Simon Called Peter by Robert Keable

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The meeting was slightly scandalised. The chairman, however, rose to the
occasion. That, he said, was a matter for H.Q. They were there to do
their duty. And, being an able person, he did his. In ten minutes they
were formed into study-bands and were pledged to study, with which
conclusion the meeting adjourned.

Peter was almost out of the door when he heard his name called, and
turning, saw the A.C.G. beckoning him. He went up to the table and shook
hands.

"Do you know the Professor?" asked his superior. "Professor, this is Mr.
Graham."

"How do you do?" said the man of science. "You are Graham of Balliol,
aren't you? You read Political Science and Economics a little at Oxford,
I think? You ought to be the very man for us, especially as you know how
to speak."

Peter was confused, but, being human, a little flattered. He confessed to
the sins enumerated, and waited for more.

"Well," said the A.C.G., "I've sent in your name already, Graham, and
they want you to go to Abbeville for a few weeks. A gathering is to be
made there of the more promising material, and you are to get down to the
work of making a syllabus, and so on. You will meet other officers from
all branches of the Service, and it should be interesting and useful. I
presume you will be willing to go? Of course it is entirely optional, but
I may say that the men who volunteer will not be forgotten."

"Quite so," said the Professor. "They will render extremely valuable
service. I shall hope to be there part of the time myself."

Peter thought quickly of a number of things, as one does at such a
moment. Some of them were serious things, and some quite frivolous--like
Julie. But he could hardly do otherwise than consent. He asked when he
should have to go.

"In a few days. You'll have plenty of time to get ready. I should advise
you to write for some books, and begin to read up a little, for I expect
you are a bit rusty, like the rest of us. And I shall hope to have you
back lecturing in this Army area before long."

So to speak, bowed out, Peter made his way home. In the Rue de Paris
Julie passed him, sitting with a couple of other nurses in an ambulance
motor-lorry, and she waved her hand to him. The incident served to
depress him still more, and he was a bit petulant as he entered the mess.
He flung his cap on the table, and threw himself into a chair.

"Well," said Pennell, who was there, "on the peg all right?"

"Don't be a fool!" said Peter sarcastically. "I'm wanted on the Staff.
Haig can't manage without me. I've got to leave this perishing suburb and
skip up to H.Q., and don't you forget it, old dear. I shall probably be a
Major-General before you get your third pip. Got that?"

Pennell took his pipe from his mouth. "What's in the wind now?" he
demanded.

"Well, you might not have noticed it, but I'm a political and economic
expert, and Haig's fed up that you boys don't tumble to the wisdom of the
centuries as you ought. Consequently I've got to instruct you. I'm going
to waltz around in a motor-car, probably with tabs up, and lecture. And
there aren't to be any questions asked, for that's subversive of
discipline."

"Good Lord, man, do talk sense! What in the world do you mean?"

"I mean jolly well what I say, if you want to know, or something precious
like it. The blinking Army's got dry-rot and revolutionary fever, and we
may all be murdered in our little beds unless I put a shoulder to the
wheel. That's a bit mixed, but it'll stand. I shall be churning out this
thing by the yard in a little."

"Any extra pay?" demanded Pennell anxiously. "I can lecture on
engineering, and would do for an extra sixpence. Whisky's going up, and
I haven't paid my last mess bill."

"You haven't, old son," said Arnold, coming in, "and you've jolly well
got to. Here's a letter for you, Graham."

Peter glanced at the envelope and tore it open. Pennell knocked his pipe
out with feigned dejection. "The fellow makes me sick, padre," he said.
"He gets billets-doux every hour of the blessed day."

Peter jumped up excitedly. "This is better," he said. "It's a letter from
Langton at Rouen, a chap I met there who writes occasionally. He's been
hauled in for this stunt himself, and is to go to Abbeville as well. By
Jove, I'll go up with him if I can. Give me some paper, somebody. I'll
have to write to him at once, or we'll boss it."

"And make a will, and write to a dozen girls, I should think," said
Pennell. "I don't know what the blooming Army's coming to. Might as well
chuck it and have peace, I think. But meantime I've got to leave you
blighted slackers to gad about the place, and go and do an honest day's
work. _I_ don't get Staff jobs and red tabs. No; I help win the ruddy
war, that's all. See you before you go, Graham, I suppose? They'll likely
run the show for a day or two more without you. There'll be time for you
to stand a dinner on the strength of it yet."

