Simon Called Peter by Robert Keable

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Peter and Langton would have their war-time apology for _petit dejeuner_
in bed or alone. Peter, as a rule, was up early, and used to wander out a
little and sometimes into church, coming back to coffee as good as ever,
but war-time bread instead of rolls on a small table under a low balcony
in the courtyard if it were fine. He would linger over it, and have
chance conversation with passing strangers of all sorts, from clerical
personages belonging to the Church Army or the Y.M.C.A. to officers who
came and went usually on unrevealed affairs. Then Langton would come
down, and they would stroll round to the newly-fitted-up office which had
been prepared for the lecture campaign and glance at maps of districts,
and exchange news with the officer in charge, who, having done all he
could, had now nothing to do but stand by and wait for the next move from
a War Office that had either forgotten his existence or discovered some
hitch in its plans. They had a couple of lectures from people who were
alleged to know all about such topics as the food shortage at home or the
new plans for housing, but who invariably turned out to be waiting
themselves for the precise information that was necessary for successful
lectures. After such they would stroll out through the town into the
fields, and Langton would criticise the thing in lurid but humorous
language, and they would come back to the club and sit or read till
lunch.

The club was one of the best in France, it was an old house with lovely
furniture, and not too much of it, which stood well back from the street
and boasted an old-fashioned garden of shady trees and spring flowers and
green lawns. Peter could both read and write in its rooms, and it was
there that he finally wrote to Hilda, but not until after much thought.

After his day with Julie at Caudebec one might have supposed that there
was nothing left for him to do but break off his engagement to Hilda. But
it did not strike him so. For one thing, he was not engaged to Julie or
anything like it, and he could not imagine such a situation, even if
Julie had not positively repudiated any desire to be either engaged or
married. He had certainly declared, in a fit of enthusiasm, that he loved
her, but he had not asked if she loved him. He had seen her since, but
although they were very good friends, nothing more exciting had passed
between them. Peter was conscious that when he was with Julie she
fascinated him, but that when he was away--ah! that was it, when he was
away? It certainly was not that Hilda came back and took her place; it
was rather that the other things in his mind dominated him. It was a
curious state of affairs. He was less like an orthodox parson than he had
ever been, and yet he had never thought so much about religion. He
agonised over it now. At times his thoughts were almost more than he
could bear.

It came, then, to this, that he had not so much changed towards Hilda as
changed towards life. Whether he had really fundamentally changed in such
a way that a break with the old was inevitable he did not know. Till then
Hilda was part of the old, and if he went back to it she naturally took
her old place in it. If he did not--well, there he invariably came to the
end of thought. Curiously enough, it was when faced with a mental blank
that Julie's image began to rise in his mind. If he admitted her, he
found himself abandoning himself to her. He felt sometimes that if he
could but take her in his arms he could let the world go by, and God with
it. Her kisses were at least a reality. There was neither convention nor
subterfuge nor divided allegiance there. She was passion, naked and
unashamed, and at least real.

And then he would remember that much of this was problematical after all,
for they had never kissed as that passion demanded, or at least that he
had never so kissed her. He was not sure of the first. He knew that he
did not understand Julie, but he felt, if he did kiss her, it would be a
kiss of surrender, of finality. He feared to look beyond that, and he
could not if he would.

He wrote, then, to Hilda, and he told of the death of Jenks, and of their
arrival in Abbeville, "You must understand, dear," he said, "that all
this has had a tremendous effect upon me. In that train all that I had
begun to feel about the uselessness of my old religion came to a head. I
could do no more for that soul than light a cigarette.... Possibly no one
could have done any more, but I cannot, I will not believe it. Jenks was
not fundamentally evil, or at least I don't think so. He was rather a
selfish fool who had no control, that is all. He did not serve the devil;
it was much more that he had never seen any master to serve. And I could
do nothing. I had no master to show him.

"You may say that that is absurd: that Christ is my Master, and I could
have shown Him. Hilda, so He is: I cling passionately to that. But
listen: I can't express Him, I don't understand Him. I no longer feel
that He was animating and ordering the form of religion I administered.
It is not that I feel Anglicanism to be untrue, and something else--say
Wesleyanism--to be true; it is much more that I feel them all to be out
of touch with reality. _That's_ it. I don't think you can possibly see
it, but that is the main trouble.

