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

of chaff on his right. Donovan was irrepressible. His laugh and voice, and the fact that he was talking to a hospital personage, attracted a certain amount of attention. Peter tried to smile, but he felt out of it and observed. He stared up towards the band, which was just striking up again.

Suddenly he became conscious, as one will, that someone was particularly looking at him. He glanced back over the chairs, and met a pair of eyes, roguish, laughing, and unquestionably fixed upon him. The moment he saw them, their owner nodded and telegraphed an obvious invitation. Peter glanced at Donovan: he had not apparently seen. He looked back; the eyes called him again. He felt himself getting hot, for, despite the fact that he had a kind of feeling that he had seen those eyes before, he was perfectly certain he did not know the girl. Perhaps she had made a mistake. He turned resolutely to his companion.

"Jolly good band, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes," she replied.

"But I suppose at a hospital like this you're always hearing decent music?" he ventured.

"Not so often," she said.

"This band is just back from touring the front, isn't it? My friend said something to that effect."

"I believe so," she said.

Peter could have cursed her. It was impossible to get anything out of her, though why he had not a notion. The answer was really simple, for she wanted to be next Donovan, and wasn't, and she was all the while scheming how to get there. But Peter did not tumble to that; he felt an ass and very uncomfortable, and he broke into open revolt.

He looked steadily towards the chairs. The back of the girl who had looked at him was towards him now, for she was talking sideways to somebody; but he noted an empty chair just next her, and that her uniform was not that of the nurses of this hospital. He felt confident that she would look again, and he was not disappointed. Instantly he made up his mind, nodded, and reached for his cap. "I see a girl I know over there," he said to his neighbour. "Excuse me, will you?" Then he got up and walked boldly over to the vacant chair. He was fast acclimatising to war conditions.

He sat down on that empty chair and met the girl's eyes fairly. She was entirely at her ease and laughing merrily. "I've lost my bet," she said, "and Tommy's won."

"And you've made me tell a thundering lie," he replied, laughing too, "which you know is the first step towards losing one's soul. Therefore you deserve your share in the loss."

"Why? What did you say?" she demanded.

"I said I saw a girl I knew," he replied. "But I haven't any idea who you are, though I can't help feeling I've seen you before."

She chuckled with amusement, and turned to her companion. "He doesn't remember, Tommy," she said.

The second girl looked past her to Peter. "I should think not," she said. "Nobody would. But he'll probably say in two minutes that he does. You're perfectly shameless, Julie."

Julie swung round to Peter. "You're a beast, Tommy," she said over her shoulder, "and I shan't speak to you again. You see," she went on to Peter, "I could see you had struck a footling girl, and as I don't know a single decent boy here, I thought I'd presume on an acquaintance, and see if it wasn't a lucky one. We've got to know each other, you know. The girl with me on the boat—oh, damn, I've told you!—and I am swearing, and you're a parson, but it can't be helped now—well, the girl told me we should meet again, and that it was probably you who was mixed up with my fate-line. What do you think of that?"

Peter had not an idea, really. He was going through the most amazing set of sensations. He felt heavy and dull, and as if he were utterly at a loss how to deal with a female of so obviously and totally different a kind from any he had met before; but, with it all, he was very conscious of being glad to be there. Underneath everything, too, he felt a bit of a dare-devil, which was a delightful experience for a London curate; and still deeper, much more mysteriously and almost a little terrifyingly, something stranger still, that he had known this girl for ages, although he had not seen her for a long time. "I'm highly privileged, I'm sure," he said, and could have kicked himself for a stupid ass.

"Oh Lord!" said Julie, with a mock expression of horror; "for goodness' sake don't talk like that. That's the worst of a parson: he can't forget the drawing-room. At any rate, I'm not sure that I'm highly fortunate, but I thought I ought to give Fate a chance. Do you smoke?"

"Yes," said Peter wonderingly.

"Then for goodness' sake smoke, and you'll feel better. No, I daren't here, but I'm glad you are educated enough to ask me. Nurses aren't supposed to smoke in public, you know, and I take it that even you have observed that I'm a nurse."

She was quite right. Peter drew on his cigarette and felt more at ease. "Well, to be absolutely honest, I had," he said. "And I observe, moreover, that you are not wearing exactly an English nurse's uniform, and that you have what I might venture to call a zoological badge. I therefore conclude that, like my friend Donovan, you hail from South Africa. What hospital are you in?"

"Quai de France," she said. "Know it?"

Peter repressed a start. "Quai de France?" he queried. "Where's that, now?"

At this moment a song started, but his companion dropped her voice to stage whisper and replied: "End of the harbour, near where the leave-boat starts. Know it now?"

He nodded, but was saved a reply.

She looked away toward the platform, and he studied her face surreptitiously. It seemed very young till you looked closely, especially at the eyes, and then you perceived something lurking there. She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he concluded. She looked as if she knew the world inside out, and as if there were something hidden below the gaiety. Peter felt curiously and intensely attracted. His shyness vanished. He had, and had had, no intimations of the doings of Providence, and nobody could possibly be more sceptical of fate-lines than he, but it dawned on him as he stared at her that he would fathom that look somehow, somewhere.

