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

the car, "this would be perfect. You men can't know how a girl comes to hate uniform. It's not bad occasionally, but if you have to wear it always it spoils chances. But I've got my new shoes and silk stockings on," she added, sticking out a neat ankle, "and my skirt is not vastly long, is it? Besides, underneath, if it's any consolation to you, I've really pretty things. Uniform or not, I see no reason why one should not feel joyful next the skin. What do you think?"

Peter agreed heartily, and tucked a rug round her. "There's the more need for this, then," he said.

"Oh, I don't know: silk always makes me feel so comfortable that I can't be cold. Isn't it a heavenly day? We are lucky, you know; it might have been beastly. Lor', but I'm going to enjoy myself to-day, my dear! I warn you. I've got to forget how Tommy looked when I put her off with excuses. I felt positively mean."

"What did she say?" asked Peter.

"That she didn't mind at all, as she had got to write letters," said Julie, "Solomon, Tommy's a damned good sort!… Give us a cigarette, and don't look blue. We're right out of town."

Peter got out his case. "Don't call me Solomon to-day," he said.

Julie threw herself back in her corner and shrieked with laughter. The French chauffeur glanced round and grimaced appreciatively, and Peter felt a fool. "What am I to call you, then?" she demanded. "You are a funny old thing, and now you look more of a Solomon than ever."

"Call me Peter," he said.

She looked at him, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "I'm really beginning to enjoy myself," she said. "But, look here, you mustn't begin like this. How in the world do you think we shall end up if you do? You'll have nothing left to say, and I shall be worn to a rag and a temper warding off your sentimentality."

"Julie," said Peter, "are you ever serious? I can't help it, you know, I suppose because I am a parson, though I am such a rotten one."

"Who says you're a rotten one?"

"Everybody who tells the truth, and, besides, I know it. I feel an absolute stummer when I go around the wards. I never can say a word to the men."

"They like you awfully. You know little Jimmy, that kiddie who came in the other day who's always such a brick? Well, last night I went and sat with him a bit because he was in such pain. I told him where I was going to-day as a secret. What do you think he said about you?"

"I don't want to know," said Peter hastily.

"Well, you shall. He said if more parsons were like you, more men would go to church. What do you make of that, old Solomon?"

"It isn't true to start with. A few might come for a little, but they would soon fall off. And if they didn't, they'd get no good. I don't know what to say to them."

Julie threw away her cigarette-stump. "One sees a lot of human nature in hospitals, my boy," she said, "and it doesn't leave one with many illusions. But from what I've seen, I should say nobody does much good by talking."

"You don't understand," said Peter. "Look here, I shouldn't call you religious in a way at all Don't be angry. I don't know, but I don't think so, and I don't think you can possibly know what I mean."

"I used to do the flowers in church regularly at home," she said. "I believe in God, though you think I don't."

Peter sighed. "Let's change the subject," he said. "Have you seen any more of that Australian chap lately?"

"Rather! He's engaged to a girl I know, and I reckon I'm doing her a good turn by sticking to him. He's a bit of a devil, you know, but I think I can keep him off the French girls a bit."

Peter looked at her curiously. "You know what he is, and you don't mind then?" he said.

"Good Lord, no!" she replied. "My dear boy, I know what men are. It isn't in their nature to stick to one girl only. He loves Edie all right, and he'll make her a good husband one day, if she isn't too particular and inquisitive. If I were married, I'd give my husband absolute liberty—and I'd expect it in return. But I shall never marry. There isn't a man who can play fair. They'll take their own pleasures, but they are all as jealous as possible. I've seen it hundreds of times."

"You amaze me," said Peter. "Let's talk straight. Do you mean to say that if you were married and your husband ran up to Paris for a fortnight, and you knew exactly what he'd gone for, you wouldn't mind?"

"No," she declared roundly. "I wouldn't. He'd come back all the more fond of me, I'd know I'd be a fool to expect anything else."

Peter stared at her. She was unlike anything he had ever seen. Her moral standards, if she had any, he added mentally, were so different from his own that he was absolutely floored. He thought grimly that alone in a motor-car he had got among the multitude with a vengeance. "Have you ever been in love?" he demanded.

She laughed. "Solomon, you're the quaintest creature. Do you think I'd tell you if I had been? You never ought to ask anyone that. But if you want to know, I've been in love hundreds of times. It's a queer disease, but not serious—at least, not if you don't take it too seriously."

"You don't know what love is at all," he said.

She faced him fairly and unashamed. "I do," she said, "It's an animal passion for the purpose of populating the earth. And if you ask me, I think it is rather a dirty trick on the part of God."

"You don't mean that," he said, distressed.