"That, too, brings me to my next point, and this I find harder still to
express. I want you to realise that I feel as if I had never seen life
before. I feel as if I had been shown all my days a certain number of
pictures and told that they were the real thing, or given certain
descriptions and told that they were true. I had always accepted that
they were. But, Hilda, they are not. Wickedness is not wicked in the way
that I was told it was wicked, and what I was told was salvation is not
the salvation men and women want. I have been playing in a fool's
paradise all these years, and I've got outside the gate. I am distressed
and terrified, I think, but underneath it all I am very glad....

"You will say, 'What are you going to do?' and I can only reply, I don't
know. I'm not going to make any vast change, if you mean that. A padre I
am, and a padre I shall stay for the war at least, and none of us can see
beyond that at present. But what I do mean to do is just this: I mean to
try and get down to reality myself and try to weigh it up. I am going to
eat and drink with publicans and sinners; maybe I shall find my Master
still there."

Peter stopped and looked up. Langton was stretched out in a chair beside
him, reading a novel, a pipe in his mouth. Moved by an impulse, he
interrupted him.

"Old man," he said, "I want you to let me read you a bit of this letter.
It's to my girl, but there's nothing rotten in reading it. May I?"

Langton did not move. "Carry on," he said shortly.

Peter finished and put down the sheet. The other smoked placidly and said
nothing. "Well?" demanded Peter impatiently.

"I should cut out that last sentence," pronounced the judge.

"Why? It's true."

"Maybe, but it isn't pretty."

"Langton," burst out Peter, "I'm sick of prettinesses! I've been stuffed
up with them all my life, and so has she. I want to break with them."

"Very likely, and I don't say that it won't be the best thing for you to
try for a little to do so, but she hasn't been where you've been or seen
what you've seen. You can't expect her wholly to understand. And more
than that, maybe she is meant for prettinesses. After all, they're
pretty."

Peter stabbed the blotting-paper with his pen. "Then she isn't meant for
me," he said.

"I'm not so sure," said Langton. "I don't know that you've stuff enough
in you to get on without those same prettinesses yourself. Most of us
haven't. And at any rate I wouldn't burn my boats yet awhile. You may
want to escape yet."

Peter considered this in silence. Then he drew the sheets to him and
added a few more words, folded the paper, put it in the envelope, and
stuck it down. "Come on," he said, "let's go and post this and have a
walk."

Langton got up and looked at him curiously, as he sometimes did. "Peter,"
he said, "you're a weird blighter, but there's something damned gritty in
you. You take life too strenuously. Why can't you saunter through it like
I do?"

Peter reached for this cap. "Come on," he said again, "and don't talk
rot."

Out in the street, they strolled aimlessly on, more or less in silence.
The big book-shop at the corner detained them for a little, and they
regarded its variegated contents through the glass. It contained a few
good prints, and many more poorly executed coloured pictures of ruined
places in France and Belgium, of which a few, however, were not bad.
Cheek by jowl with some religious works, a statue of Notre Dame d'Albert,
and some more of Jeanne d'Arc, were a line of pornographic novels and
beyond packets of picture post-cards entitled _Theatreuses, Le Bain de la
Parisienne, Les Seins des Marbre_, and so on. Then Langton drew Graham's
attention to one or two other books, one of which had a gaudy cover
representing a mistress with a birch-rod in her hands and a number of
canes hung up beside her, while a girl of fifteen or so, with very red
cheeks, was apparently about to be whipped. "Good Lord," said Langton,
"the French are beyond me. This window is a study for you, Graham, in
itself. I should take it that it means that there is nothing real in
life. It is utterly cynical.

"'And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in--Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were--To-morrow you shall not be less,'"

he quoted.

"Yes," said Peter. "Or else it means that there are only two realities,
and that the excellent person who keeps this establishment regards both
in a detached way, and conceives it her business to cater for each. Let's
go on."

They turned the corner, and presently found themselves outside the famous
carven door of the church. "Have you ever been round?" asked Peter.

"No," said Langton; "let's go in."