"I'm practically not made up at all," she whispered, without turning her head, "so for Heaven's sake don't say there's too much powder on my nose."

Peter shook silently. "No, but a faint trace on the right cheek," he whispered back. She turned then and looked at him, and her eyes challenged his. And yet it is to be supposed that Hilda knew nothing whatever about it.

"'Right on my mother's knee….'" sang the platform.

"'Without a shirt, without a shirt,'" gagged Peter, sotto voce, and marvelled at himself. But he felt that her smothered laughter amply rewarded him.

The song ceased in time, and the encore, which they both rigorously demanded. And immediately she began again.

"I hope to goodness tea isn't far off," she said. "By the way, you'll have to take me to it, now, you know. We go out of that door, and up a flight of steps, and there's the matron's room on the top and a visitor's room next to it, and tea'll be there. It will be a fiendish squash, and I wouldn't go if I hadn't you to get me tea and take me away afterwards as soon as possible."

"I'm highly privileged, I'm sure," said Peter again, quite deliberately. She laughed. "You are," she said. "Look how you're coming on! Ten minutes ago you were a bored curate, and now you're—what are you?"

Peter hesitated perceptibly. He felt he might say many things. Then he said "A trapped padre," and they both laughed.

"Thank goodness you're not sentimental, anyway," she said. "Nor's your friend; but the matron is. I know her sort. Look at them."

Peter looked. Donovan appeared still entirely at his ease, but he was watching Peter, who realised why he had been made to look. He brazened it out, smiled back at him, and turned perfectly deliberately to his companion.

"Julie," he said, "don't look over there any more, for goodness' sake, or we'll have Donovan here. And if he comes he'll sail in and take you to tea without a word. I know him. He's got an unfair advantage over me. I'm just waking up, and he's been awake for years. Please give me a chance."

She leaned, back and regarded him humorously. "You're not doing so badly," she said, "I don't know that a man has ever called me 'Julie' before in the first quarter of an hour. Do you know that, Solomon?"

"It's your fault, I've never been introduced, and I must call you something, so why not the name your friend called you? Julie's very pretty and suits you. Somehow I couldn't call you 'Miss' anything, though it may be convenient to know the rest. Do you think you could call me the Rev. Peter Graham?"

"I couldn't," she confessed, slightly more solemnly. "Queer, isn't it? But don't, talk about it: it isn't lucky. I shall call you Solomon for ever now. And you can only call me Miss Gamelyn when you've got to. See?"

"But why in the world 'Solomon'? It doesn't fit me a bit."

"Oh," she said, "it does, but don't worry why. Perhaps because, as the old man said to the vicar when he heard of Solomon's wives, you are a highly privileged Christian. You can't deny that, since you've said it twice. Praises be, here is tea. Come on; come on, Tommy. Oh, Tommy, this is the Very Reverend Peter Graham. Mr. Graham, this is one Raynard, commonly known as Tommy, my half-section, so try to be polite."

There was a general movement, and Peter shook hands as he got up. The other girl struck him at once as a good sort.

"You're booked to take us to tea, I suppose?" she said. "Julie's far more practical than you'd imagine, padre."

They left the row of chairs together, Julie well in front and apparently forgetful of their existence. As they came abreast of the empty bed, Peter noticed that the assistant matron had gone, and that Donovan was drifting in the stream alongside her in front. But before they were out of the great ward, Julie and he were laughing together. Peter felt absurdly hurt, and hated himself for feeling it. The other girl was talking at his elbow, but he made ridiculous and commonplace replies and hardly noticed her. She broke off at last abruptly, and he roused himself to carry on. He caught her expression, and somehow or other it landed him deeper in the business. He made a deliberate move.

"Where are you going after this?" he asked.

"Down town to do some shopping; then I suppose home, unless a fit seizes
Julie and we run a risk once more of being summarily repatriated."

He laughed. "Does that often happen?"

"Quite often. You see ours is an English hospital, though we are South Africans attached to it. I think they're much more strict than Colonial hospitals. But they give us more latitude than the rest, at any rate. Julie had a fearful row once, and simply declared she would do some things, and since then they turn a blind eye occasionally. But there are limits, and one day she'll step over them—I know she will."

"Let's hope not," said Peter; "but now let me get you some tea."

The little room was packed, but Peter got through somehow and made his way to a series of tables spread with cakes and sandwiches. He got a cup and seized a plate, and shouldered his way back. In the crush he saw only the top of Miss Raynard's head, and made for that. "Here you are," he said cheerfully, as he emerged. "Have a sandwich?"

"Thanks," she said as she took it; "but why didn't you bring two cups?"

"Why?" he asked.

She nodded towards a corner and there was Julie, wedged in between people, and refusing tea from a subaltern. "She expects you to bring it," said Miss Raynard.

Peter looked puzzled, "Where's Donovan?" he said. "I thought she came in with him."

The girl smiled. "She did, but she arranged for you to bring her tea, whoever