A week later Peter met Langton by appointment in the Rouen club, the two
of them being booked to travel that evening via Amiens to Abbeville. His
tall friend was drinking a whisky-and-soda in the smoke-room and talking
with a somewhat bored expression to no less a person than Jenks of the
A.S.C.

Peter greeted them. "Hullo!" he said to the latter. "Fancy meeting you
here again. Don't say you're going to lecture as well?"

"The good God preserve us!" exclaimed Jenks blasphemously. "But I am off
in your train to Boulogne. Been transferred to our show there, and
between ourselves, I'm not sorry to go. It's a decent hole in some ways,
Boulogne, and it's time I got out of Rouen. You're a lucky man, padre,
not to be led into temptation by every damned girl you meet. I don't know
what they see in me," he continued mournfully, "and, at this hour of the
afternoon, I don't know what I see in them."

"Nor do I," said Langton. "Have a drink, Graham? There'll be no getting
anything on the ruddy train. We leave at six-thirty, and get in somewhere
about four a.m. next morning, so far as I can make out."

"You don't sound over-cheerful," said Graham.

"I'm not. I'm fed up over this damned lecture stunt! The thing's
condemned to failure from the start, and at any rate it's no time for it.
Fritz means more by this push than the idiots about here allow. He may
not get through; but, on the other hand, he may. If he does, it's UP with
us all. And here we are to go lecturing on economics and industrial
problems while the damned house is on fire!"

Peter took his drink and sat down. "What's your particular subject?" he
asked.

"The Empire. Colonies. South Africa. Canada. And why? Because I took a
degree in History in Cambridge, and have done surveying on the C.P.R.
Lor'! Finish that drink and have another."

They went together to the station, and got a first to themselves, in
which they were fortunate. They spread their kit about the place,
suborned an official to warn everyone else off, and then Peter and
Langton strolled up and down the platform for half an hour, as the
train was not now to start till seven. Somebody told them there was
a row on up the line, though it was not plain how that would affect
them. Jenks departed on business of his own. A girl lived somewhere
in the neighbourhood.

"How're you getting on now, padre?" asked Langton.

"I'm not getting on," said Peter. "I'm doing my job as best I can, and
I'm seeing all there is to see, but I'm more in a fog than ever. I've got
a hospital at Havre, and I distribute cigarettes and the news of the day.
That's about all. I get on all right with the men socially, and now and
again I meet a keen Nonconformist who wants me to pray with him, or an
Anglican who wants Holy Communion, but not many. When I preach I rebuke
vice, as the Apostle says, but I'm hanged if I really know why."

Langton laughed. "That's a little humorous, padre," he said. "What about
the Ten Commandments?"

Peter thought of Julie. He kicked a stone viciously. "Commandments are no
use," he said--"not out here."

"Nor anywhere," said Langton, "nor ever, I think, too. Why do you suppose
I keep moderately moral? Chiefly because I fear natural consequences and
have a wife and kiddies that I love. Why does Jenks do the opposite?
Because he's more of a fool or less of a coward, and chiefly loves
himself. That's all, and that's all there is in it for most of us."

"You don't fear God at all, then?" demanded Peter.

"Oh that I knew where I might find him!" quoted Langton. "I don't believe
He thundered on Sinai, at any rate."

"Nor spoke in the Sermon on the Mount?"

"Ah, I'm not so sure but it seems to me that He said too much or He
said too little there, Graham. One can't help 'looking on' a woman
occasionally. And in any case it doesn't seem to me that the Sermon is
anything like the Commandments. Brotherly love is behind the first, fear
of a tribal God behind the second. So far as I can see, Christ's creed
was to love and to go on loving and never to despair of love. Love,
according to Him, was stronger than hate, or commandments or preaching,
or the devil himself. If He saved souls at all, He saved them by loving
them whatever they were, and I reckon He meant us to do the same. What do
you make of the woman taken in adultery, and the woman who wiped His feet
with her hair? Or of Peter? or of Judas? He saved Peter by loving him
when he thought he ought to have the Ten Commandments and hell fire
thrown at his head and I reckon He'd have saved Judas by giving him that
sop-token of love if he hadn't had a soul that could love nothing but
himself."

"What is love, Langton?" asked Peter, after a pause.

