see
more clearly; and so, having reached a place from which much was visible,
remained standing for a few seconds.

The light streamed from an altar, and from candles above it set around
a figure of the Mother of God. In front knelt a priest, and behind him,
straggling back in the pews, a score or so of women, some children, and
a blue-coated French soldier or two. The priest's voice sounded thin
and low: neither could hear what he said; the congregation made rapid
responses regularly, but eliding the, to them, familiar words. There was,
then, the murmur of repeated prayer, like muffled knocking on a door, and
nothing more.

"Let's go," whispered Pennell at last.

They went out, and shut the door softly behind them. As they did so, some
other door was opened noisily and banged, while footsteps began to drag
slowly across the stone floor and up the aisle they had come down. The
new-comer subsided into a pew with a clatter on the boards, but the
murmured prayers went on unbroken.

Outside the street engulfed them. The same faces passed by. A street-car
banged and clattered up towards the centre of the town, packed with
jovial people. Pennell looked towards it half longingly. "Great Scott,
Graham! I wish, now, we hadn't come away so soon," he said.

CHAPTER VIII

The lower valley of the Seine is one of the most beautiful and
interesting river-stretches in Northern Europe. It was the High Street of
old Normandy, and feuda, barons and medieval monks have left their mark
upon it. From the castle of Tancarville to the abbey of Jumieges
you can read the story of their doings; or when you stand in the Roman
circus at Lillebonne, or enter the ancient cloister of M. Maeterlinck's
modern residence at St. Wandrille, see plainly enough the writing of a
still older legend, such as appeared, once, on the wall of a palace in
Babylon. On the left bank steep hills, originally wholly clothed with
forest and still thickly wooded, run down to the river with few breaks
in them, each break, however, being garrisoned by an ancient town. Of
these, Caudebec stands unrivalled. On the right bank the flat plain of
Normandy stretches to the sky-line, pink-and-white in spring with miles
of apple-orchards. The white clouds chase across its fair blue sky,
driven by the winds from the sea, and tall poplars rise in their uniform
rows along the river as if to guard a Paradise.

Caudebec can be reached from Le Havre in a few hours, and although cars
for hire and petrol were not abundant in France at the time, one could
find a chauffeur to make the journey if one was prepared to pay. Given
fine weather, it was an ideal place for a day off in the spring. And
Peter knew it.

In the Grand Magasin Julie had talked of a day off, and a party of four
had been mooted, but when he had leisure to think of it, Peter found
himself averse to four, and particularly if one of the four were to be
Donovan. He admitted it freely to himself. Donovan was the kind of a
man, he thought, that Julie must like, and he was the kind of man, too,
to put him, Peter, into the shade. Ordinarily he asked for no better
companion, but he hated to see Julie and Jack together. He could not make
the girl out, and he wanted to do so. He wanted to know what she thought
about many things, and--incidentally, of course--what she thought about
him.

He had argued all this over next morning while shaving, and had ended
by cutting himself. It was a slight matter, but it argued a certain
absent-mindedness, and it brought him back to decency. He perceived that
he was scheming to leave his friend out, and he fought resolutely against
the idea. Therefore, that afternoon, he went to the hospital, spent a
couple of hours chatting with the men, and finally wound up in the
nurses' mess-room for tea as usual. It was a little room, long and
narrow, at the end of the biggest ward, but its windows looked over the
sea and it was convenient to the kitchen. Coloured illustrations cut from
magazines and neatly mounted on brown paper decorated the walls, but
there was little else by way of furniture or ornament except a long table
and chairs. One could get but little talk except of a scrappy kind, for
nurses came continually in and out for tea, and, indeed, Julie had only a
quarter of an hour to spare. But he got things fixed up for the following
Thursday, and he left the place to settle with Donovan.

That gentleman's company of native labour was lodged a mile or so through
the docks from Peter's camp, on the banks of the Tancarville Canal. It
was enlivened at frequent intervals, day and night, by the sirens of
tugs bringing strings of barges to the docks, whence their cargo was
borne overseas in the sea-going tramps, or, of course, taking equally
long strings to the Seine for Rouen and Paris. It was mud and cinders
underfoot, and it was walled off with corrugated-iron sheeting and
barbed wire from the attentions of some hundreds of Belgian refugees who
lived along the canal and parallel roads in every conceivable kind of
resting-place, from ancient bathing-vans to broken-down railway-trucks.
But there were trees along the canal and reeds and grass, so that there
were worse places than Donovan's camp in Le Havre.

