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

say, more likely, the credit system makes it impossible for us to keep out. I mean, half Europe can't go to war and we sit still. Not in these days. And if it comes—Good Lord, Hilda, do you know what it means? I can't see the end, only it looks to me like being a fearful smash…. Oh, we shall pull through, but nobody seems to see that our ordinary life will come down like a pack of cards. And what will the poor do? And can't you see the masses of poor souls that will be thrown into the vortex like, like…." He broke off. "I can't find words," he said, gesticulating nervously. "It's colossal."

"Peter, you're going to preach about it: I can see you are. But do take care what you say. I should hate father to be upset. He's so—oh, I don't know!—British, I think. He hates to be thrown out, you know, and he won't think all that possible."

She glanced up (the least little bit that she had to) anxiously. Graham smiled. "I know Mr. Lessing," he said. "But, Hilda, he's got to be moved. Why, he may be in khaki yet!"

"Oh, Peter, don't be silly. Why, father's fifty, and not exactly in training," she laughed. Then, seriously: "But for goodness' sake don't say such things—for my sake, anyway."

Peter regarded her gravely, and held open the gate. "I'll remember," he said, "but more unlikely things may happen than that."

They went up the path together, and Hilda slipped a key into the door. As it opened, a thought seemed to strike her for the first time. "What will you do?" she demanded suddenly.

Mrs. Lessing was just going into the dining-room, and Peter had no need to reply. "Good-morning, Mr. Graham," she said, coming forward graciously. "I wondered if Hilda would meet you: she wanted to post a letter. Come in. You must be hungry after your walk."

A manservant held the door open, and they all went in. That magic sun shone on the silver of the breakfast-table, and lit up the otherwise heavy room. Mrs. Lessing swung the cover of a silver dish and the eggs slipped in to boil. She touched a button on the table and sat down, just as Mr. Lessing came rather ponderously forward with a folded newspaper in his hand.

"Morning, Graham," he said. "Morning, Hilda. Been out, eh? Well, well, lovely morning out; makes one feel ten years younger. But what do you think of all this, Graham?" waving the paper as he spoke.

Peter just caught the portentous headline—

"GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA,"

as he pulled up to the table, but he did not need to see it. There was really no news: only that. "It is certain, I think, sir," he said.

"Oh, certain, certain," said Lessing, seating himself. "The telegrams say they are over the frontier of Luxembourg and massing against France. Grey can't stop 'em now, but the world won't stand it—can't stand it. There can't be a long war. Probably it's all a big bluff again; they know in Berlin that business can't stand a war, or at any rate a long war. And we needn't come in. In the City, yesterday, they said the Government could do more by standing out. We're not pledged. Anderson told me Asquith said so distinctly. And, thank God, the Fleet's ready! It's madness, madness, and we must keep our heads. That's what I say, anyway."

Graham cracked an egg mechanically. His sermon was coming back to him. He saw a congregation of Lessings, and more clearly than ever the other things. "What about Belgium?" he queried. "Surely our honour is engaged there?"

Mr. Lessing pulled up his napkin, visibly perturbed. "Yes, but what can we do?" he demanded. "What is the good of flinging a handful of troops overseas, even if we can? It's incredible—English troops in Flanders in this century. In my opinion—in my opinion, I say—we should do better to hold ourselves in readiness. Germany would never really dare antagonise us. They know what it involves. Why, there's hundreds of millions of pounds at stake. Grey has only to be firm, and things must come right. Must—absolutely must."

"Annie said, this morning, that she heard everyone in the streets last night say we must fight, father," put in Hilda.

"Pooh!" exclaimed the city personage, touched now on the raw. "What do the fools know about it? I suppose the Daily Mail will scream, but, thank God, this country has not quite gone to the dogs yet. The people, indeed! The mass of the country is solid for sense and business, and trusts the Government. Of course, the Tory press will make the whole question a party lever if it can, but it can't. What! Are we going to be pushed into war by a mob and a few journalists? Why, Labour even will be dead against it. Come, Graham, you ought to know something about that. More in your line than mine—don't you think so?"

"You really ought not to let the maids talk so," said Mrs. Lessing gently.

Peter glanced at her with a curiously hopeless feeling, and looked slowly round the room until his eyes rested on Mr. Lessing's portrait over the mantelshelf, presented by the congregation of St. John's on some occasion two years before. From the portrait he turned to the gentleman, but it was not necessary for him to speak. Mr. Lessing was saying something to the man—probably ordering the car. He glanced across at Hilda, who had made some reply to her mother and was toying with a spoon. He thought he had never seen her look more handsome and…. He could not find the word: thought of "solid," and then smiled at the thought. It did not fit in with the sunlight on her hair.

"Well, well," said Mr. Lessing; "we ought to make a move. It won't do for either of us to be late, Mr. Preacher."