The other looked at him curiously, and laughed. "Ask the Bishops," he
said. "Don't ask me. I don't know. Living with the woman to whom you're
married because you fear to leave her, or because you get on all right,
is not love at any rate. I can't see that marriage has got much to do
with it. It's a decent convention of society at this stage of development
perhaps, and it may sign and seal love for some people. But I reckon
love's love--a big positive thing that's bigger than sin, and bigger than
the devil. I reckon that if God sees that anywhere, He's satisfied. I
don't think Cranmer's marriage service affects Him much, nor the laws
of the State. If a man cares to do without either, he runs a risk, of
course. Society's hard on a woman, and man's meant to be a gregarious
creature. But that's all there is in it."

"But how can you tell lust from love?" demanded Peter.

"You can't, I think," said Langton. "Most men can't, anyway. Women may
do, but I don't know. I reckon that what they lust after mostly is babies
and a home. I don't think they know it any more than men know that what
they're after is the gratification of a passion; but there it is. We're
sewer rats crawling up a damned long drain, if you ask me, padre! I don't
know who said it, but it's true."

They turned in their walk, and Peter looked out over the old town. In the
glow of sunset the thin iron modern spire of the cathedral had a grace
not its own, and the roofs below it showed strong and almost sentient.
One could imagine that the distant cathedral brooding over the city
heard, saw, and spoke, if in another language than the language of men.

"If that were all, Langton," said Peter suddenly, "I'd shoot myself."

"You're a queer fellow, Graham," said Langton. "I almost think you might.
I'd like to know what becomes of you, anyway. Forgive me--I don't mean to
be rude--but you may make a parson yet. But don't found a new religion
for Heaven's sake, and don't muddle up man-made laws and God-made
instincts--if they are God-made," he added.

Peter said nothing, until they were waiting at the carriage-door for
Jenks. Then he said: "Then you think out here men have simply abandoned
conventions, and because there is no authority or fear or faith left to
them, they do as they please?"

Langton settled himself in a corner. "Yes," he said, "that's right in a
way. But that's negatively. I'd go farther than that. Of course, there
are a lot of Judas Iscariots about for whom I shouldn't imagine the devil
himself has much time, though I suppose we ought not to judge 'em, but
there are also a lot of fine fellows--and fine women. They are men and
women, if I understand it, who have sloughed off the conventions, that
are conventions simply for convention's sake, and who are reaching out
towards the realities. Most of them haven't an idea what those are, but
dumbly they know. Tommy knows, for instance, who is a good chum and who
isn't; that is, he knows that sincerity and unselfishness and pluck are
realities. He doesn't care a damn if a chap drinks and swears and commits
what the Statute-Book and the Prayer-Book call fornication. And he
certainly doesn't think there is an ascending scale of sins, or at
any rate that you parsons have got the scale right."

"I shouldn't be surprised if we haven't," said Peter. "The Bible lumps
liars and drunkards and murderers and adulterers and dogs--whatever that
may mean--into hell altogether."

"That's so," said Langton, sticking a candle on the window-sill; "but I
reckon that's not so much because they lie or drink or murder or lust
or--or grin about the city like our friend Jenks, who'll likely miss the
boat for that very reason, but because of something else they all have in
common."

"What's that?" demanded Peter.

"I haven't the faintest idea," said Langton.

At this moment the French guard, an R.T.O., and Jenks appeared in sight
simultaneously, the two former urging the latter along. He caught sight
of them, and waved.

"Help him in," said the R.T.O., a jovial-looking subaltern,
genially--"and keep him there," he added under his voice.
"He's had all he can carry, and if he gets loose again he'll
be for the high jump. The wonder is he ever got back in
time."

Peter helped him up. The subaltern glanced at his badges and smiled.
"He's in good company anyway, padre," he said. "If you're leaving the
ninety-and-nine in the wilderness, here's one to bring home rejoicing."
He slammed the door. "Right-o!" he said to the guard; "they're all aboard
now." The man comprehended the action, and waved a flag. The train
started after the manner of French trains told off for the use of British
soldiers, and Jenks collapsed on the seat.

"Damned near thing that!" he said unsteadily; "might have missed the
bloody boat! I saw my little bit, though. She's a jolly good sort, she
is. Blasted strong stuff that French brandy, though! Whiskies at the club
first, yer know. Give us a hand, padre; I reckon I'll just lie down
a bit.... Jolly good sort of padre, eh, skipper? What?"

Peter helped him into his place, and then came and sat at his feet,
opposite Langton, who smiled askance at him. "I'll read a bit," he said.
"Jenks won't trouble us further; he'll sleep it off. I know his sort. Got
a book, padre?"