They passed through the door into the old church, which, in contrast to
that at Le Havre, was bathed in the daylight that streamed through many
clear windows. Together they wandered round it, saying little. They
inspected an eighteenth-century statue of St. Roch, who was pulling up
his robe to expose a wound and looking upwards at the same time
seraphically--or, at least, after the manner that the artist of that age
had regarded as seraphic. A number of white ribbons and some wax figures
of feet and hands and other parts of the body were tied to him. They
stood before a wonderful coloured alabaster reredos of the fourteenth
century, in which shepherds and kings and beasts came to worship at the
manger. They had a little conversation as to the architectural periods of
the nave, choir, and transepts, and Langton was enthusiastic over a noble
pillar and arch. Beyond they gazed in silence at a statue of Our Lady
Immaculate in modern coloured plaster, so arranged that the daylight
fell through an unseen opening upon her. Among the objects in front were
a pair of Renaissance candlesticks of great beauty. A French officer came
up and arranged and lit a votive candle as they watched, and then went
back to stand in silence by a pillar. The church door banged and two
peasants came in, one obviously from the market, with a huge basket of
carrots and cabbages and some long, thin French loaves. She deposited
this just inside the door, took holy water, clattered up towards the high
altar, dropped a curtsy, and made her way to an altar of the Sacred
Heart, at which she knelt. Peter sighed. "Come on," he said; "let's
get out."

Langton marched on before him, and held the door back as they stepped
into the street. "Well, philosopher," he demanded, "what do you make of
that?"

Peter smiled. "What do you?" he said.

"Well," said Langton, "it leaves me unmoved, except when I'm annoyed by
the way their wretched images spoil the church, but it is plain that they
like it. I should say one of your two realities is there. But I find it
hard to forgive the bad art."

"Do you?" said Peter, "I don't. It reminds me of those appalling
enlargements of family groups that you see, for example, in any Yorkshire
cottage. They are unutterably hideous, but they stand for a real thing
that is honest and beautiful--the love of home and family. And by the
same token, when the photographs got exchanged, as they do in Mayfair,
for modern French pictures of nude women, or some incredible Futurist
extravagance, that love has usually flown out of the window."

"Humph!" said Langton--"not always. Besides, why can't a family group be
made artistically, and so keep both art and love? I should think we ought
to aim at that."

"I suppose we ought," said Peter, "but in our age the two don't seem to
go together. Goodness alone knows why. Why, hullo!" he broke off.

"What's up now?" demanded Langton.

"Why, there, across the street, if that isn't a nurse I know from Havre,
I don't know who it is. Wait a tick."

He crossed the road, and saw, as he got near, that it was indeed Julie.
He came up behind her as she examined a shop-window. "By all that's
wonderful, what are you doing here?" he asked.

She turned quickly, her eyes dancing. "I wondered if I should meet you,"
she said. "You see, your letter told me you were coming here, but I
haven't heard from you since you came, and I didn't know if you had
started your tour or not. _I_ came simply enough. There's a big South
African hospital here, and we had to send up a batch of men by motor.
As they knew I was from South Africa, they gave me the chance to come
with them."

"Well, I _am_ glad," said Peter, devouring the sight of her. "Wait a
minute; I must introduce you to Langton. He and I are together, and he's
a jolly good chap."

He turned and beckoned Langton, who came over and was introduced. They
walked up the street a little way together. "Where are you going now?"
asked Peter.

"Back to the hospital," said Julie. "A car starts from the square at
twelve-forty-five, and I have to be in for lunch."

"Have you much to do up there?" asked Peter.

"Oh no," she said, "my job's done. I clear off the day after to-morrow.
We only got in last night, so I get a couple of days' holiday. What are
you doing? You don't look any too busy."

Peter glanced across at Langton and laughed. "We aren't," he said. "The
whole stunt's a wash-out, if you ask me, and we're really expecting to be
sent back any day. There's too much doing now for lectures. Is the
hospital full?"

"Packed," said Julie gravely. "The papers say we're falling back steadily
so as not to lose men, but the facts don't bear it out. We're crammed
out. It's ghastly; I've never known it so bad."

Peter had hardly ever seen her grave before, and her face showed a new
aspect of her. He felt a glow of warmth steal over him. "I say," he said,
"couldn't you dine with us to-night? We're at the Angleterre, and its
tremendously respectable."

She laughed, her gravity vanishing in a minute. "I must say," she said,
"that I'd love to see you anywhere really respectable. He's a terrible
person for a padre--don't you think so, Captain Langton?"

"Terrible," said Langton. "But really the Angleterre is quite proper. You
don't get any too bad a dinner, either. Do come, Miss Gamelyn."

