Simon Called Peter, Robert Keable [read e books online free txt] 📗

"No, I don't, padre, but look here, I'm not a Christian, and I take a common-sense view of these things, but I'm bound to say I think you're on the wrong tack, too. Didn't Christ have compassion on people like that? Didn't He eat and drink with publicans and sinners?"

"Yes, to convert them. You can't name the two things in the same breath. He had compassion on the multitude of hungry women and children and misguided men, but He hated sin. You can't deny that." Peter recalled his sermon; he was rather indignant, unreasonably, that the suggestion should have been made.

"So?" said the other laconically. "Well, you know more about it than
I do, I suppose. Come on; we go down here."

They parted at the corner by the river again, and Peter set out for his long walk home alone. It was a lovely evening of stars, cool, but not too cold, and at first the streets were full of people. He kept to the curb or walked in the road till he was out of the town, taking salutes automatically, his thoughts far away. The little cafés debits were crowded, largely by Tommies. He was not accosted again, for he walked fast, but he saw enough as he went.

More than an hour later he swung into camp, and went to his room, lit a candle, and shut the door. Tunic off, he sat on the edge of the camp-bed and stared at the light. He seemed to have lived a year in a day, and he felt unclean. He thought of Hilda, and then actually smiled, for Hilda and this life seemed so incredibly far apart. He could not conceive of her even knowing of its existence. Yet, he supposed, she knew, as he had done, that such things were. He had even preached about them…. It suddenly struck him that he had talked rot in the pulpit, talked of things of which he knew nothing. Yet, of course, his attitude had been right.

He wondered if he should speak to Mackay, and, so wondering, fell forward on his knees.

Hilda's religion was, like the religion of a great many Englishwomen of her class, of a very curious sort. She never, of course, analysed it herself, and conceivably she would object very strongly to the description set down here, but in practical fact there is no doubt about the analysis. To begin with, this conventional and charming young lady of Park Lane had in common with Napoleon Bonaparte that Christianity meant more to them both as the secret of social order than as the mystery of the Incarnation. Hilda was convinced that a decent and orderly life rested on certain agreements and conclusions in respect to marriage and class and conduct, and that these agreements and conclusions were admirably stated in the Book of Common Prayer, and most ably and decorously advocated from the pulpit of St. John's. She would have said that she believed the agreements and conclusions because of the Prayer Book, but in fact she had primarily given in her allegiance to a social system, and supported the Prayer Book because of its support of that. Once a month she repeated the Nicene Creed, but only because, in the nature of things, the Nicene Creed was given her once a month to repeat, and she never really conceived that people might worry strenuously about it, any more than she did. Being an intelligent girl, she knew, of course, that people did, and occasionally preachers occupied the pulpit of St. John's who were apparently quite anxious that she and the rest of the congregation should understand that it meant this and not that, or that and not this, according to the particular enthusiasm of the clergyman of the moment. Sentence by sentence she more or less understood what these gentlemen keenly urged upon her; as a whole she understood nothing. She was far too much the child of her environment and age not to perceive that Mr. Lloyd George's experiments in class legislation were vastly more important.

Peter, therefore, had always been a bit of an enigma to her. As a rule he fitted in with the scheme of things perfectly well, for he was a gentleman, he liked nice things, and he was splendidly keen on charity organisation and the reform of abuses on right lines. But now and again he said and did things which perturbed her. It was as if she had gradually become complete mistress of a house, and then had suddenly discovered a new room into which she peeped for a minute before it was lost to her again and the door shut. It was no Bluebeard's chamber into which she looked; it was much more that she had a suspicion that the room contained a live mistress who might come out one day and dispute her own title. She could tell how Peter would act nine times out of ten; she knew by instinct, a great deal better than he did, the conceptions that ruled his life; but now and again he would hesitate perplexedly as if at the thought of something that she did not understand, or act suddenly in response to an overwhelming flood of impulse whose spring was beyond her control or even her surmise. Women mother all their men because men are on the whole such big babies, but from a generation of babies is born occasionally the master. Women get so used to the rule that they forget the exception. When he comes, then, they are troubled.

But this was not all Hilda's religion. For some mysterious reason this product of a highly civilised community had the elemental in her. Men and women both have got to eliminate all trace of sex before they can altogether escape that. In other words, because in her lay latent the power of birth, in which moment she would be cloistered alone in a dark and silent room with infinity, she clung unreasonably and all but unconsciously to certain superstitions which she shared with primitive savages and fetish-worshippers. All of which seems a far cry from the War Intercession Services at wealthy and fashionable St. John's, but it was nothing more or less than this which was causing her to kneel on a high hassock, elbows comfortably on the prayer-rail, and her face in her hands, on a certain Friday evening in the week after Peter's arrival in France, while the senior curate (after suitable pauses, during which her mind was uncontrollably busy with an infinite number of things, ranging from the doings of Peter in France to the increasing difficulty of obtaining silk stockings), intoned the excellent stately English of the Prayers set forth by Authority in Time of War.