Peter found his friend surveying the endeavours of a gang of boys to
construct a raised causeway from the officers' mess to the orderly-room,
and he promptly broached his object. Donovan was entranced with the
proposal, but he could not go. He was adamant upon it. He could possibly
have got off, but it meant leaving his something camp for a whole day,
and just at present he couldn't. Peter could get Pennell or anyone.
Another time, perhaps, but not now. For thus can the devil trap his
victims.

Peter pushed back for home on his bicycle, but stopped at the docks on
his way to look up Pennell. That gentleman was bored, weary, and inclined
to be blasphemous. It appeared that for the whole, infernal day he had
had to watch the off-loading of motor-spares, that he had had no lunch,
and that he could not get away for a day next week if he tried. "It isn't
everyone can get a day off whenever he wants to, padre," he said. "In the
next war I shall be ..." Peter turned hard on his heel, and left him
complaining to the derricks.

He was now all but cornered. There was nobody else he particularly cared
to ask unless it were Arnold, and he could not imagine Arnold and Julie
together. It appeared to him that fate was on his side; it only remained
to persuade Julie to come alone. He pedalled back to mess and dinner, and
then, about half-past eight, strolled round to the hospital again. It was
late, of course, but he was a padre, and the hospital padre, and
privileged. He knew exactly what to do, and that he was really as safe as
houses in doing it, and yet this intriguing by night made him
uncomfortable still. He told himself he was an ass to think so, but he
could not get rid of the sensation.

Julie would be on duty till 9.30, and he could easily have a couple
of minutes' conversation with her in the ward. He followed the
railway-track, then, along the harbour, and went in under the great roof
of the empty station. On the far platform a hospital train was being made
ready for its return run, but, except for a few cleaners and orderlies,
the place was empty.

An iron stairway led up from the platform to the wards above. He
ascended, and found himself on a landing with the door of the theatre
open before him. There was a light in it, and he caught the sound of
water; some pro. was cleaning up. He moved down the passage and
cautiously opened the door of the ward.

It was shaded and still. Somewhere a man breathed heavily, and another
turned in his sleep. Just beyond the red glow of the stove, with the
empty armchairs in a circle before it, were screens from which came a
subdued light. He walked softly between the beds towards them, and looked
over the top.

Inside was a little sanctum: a desk with a shaded reading-lamp, a chair,
a couch, a little table with flowers upon it and a glass and jug, and on
the floor by the couch a work-basket. Julie was at the desk writing in a
big official book, and he watched her for a moment unobserved. It was
almost as if he saw a different person from the girl he knew. She was at
work, and a certain hidden sadness showed clearly in her face. But the
little brown fringe of hair on her forehead and the dimpled chin were the
same....

"Good-evening," he whispered.

She looked up quickly, with a start, and he noticed curiously how rapidly
the laughter came back to her face. "You did startle me, Solomon," she
said. "What is it?"

"I want to speak to you a minute about Thursday," he said. "Can I come
in?"

She got up and came round the screens. "Follow me," she said, "and don't
make a noise."

She led him across the ward to the wide verandah, opening the door
carefully and leaving it open behind her, and then walked to the
balustrade and glanced down. The hospital ship had gone, and there was
no one visible on the wharf. The stars were hidden, and there was a
suggestion of mist on the harbour, through which the distant lights
seemed to flicker.

"You're coming on, Solomon," she said mockingly. "Never tell me you'd
have dared to call on the hospital to see a nurse by night a few weeks
ago! Suppose matron came round? There is no dangerous case in my ward."

"Not among the men, perhaps," said Peter mischievously. "But, look here,
about Thursday; Donovan can't go, nor Pennell, and I don't know anyone
else I want to ask."

"Well, I'll see if I can raise a man. One or two of the doctors are
fairly decent, or I can get a convalescent out of the officers'
hospital."

She had the lights behind her, and he could not see her face, but he knew
she was laughing at him, and it spurred him on. "Don't rag, Julie," he
said, "You know I want you to come alone."

There was a perceptible pause. Then: "I can't cut Tommy," she said.

"Not for once?" he urged. She turned away from him and looked down at the
water. It is curious how there come moments of apprehension in all our
lives when we want a thing, but know quite well we are mad to want it.
Julie looked into the future for a few seconds, and saw plainly, but
would not believe what she saw.