She appeared to consider. "I might manage it," she said at last, stopping
just short of entering the square; "but I haven't the nerve to burst in
and ask for you. Nor will it do for you to see me all the way to that
car, or we shall have a dozen girls talking. If you will meet me
somewhere," she added, looking at Peter, "I'll risk it. I'll have a
headache and not go to first dinner; then the first will think I'm at the
second, and the second at the first. Besides, I've no duty, and the
hospital's not like Havre. It's all spread out in huts and tents, and
it's easy enough to get in. Last, but not least, it's Colonial, and the
matron is a brick. Yes, I'll come."

"Hurrah!" said Peter. "I tell you what: I'll meet you at the
cross-roads below the hospital and bring you on. Will that do? What
time? Five-thirty?"

"Heavens! do you dine at five-thirty?" demanded Julie.

"Well, not quite, but we've got to get down," said Peter, laughing.

"All right," said Julie, "five-thirty, and the saints preserve us. Look
here, I shall chance it and come in mufti if possible. No one knows me
here."

"Splendid!" said Peter. "Good-bye, five-thirty."

"Good-bye," said Langton; "we'll go and arrange our menu."

"There must be champagne," called Julie merrily over her shoulder, and
catching his eye.

The two men watched her make for the car across the sunlit square, then
they strolled round it towards a cafe. "Come on," said Langton; "let's
have an appetiser."

From the little marble-topped table Peter watched the car drive away.
Julie was laughing over something with another girl. It seemed to
conclude the morning, somehow. He raised his glass and looked at Langton.
"Well," he said, "here's to reality, wherever it is."

"And here's to getting along without too much of it," said Langton,
smiling at him.

* * * * *

The dinner was a great success--at least, in the beginning. Julie wore a
frock of some soft brown stuff, and Peter could hardly keep his eyes off
her. He had never seen her out of uniform before, and although she was
gay enough, she said and did nothing very exciting. If Hilda had been
there she need hardly have behaved differently, and for a while Peter was
wholly delighted. Then it began to dawn on him that she was playing up to
Langton, and that set in train irritating thoughts. He watched the other
jealously, and noticed how the girl drew him out to speak of his travels,
and how excellently he did it, leaning back at coffee with his cigarette,
polite, pleasant, attractive. Julie, who usually smoked cigarette after
cigarette furiously, only, however, getting through about half of each,
now refused a second, and glanced at the clock about 8.30.

"Oh," she said, "I must go."

Peter remonstrated. "If you can stay out later at Havre," he said, "why
not here?"

She laughed lightly. "I'm reforming," she said, "in the absence of bad
companions. Besides, they are used to my being later at Havre, but here I
might be spotted, and then there would be trouble. Would you fetch my
coat, Captain Graham?"

Peter went obediently, and they all three moved out into the court.

"Come along and see her home, Langton," he said, though he hardly knew
why he included the other.

"Thanks," said his friend; "but if Miss Gamelyn will excuse me, I ought
not. I've got some reading I must do for to-morrow, and I want to write a
letter or two as well. You'll be an admirable escort, Graham."

"Good-night," said Julie, holding out her hand; "perhaps we shall meet
again some time. One is always running up against people in France. And
thank you so much for your share of the entertainment."

In a few seconds Peter and she were outside. The street was much
darkened, and there was no moon. They walked in silence for a little.
Suddenly he stopped. "Wouldn't you like a cab?" he said; "we might be
able to get one."

Julie laughed mischievously, and Peter gave a little start in the dark.
It struck him that this was the old laugh and that he had not heard it
that night before. "It's convenient, of course," she said mockingly. "Do
get one by all means. But last time I came home with you in a cab, you
let me finish alone. I thought that was to be an invariable rule."

"Oh, don't Julie," said Peter.

Her tone changed. "Why not?" she demanded. "Solomon, what's made you so
glum to-night? You were cheerful enough when you met me, and when we
began; then you got silent. What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he said.

She slipped her hand in his arm. "There is something," she said. "Do tell
me."

"Do you like Langton?" he asked.

"Oh, immensely--why? Oh, Lord, Solomon, what do you mean?"

"You were different in his presence, Julie, from anything you've been
before."

They took a few paces in silence; then Peter had an idea, and glanced at
her. She was laughing silently to herself. He let her hand fall from his
arm, and looked away. He knew he was behaving like an ass, but he could
not help it.