Two pews ahead of her knelt Sir Robert Doyle, in uniform. That simple soldier was a bigger child than most men, and was, therefore, still conscious of a number of unfathomable things about him, for the which Hilda, his godchild, adored and loved him as a mother will adore her child who sits in a field of buttercups and sees, not minted, nor botanical, but heavenly gold. He was all the more lovable, because he conceived that he was much bigger and stronger than she, and perfectly capable of looking after her. In that, he was like a plucky boy who gets up from his buttercups to tell his mother not to be frightened when a cow comes into the field.

They went out together, and greeted each other in the porch.
"Good-evening, child," said the soldier, with a smile. "And how's Peter?"

Hilda smiled back, but after a rather wintry fashion, which the man was quick to note. "I couldn't have told you fresh news yesterday," she said, "but I had a letter this morning all about his first Sunday. He's at Rouen at a rest camp for the present, though he thinks he's likely to be moved almost at once; and he's quite well."

"And then?" queried the other affectionately.

"Oh, he doesn't know at all, but he says he doesn't think there's any chance of his getting up the line. He'll be sent to another part where there is likely to be a shortage of chaplains soon."

"Well, that's all right, isn't it? He's in no danger at Rouen, at any rate. If we go on as we're going on now, they won't even hear the guns down there soon. Come, little girl, what's worrying you? I can see there's something."

They were in the street now, walking towards the park, and Hilda did not immediately reply. Then she said: "What are you going to do? Can't you come in for a little? Father and mother will be out till late, and you can keep me company."

He glanced at his watch. "I've got to be at the War Office later," he said, "but my man doesn't reach town till after ten, so I will. The club's not over-attractive these days. What with the men who think one knows everything and won't tell, and the men who think they know everything and want to tell, it's a bit trying."

Hilda laughed merrily. "Poor Uncle Bob," she said, giving him her childhood's name that had never been discontinued between them. "You shall come home with me, and sit in father's chair, and have a still decent whisky and a cigar, and if you're very good I'll read you part of Peter's letter."

"What would Peter say?"

"Oh, he wouldn't mind the bits I'll read to you. Indeed, I think he'd like it: he'd like to know what you think. You see, he's awfully depressed; he feels he's not wanted out there, and—though I don't know what he means—that things, religious things, you know, aren't real."

"Not wanted, eh?" queried the old soldier. "Now, I wonder why he resents that. Is it because he feels snubbed? I shouldn't be surprised if he had a bit of a swelled head, your young man, you know, Hilda."

"Sir Robert Doyle, if you're going to be beastly, you can go to your horrid old club, and I only hope you'll be worried to death. Of course it isn't that. Besides, he says everyone is very friendly and welcomes him—only he feels that that makes it worse. He thinks they don't want—well, what he has to give, I suppose."

"What he has to give? But what in the world has he to give? He has to take parade services, and visit hospitals and" (he was just going to say "bury the dead," but thought it hardly sounded pleasant), "make himself generally decent and useful, I suppose. That's what chaplains did when I was a subaltern, and jolly decent fellows they usually were."

"Well, I know. That's what I should feel, and that's what I don't quite understand. I suppose he feels he's responsible for making the men religious—it reads like that. But you shall hear the letter yourself."

Doyle digested this for a while in silence. Then he gave a sort of snort, which is inimitable, but always accompanied his outbursts against things slightly more recent than the sixties. It had the effect of rousing Hilda, at any rate.

"Don't, you dear old thing," she said, clutching his arm. "I know exactly what you're going to say. Young men of your day minded their business and did their duty, and didn't theorise so much. Very likely. But, you see, our young men had the misfortune to be born a little later than you. And they can't help it." She sighed a little. "It is trying sometimes…. But they're all right really, and they'll come back to things."

They were at the gate by now. Sir Robert stood aside to let her pass. "I know, dear," he said, "I'm an old fogey. Besides, young Graham has good stuff in him—I always said so. But if he's on the tack of trying to stick his fingers into people's souls, he's made a mistake in going to France. I know Tommy—or I did know him. (The Lord alone knows what's in the Army these days.) He doesn't want that sort of thing. He swears and he grouses and he drinks, but he respects God Almighty more than you'd think, and he serves his Queen—I mean his King. A parade service is a parade, and it's a bore at times, but it's discipline, and it helps in the end. Like that little 'do' to-night, it helps. One comes away feelin' one can stand a bit more for the sake of the decent, clean things of life."

Hilda regarded the fine, straight old man for a second as they stood, on the top of the steps. Then her eyes grew a little misty. "God bless