Peter said he had, but that he wouldn't read for a little, and he sat
still looking at the country as they jolted past in the dusk. After a
while Langton lit his candle, and contrived a wind-screen, for the centre
window was broken, of a newspaper. Peter watched him drowsily. He had
been up early and travelled already that day. The motion helped, too, and
in half an hour or so he was asleep.

He dreamt that he was preaching Langton's views on the Sermon on the
Mount in the pulpit of St. John's, and that the Canon, from his place
beside the credence-table within the altar-rails, was shouting at him to
stop. In his dream he persisted, however, until that irate dignitary
seized the famous and massive offertory-dish by his side and hurled it
in the direction of the pulpit. The clatter that it made on the stone
floor awoke him.

He was first aware that the train was no longer in motion, and next that
Langton's tall form was leaning half out of the window. Then confused
noises penetrated his consciousness, and he perceived that light
flickered in the otherwise darkened compartment. "Where are we?" he
demanded, now fully awake. "What's up?"

Langton answered over his shoulder. "Some where outside of a biggish
town," he said; "and there's the devil of a strafe on. The whole
sky-line's lit up, but that may be twenty miles off. However, Fritz
must have advanced some."

He was interrupted by a series of much louder explosions and the rattle
of machine-gun fire. "That's near," he said. "Over the town, I should
say--an air-raid, though it may be long-distance firing. Come and see for
yourself."

He pulled himself back into the carriage, and Peter leaned out of the
window in his turn. It was as the other had said. Flares and sudden
flashes, that came and went more like summer-lightning than anything
else, lit up the whole sky-line, but nearer at hand a steady glow from
one or two places showed in the sky. One could distinguish flights of
illuminated tracer bullets, and now and again what he took to be Very
lights exposed the countryside. Peter saw that they were in a siding, the
banks of which reached just above the top of the compartments. It was
only by craning that he could see fields and what looked like a house
beyond. Men were leaning out of all the windows, mostly in silence. In
the compartment next them a man cursed the Huns for spoiling his beauty
sleep. It was slightly overdone, Peter thought.

"Good God!" said, his companion behind him. "Listen!"

It was difficult, but between the louder explosions Peter concentrated
his senses on listening. In a minute he heard something new, a faint buzz
in the air.

"Aeroplanes," said Langton coolly. "I hope they don't spot us. Let me
see. Maybe it's our planes." He craned out in Peter's place. "I can't see
anything," he said, "and you can hear they're flying high."

Down the train everyone was staring upwards now. "Christ!" exclaimed
Langton suddenly, "some fool's lighting a pipe! Put that match out
there," he called.

Other voices took him up. "That's better," he said in a minute. "Forgive
my swearing, padre, but a match might give us away."

Peter was silent, and, truth to tell, terrified. He tried hard not to
feel it, and glanced at Jenks. He was still asleep, and breathing
heavily. He pressed his face against the pane, and tried to stare up too.

"They're coming," said Langton suddenly and quickly. "There they are,
too--Hun planes. They may not see us, of course, but they may...." He
brought his head in again and sat down.

"Is there anything we can do?" said Peter.

"Nothing," said Langton, "unless you like to get under the seat. But
that's no real good. It's on the knees of the gods, padre, whatever gods
there be."

Just then Peter saw one. Sailing obliquely towards them and lit by the
light of a flare, the plane looked serene and beautiful. He watched it,
fascinated.

"It's very low--two hundred feet, I should say," said Langton behind him.
"Hope he's no pills left. I wonder whether there's another. Let's have a
look the other side."

He had scarcely got up to cross the compartment when the rattle of a
machine-gun very near broke out. "Our fellows, likely," he exclaimed
excitedly, struggling with the sash, but they knew the truth almost as he
spoke.

Langton ducked back. A plane on the other side was deliberately flying up
the train, machine-gunning. "Down, padre, for God's sake!" he exclaimed,
and threw himself on the floor.

Peter couldn't move. He heard the splintering of glass and a rending of
woodwork, some oaths, and a sudden cry. The whirr of an engine filled his
ears and seemed, as it were, on top of them. Then there was a crash all
but at his side, and next instant a half-smothered groan and a dreadful
gasp for breath.

He couldn't speak. He heard Langton say, "Hit, anyone?" and then Jenks'
"They've got me, skipper," in a muffled whisper, and he noticed that the
hard breathing had ceased. At that he found strength and voice and jumped
up. He bent over Jenks. "Where have you got it, old man?" he said, and
hardly realised that it was himself speaking.

The other was lying just as before, on his back, but he had pulled his
knees up convulsively and a rug had slipped off. In a flare Peter saw
beads of sweat on his forehead and a white, twisted face.