The congregation of St. John's assembled on a Sunday morning as befitted its importance and dignity. Families arrived, or arrived by two or three representatives, and proceeded with due solemnity to their private pews. No one, of course, exchanged greetings on the way up the church, but every lady became aware, not only of the other ladies present, but of what each wore. A sidesman, with an air of portentous gravity, as one who, in opening doors, performed an office more on behalf of the Deity than the worshippers, was usually at hand to usher the party in. Once there, there was some stir of orderly bustle: kneelers were distributed according to requirements, books sorted out after the solemn unlocking of the little box that contained them, sticks and hats safely stowed away. These duties performed, paterfamilias cast one penetrating glance round the church, and leaned gracefully forward with a kind of circular motion. Having suitably addressed Almighty God (it is to be supposed), he would lean back, adjust his trousers, possibly place an elbow on the pew-door, and contemplate with a fixed and determined gaze the distant altar.

Peter, of course, wound in to solemn music with the procession of choir boys and men, and, accorded the honour of a beadle with a silver mace, since he was to preach, was finally installed in a suitably cushioned seat within the altar-rails. He knelt to pray, but it was an effort to formulate anything. He was intensely conscious that morning that a meaning hitherto unfelt and unguessed lay behind his world, and even behind all this pomp and ceremony that he knew so well. Rising, of course, when the senior curate began to intone the opening sentence in a manner which one felt was worthy even of St. John's, he allowed himself to study his surroundings as never before.

The church had, indeed, an air of great beauty in the morning sunlight. The Renaissance galleries and woodwork, mellowed by time, were dusted by that soft warm glow, and the somewhat sparse congregation, in its magnificently isolated groups, was humanised by it too. The stone of the chancel, flecked with colour, had a quiet dignity, and even the altar, ecclesiastically ludicrous, had a grace of its own. There was to be a celebration after Matins. The historic gold plate was therefore arranged on the retable with something of the effect of show pieces at Mappin and Webb's. Peter noticed three flagons, and between them two patens of great size. A smaller pair for use stood on the credence-table. The gold chalice and paten, veiled, stood on the altar-table itself, and above them, behind, rose the cross and two vases of hot-house lilies. Suggesting one of the great shields of beaten gold that King Solomon had made for the Temple of Jerusalem, an alms-dish stood on edge, and leant against the retable to the right of the veiled chalice. Peter found himself marvelling at its size, but was recalled to his position when it became necessary to kneel for the Confession.

The service followed its accustomed course, and throughout the whole of it Peter was conscious of his chaotic sermon. He glanced at his notes occasionally, and then put them resolutely away, well aware that they would be all but useless to him. Either he would, at the last, be able to formulate the thoughts that raced through his head, or else he could do no more than occupy the pulpit for the conventional twenty minutes with a conventional sermon. At times he half thought he would follow this easier course, but then the great letters of the newspaper poster seemed to frame themselves before him, and he knew he could not. And so, at last, there was the bowing beadle with the silver mace, and he must set out on the little dignified procession to the great Jacobean pulpit with its velvet cushion at the top.

Hilda's mind was a curious study during that sermon. At first, as her lover's rather close-cropped, dark-haired head appeared in sight, she had studied him with an odd mixture of pride and apprehension. She held her hymn-book, but she did not need it, and she watched surreptitiously while he opened the Bible, arranged some papers, and, in accordance with custom, knelt to pray. She began to think half-thoughts of the days that might be, when perhaps she would be the wife of the Rector of some St. John's, and later, possibly, of a Bishop. Peter had it in him to go far, she knew. She half glanced round with a self-conscious feeling that people might be guessing at her thoughts, and then back, wondering suddenly if she really knew the man, or only the minister. And then there came the rustle of shutting books and of people composing themselves to listen, the few coughs, the vague suggestion of hassocks and cushions being made comfortable. And then, in a moment, almost with the giving out of the text, the sudden stillness and that tense sensation which told that the young orator had gripped his congregation.

Thereafter she hardly heard him, as it were, and she certainly lost the feeling of ownership that had been hers before. As he leaned over the pulpit, and the words rang out almost harshly from their intensity, she began to see, as the rest of the congregation began to see, the images that the preacher conjured up before her. A sense of coming disaster riveted her—the feeling that she was already watching the end of an age.

"Jesus had compassion on the multitude"—that had been the short and simple text. Simple words, the preacher had said, but how when one realised Who had had compassion, and on what? Almighty God Himself, with His incarnate Mind set on the working out of immense and agelong plans, had, as it were, paused for a moment to have compassion on hungry women and crying babies and folk whose petty confused affairs could have seemed of no consequence to anyone in the drama of the world. And then, with a few terse sentences, the preacher swung from that instance to the world drama of to-day. Did they realise, he asked, that peaceful bright Sunday morning, that millions of simple men were at that moment being hurled at each other to maim and kill? At the bidding of powers that even they could hardly visualise, at the behest of world politics that not one in a thousand would understand and scarcely any justify, houses were being broken up, women were weeping, and children playing in the sun before cottage doors were even now being left fatherless. It was incredible, colossal, unimaginable, but as one tried to picture it, Hell had opened her mouth and Death gone forth to slay. It was terrible enough that battlefields of stupendous size should soon be littered with the dying and the