When she turned back she had her old manner completely. "You're a dear
old thing," she said, "and I'll do it. But if it gets out that I gadded
about for a day with an officer, even though he is a padre, and that we
went miles out of town, there'll be some row, my boy. Quick now! I must
get back. What's the plan?"

"Thanks awfully," said Peter. "It will be a rag. What time can you get
off?"

"Oh, after breakfast easily--say eight-thirty."

"Right. Well, take the tram-car to Harfleur--you know?--as far as it
goes. I'll be at the terminus with a car. What time must you be in?"

"I can get late leave till ten, I think," she said.

"Good! That gives us heaps of time. We'll lunch and tea in Caudebec, and
have some sandwiches for the road home."

"And if the car breaks down?"

"It won't," said Peter. "You're lucky in love, aren't you?"

She did not laugh. "I don't know," she said. "Good-night."

And then Peter had walked home, thinking of Hilda. And he had sat by the
sea, and come to the conclusion that he was a rotter, but in the web of
Fate and much to be pitied, which is like a man. And then he had played
auction till midnight and lost ten francs, and gone to bed concluding
that he was certainly unlucky--at cards.

As Peter sat in his car at the Harfleur terminus that Thursday it must be
confessed that he was largely indifferent to the beauties of the Seine
Valley that he had professedly come to see. He was nervous, to begin
with, lest he should be recognised by anyone, and he was in one of his
troubled moods. But he had not long to wait. The tram came out, and he
threw away his cigarette and walked to meet the passengers.

Julie looked very smart in the grey with its touch of scarlet, but she
was discontented with it. "If only I could put on a few glad rags," she
said as she climbed into the car, "this would be perfect. You men can't
know how a girl comes to hate uniform. It's not bad occasionally, but if
you have to wear it always it spoils chances. But I've got my new shoes
and silk stockings on," she added, sticking out a neat ankle, "and my
skirt is not vastly long, is it? Besides, underneath, if it's any
consolation to you, I've really pretty things. Uniform or not, I see no
reason why one should not feel joyful next the skin. What do you think?"

Peter agreed heartily, and tucked a rug round her. "There's the more need
for this, then," he said.

"Oh, I don't know: silk always makes me feel so comfortable that I can't
be cold. Isn't it a heavenly day? We are lucky, you know; it might have
been beastly. Lor', but I'm going to enjoy myself to-day, my dear! I warn
you. I've got to forget how Tommy looked when I put her off with excuses.
I felt positively mean."

"What did she say?" asked Peter.

"That she didn't mind at all, as she had got to write letters," said
Julie, "Solomon, Tommy's a damned good sort!... Give us a cigarette, and
don't look blue. We're right out of town."

Peter got out his case. "Don't call me Solomon to-day," he said.

Julie threw herself back in her corner and shrieked with laughter. The
French chauffeur glanced round and grimaced appreciatively, and Peter
felt a fool. "What am I to call you, then?" she demanded. "You are a
funny old thing, and now you look more of a Solomon than ever."

"Call me Peter," he said.

She looked at him, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "I'm really
beginning to enjoy myself," she said. "But, look here, you mustn't begin
like this. How in the world do you think we shall end up if you do?
You'll have nothing left to say, and I shall be worn to a rag and a
temper warding off your sentimentality."

"Julie," said Peter, "are you ever serious? I can't help it, you know, I
suppose because I am a parson, though I am such a rotten one."

"Who says you're a rotten one?"

"Everybody who tells the truth, and, besides, I know it. I feel an
absolute stummer when I go around the wards. I never can say a word to
the men."

"They like you awfully. You know little Jimmy, that kiddie who came in
the other day who's always such a brick? Well, last night I went and sat
with him a bit because he was in such pain. I told him where I was going
to-day as a secret. What do you think he said about you?"

"I don't want to know," said Peter hastily.

"Well, you shall. He said if more parsons were like you, more men would
go to church. What do you make of that, old Solomon?"

"It isn't true to start with. A few might come for a little, but they
would soon fall off. And if they didn't, they'd get no good. I don't know
what to say to them."

Julie threw away her cigarette-stump. "One sees a lot of human nature in
hospitals, my boy," she said, "and it doesn't leave one with many
illusions. But from what I've seen, I should say nobody does much good by
talking."