She stopped suddenly. "Peter," she said, "I want to talk to you. Take me
somewhere where it's possible."

"At this hour of the evening? What about being late?"

She gave a little stamp with her foot, then laughed again. "What a boy it
is!" she said. "Don't you know anywhere to go?"

Peter hesitated; then he made up his mind. There was an hotel he knew of,
out of the main street, of none too good a reputation. Some men had taken
Langton and him there, once, in the afternoon, between the hours in which
drinks were legally sold, and they had gone through the hall into a
little back-room that was apparently partly a sitting-room, partly part
of the private rooms of the landlord, and had been served there. He
recalled the description of one of the men: "It's a place to know. You
can always get a drink, and take in anyone you please."

"Come on, then," he said, and turned down a back-street.

"Where in the world are you taking me?" demanded Julie. "I shall have no
reputation left if this gets out."

"Nor shall I," said Peter.

"Nor you will; what a spree! Do you think it's worth it, Peter?"

Under a shaded lamp they were passing at the moment, he glanced at her,
and his pulses raced! "Good God, Julie!" he said, "you could do anything
with me."

She chuckled with laughter, her brown eyes dancing. "Maybe," she said,
"but I'm out to talk to you for your good now."

They turned another corner, into an old street, and under an arch. Peter
walked forward to the hotel entrance, and entered. There was a woman in
the office, who glanced up, and looked, first at Peter, then at Julie. On
seeing her behind him, she came forward. "What can I do for monsieur?"
she asked.

"Good-evening, madame," said Peter. "I was here the other day. Give us a
bottle of wine in that little room at the back, will you?"

"Why, certainly, monsieur," said she. "Will madame follow me? It is this
way."

She opened, the door, and switched on the light, "Shall I light the fire,
madame?" she demanded.

Julie beamed on her. "Ah, yes; that would be jolly," she said. "And the
wine, madame--Beaune."

The woman smiled and bowed. "Let madame but seat herself and it shall
come," she said, and went out.

Julie took off her hat, and walked to the glass, patting her hair. "Give
me a cigarette, my dear," she said. "It was jolly hard only to smoke one
to-night."

Peter opened and handed her his case in silence, then pulled up a big
chair. There was a knock at the door, and a girl came in with the wine
and glasses, which she set on the table, and, then knelt down to light
the fire. She withdrew and shut the door. They were alone.

Peter was still standing. Julie glanced at him, and pointed to a chair
opposite. "Give me a drink, and then go and sit there," she said.

He obeyed. She pulled her skirts up high to the blaze and pushed one foot
out to the logs, and sat there, provocative, sipping her wine and puffing
little puffs of smoke from her cigarette. "Now, then," she said, "what
did I do wrong to-night?"

Peter was horribly uncomfortable. He felt how little he knew this girl,
and he felt also how much he loved her.

"Nothing, dear," he said; "I was a beast."

"Well," she said, "if you won't tell me, I'll tell you. I was quite
proper to-night, immensely and intensely proper, and you didn't like it.
You had never seen me so. You thought, too, that I was making up to your
friend. Isn't that so?"

Peter nodded. He marvelled that she should know so well, and he wondered
what was coming.

"I wonder what you really think of me, Peter," she went on. "I suppose
you think I never can be serious--no, I won't say serious--conventional.
But you're very stupid; we all of us can be, and must be sometimes. You
asked me just now what I thought of your friend--well, I'll tell you.
He is as different from you as possible. He has his thoughts, no doubt,
but he prefers to be very tidy. He takes refuge in the things you throw
overboard. He's not at all my sort, and he's not yours either, in a way.
Goodness knows what will happen to either of us, but he'll be Captain
Langton to the end of his days. I envy that sort of person intensely,
and when I meet him I put on armour. See?"

Peter stared at her. "How is he different from Donovan?" he asked.

"Donovan! Oh, Lord, Peter, how dull you are! Donovan has hardly a thought
in his head about anything except Donovan. He was born a jolly good sort,
and he's sampled pretty well everything. He's cool as a cucumber, though
he has his passions like everyone else. If you keep your head, you can
say or do anything with Donovan. But Langton is deliberate. He knows
about things, and he refuses and chooses. I didn't want ..." She broke
off. "Peter," she said savagely, "in two minutes that man would know more
about me than you do, if I let him."

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