He choked back panic and knelt down. He had imagined it all before, and
yet not quite like this. He knew what he ought to say, but for a minute
he could not formulate it. "Where are you hit, Jenks?" was all he said.

The other turned his head a little and looked at him. "Body--lungs, I
think," he whispered. "I'm done, padre; I've seen chaps before."

The words trailed off. Peter gripped himself mentally, and steadied his
voice. "Jenks, old man," he said. "Just a minute. Think about God--you
are going to Him, you know. Trust Him, will you? 'The blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, saveth us from all sin.'"

The dying man, moved his hand convulsively. "Don't you worry, padre," he
said faintly; "I've been--confirmed." The lips tightened a second with
pain, and then: "Reckon I won't--shirk. Have you--got--a cigarette?"

Peter felt quickly for his case, fumbled and dropped one, then got
another into his fingers. He hesitated a second, and then, put it to his
own lips, struck a match, and puffed at it. He was in the act of holding
it to the other when Langton spoke behind him:

"It's no good now, padre," he said quietly; "it's all over."

And Peter saw that it was.

The planes did not come back. The officer in charge of the train came
down it with a lantern, and looked in. "That makes three," he said. "We
can do nothing now, but we'll be in the station in a bit. Don't show any
lights; they may come back. Where the hell were our machines, I'd like to
know?"

He went on, and Peter sat down in his corner. Langton picked up the rug,
and covered up the body. Then he glanced at Peter. "Here," he said,
holding out a flask, "have some of this."

Peter shook his head. Langton came over to him. "You must," he said;
"it'll pull you together. Don't go under now, Graham. You kept your nerve
just now--come on."

At that Peter took it, and drained the little cup the other poured out
for him. Then he handed it back, without a word.

"Feel better?" queried the other, a trifle curiously, staring at him.

"Yes, thanks," said Peter--"a damned sight better! Poor old Jenks! What
blasted luck that he should have got it!... Langton, I wish to God it had
been me!"

PART II

"And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter."

ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL.

CHAPTER I

The charm of the little towns of Northern France is very difficult to
imprison on paper. It is not exactly that they are old, although there is
scarcely one which has not a church or a chateau or a quaint medieval
street worth coming far to see; nor that they are particularly
picturesque, for the ground is fairly flat, and they are all but always
set among the fields, since it is by agriculture far more than by
manufacture that they live. But they are clean and cheerful; one thinks
of them under the sun; and they are very homely. In them the folk smile
simply at you, but not inquisitively as in England, for each bustles
gaily about his own affairs, and will let you do what you please, with a
shrug of the shoulders. Abbeville is very typical of all this. It has its
church, and from the bridge over the Somme the backs of ancient houses
can be seen leaning half over the river, which has sung beneath them for
five hundred years; and it is set in the midst of memories of stirring
days. Yet it is not for these that one would revisit the little town, but
rather that one might walk by the still canal under the high trees in
spring, or loiter in the market-place round what the Hun has left of the
statue of the famous Admiral with his attendant nymphs, or wander down
the winding streets that skirt the ancient church and give glimpses of
its unfinished tower.

Peter found it very good to be there in the days that followed the death
of Jenks. True, it was now nearer to the seat of war than it had been for
years, and air-raids began to be common, but in a sense the sound of the
guns fitted in with his mood. So great a battle was being fought within
him that the world could not in any case have seemed wholly at peace, and
yet in the quiet fields, or sauntering of an afternoon by the river, he
found it easier than at Havre to think. Langton was almost his sole
companion, and a considerable intimacy had grown up between them. Peter
found that his friend seemed to understand a great deal of his thoughts
without explanation. He neither condoled nor exhorted; rather he watched
with an almost shy interest the other's inward battle.

They lodged at the Hotel de l'Angleterre, that hostelry in the street
that leads up and out of the town towards Saint Riquier, which you
enter from a courtyard that opens on the road and has rooms that you
reach by means of narrow, rickety flights of stairs and balconies
overhanging the court. The big dining-room wore an air of gloomy
festivity. Its chandeliers swathed in brown paper, its faded paint, and
its covered upholstery, suggested that it awaited a day yet to be when it
should blossom forth once more in glory as in the days of old. Till then
it was as merry as it could be. Its little tables filled up of an evening
with the new cosmopolitan population of the town, and old Jacques bustled
round with the good wine, and dropped no hint that the choice brands were
nearly at an end in the cellar.

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