"You don't understand," said Peter. "Look here, I shouldn't call you
religious in a way at all Don't be angry. I don't _know_, but I don't
think so, and I don't think you can possibly know what I mean."

"I used to do the flowers in church regularly at home," she said. "I
believe in God, though you think I don't."

Peter sighed. "Let's change the subject," he said. "Have you seen any
more of that Australian chap lately?"

"Rather! He's engaged to a girl I know, and I reckon I'm doing her a good
turn by sticking to him. He's a bit of a devil, you know, but I think I
can keep him off the French girls a bit."

Peter looked at her curiously. "You know what he is, and you don't mind
then?" he said.

"Good Lord, no!" she replied. "My dear boy, I know what men are. It isn't
in their nature to stick to one girl only. He loves Edie all right, and
he'll make her a good husband one day, if she isn't too particular and
inquisitive. If I were married, I'd give my husband absolute liberty--and
I'd expect it in return. But I shall never marry. There isn't a man who
can play fair. They'll take their own pleasures, but they are all as
jealous as possible. I've seen it hundreds of times."

"You amaze me," said Peter. "Let's talk straight. Do you mean to say that
if you were married and your husband ran up to Paris for a fortnight, and
you knew exactly what he'd gone for, you wouldn't mind?"

"No," she declared roundly. "I wouldn't. He'd come back all the more fond
of me, I'd know I'd be a fool to expect anything else."

Peter stared at her. She was unlike anything he had ever seen. Her moral
standards, if she had any, he added mentally, were so different from his
own that he was absolutely floored. He thought grimly that alone in a
motor-car he had got among the multitude with a vengeance. "Have you
ever been in love?" he demanded.

She laughed. "Solomon, you're the quaintest creature. Do you think I'd
tell you if I had been? You never ought to ask anyone that. But if you
want to know, I've been in love hundreds of times. It's a queer disease,
but not serious--at least, not if you don't take it too seriously."

"You don't know what love is at all," he said.

She faced him fairly and unashamed. "I do," she said, "It's an animal
passion for the purpose of populating the earth. And if you ask me, I
think it is rather a dirty trick on the part of God."

"You don't mean that," he said, distressed.

She laughed again merrily, and slipped her hand into his under the rug.
"Peter," she said--"there, am I not good? You aren't made to worry about
these things. I don't know that anyone is. We can't help ourselves, and
the best thing is to take our pleasures when we can find them. I suppose
you'll be shocked at me, but I'm not going to pretend. I wasn't built
that way. If this were a closed car I'd give you a kiss."

"I don't want that sort of a kiss," he said. "That was what you gave me
the other night. I want...."

"You don't know what you want, my dear, though you think you do. You
shouldn't be so serious. I'm sure I kiss very nicely--plenty of men think
so? anyway, and if there is nothing in that sort of kiss, why not kiss?
Is there a Commandment against it? I suppose our grandmothers thought so,
but we don't. Besides, I've been east of Suez, where there ain't no ten
Commandments. There's only one real rule left in life for most of us,
Peter, and that's this: 'Be a good pal, and don't worry.'"

Peter sighed. "You and I were turned out differently, Julie," he said.
"But I like you awfully. You attract me so much that I don't know how to
express it. There's nothing mean about you, and nothing sham. And I
admire your pluck beyond words. It seems to me that you've looked life in
the face and laughed. Anybody can laugh at death, but very few of us at
life. I think I'm terrified of it. And that's the awful part about it
all, for I ought to know the secret, and I don't. I feel an absolute
hypocrite at times--when I take a service, for example. I talk about
things I don't understand in the least, even about God, and I begin
to think I know nothing about Him...." He broke off, utterly miserable.

"Poor old boy," she said softly; "is it as bad as that?"

He turned to her fiercely. "You darling!" he said, carried away by her
tone. "I believe I'd rather have you than--than God!"

She did not move in her corner, nor did she smile now. "I wonder," she
said slowly. "Peter, it's you that hate shams, not I. It's you that are
brave, not I. I play with shams because I know they're shams, but I like
playing with them. But you are greater than I. You are not content with
playing. One of these days--oh, I don't know...." She broke off and
looked away.

Peter gripped her hand tightly. "Don't, little girl," he said. "Let's
forget for to-day. Look at those primroses; they're the first I've seen.
Aren't they heavenly?"

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