She laughed again merrily, and slipped her hand into his under the rug. "Peter," she said—"there, am I not good? You aren't made to worry about these things. I don't know that anyone is. We can't help ourselves, and the best thing is to take our pleasures when we can find them. I suppose you'll be shocked at me, but I'm not going to pretend. I wasn't built that way. If this were a closed car I'd give you a kiss."

"I don't want that sort of a kiss," he said. "That was what you gave me the other night. I want…."

"You don't know what you want, my dear, though you think you do. You shouldn't be so serious. I'm sure I kiss very nicely—plenty of men think so? anyway, and if there is nothing in that sort of kiss, why not kiss? Is there a Commandment against it? I suppose our grandmothers thought so, but we don't. Besides, I've been east of Suez, where there ain't no ten Commandments. There's only one real rule left in life for most of us, Peter, and that's this: 'Be a good pal, and don't worry.'"

Peter sighed. "You and I were turned out differently, Julie," he said. "But I like you awfully. You attract me so much that I don't know how to express it. There's nothing mean about you, and nothing sham. And I admire your pluck beyond words. It seems to me that you've looked life in the face and laughed. Anybody can laugh at death, but very few of us at life. I think I'm terrified of it. And that's the awful part about it all, for I ought to know the secret, and I don't. I feel an absolute hypocrite at times—when I take a service, for example. I talk about things I don't understand in the least, even about God, and I begin to think I know nothing about Him…." He broke off, utterly miserable.

"Poor old boy," she said softly; "is it as bad as that?"

He turned to her fiercely. "You darling!" he said, carried away by her tone. "I believe I'd rather have you than—than God!"

She did not move in her corner, nor did she smile now. "I wonder," she said slowly. "Peter, it's you that hate shams, not I. It's you that are brave, not I. I play with shams because I know they're shams, but I like playing with them. But you are greater than I. You are not content with playing. One of these days—oh, I don't know…." She broke off and looked away.

Peter gripped her hand tightly. "Don't, little girl," he said. "Let's forget for to-day. Look at those primroses; they're the first I've seen. Aren't they heavenly?"

They ran into Caudebec in good time, and lunched at an hotel overlooking the river, with great enthusiasm. To Peter it was utterly delicious to have her by him. She was as gay as she could possibly be, and made fun over everything. Sitting daintily before him, her daring, unconventional talk carried him away. She chose the wine, and after dèjeuner sat with her elbows on the table, puffing at a cigarette, her brown eyes alight with mischief, apparently without a thought for to-morrow.

"Oh, I say," she said, "do look at that party in the corner. The old
Major's well away, and the girl'll have a job to keep him in hand, I
wonder where they're from? Rouen, perhaps; there was a car at the door.
What do you think of the girl?"

Peter glanced back. "No better than she ought to be," he said.

"No, I don't suppose so, but they are gay, these French girls. I don't wonder men like them. And they have a hard time. I'd give them a leg up any day if I could. I can't, though, so if ever you get a chance do it for me, will you?"

Peter assented. "Come on," he said. "Finish that glass if you think you can, and let's get out."

"Here's the best, then, I've done. What are we going to see?"

For a couple of hours they wandered round the old town, with its narrow streets and even fifteenth-century houses, whose backs actually leaned over the swift little river that ran all but under the place to the Seine. They penetrated through an old mill to its back premises, and climbed precariously round the water-wheel to reach a little moss-grown platform from which the few remaining massive stones of the Norman wall and castle could still be seen. The old abbey kept them a good while, Julie interested Peter enormously as they walked about its cool aisles, and tried to make out the legends of its ancient glass. She had nothing of that curious kind of shyness most people have in a church, and that he would certainly have expected of her. She joked and laughed a little in it—at a queer row of mutilated statues packed into a kind of chapel to keep quiet out of the way till wanted, at the vivid red of the Red Sea engulfing Pharaoh and all his host—but not in the least irreverently. He recalled a saying of a book he had once read in which a Roman Catholic priest had defended the homeliness of an Italian congregation by saying that it was right for them to be at home in their Father's House. It was almost as if Julie were at home, yet he shrank from the inference.

She was entirely ignorant of everything, except perhaps, of a little biblical history, but she made a most interested audience. Once he thought she was perhaps egging him on for his own pleasure, but when he grew more silent she urged him to explain. "It's ripping going round with somebody who knows something," she said. "Most of the men one meets know absolutely nothing. They're very jolly, but one gets tired. I could listen to you for ages."

Peter assured her that he was almost as ignorant as they, but she was shrewdly insistent. "You read more, and you understand what you read," she said. "Most people don't. I know."

They bought picture post-cards off a queer old woman in a peasant head-dress, and then came back to the river and sat under the shade of a line of great trees to wait for the tea the hotel had guaranteed them. Julie now did all the talking—of South Africa, of gay adventures in France and on the voyage, and of the men she had met. She was as frank as possible,