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

his way to say much, but he walked on silently for a long time. Then he said: "The Potter makes many vessels, but never one needlessly. I hold on to that. And He can remake the broken clay."

"Are you sure?" asked Peter.

"I am," said Arnold. "It's not in the Westminster Confession, nor in the Book of Common Prayer, nor, for all I know, in the Penny Catechism, but I believe it. God Almighty must be stronger than the devil, Graham."

Peter considered this. Then he shook his head. "That won't wash, Arnold," he said. "If God is stronger than the devil, so that the devil is never ultimately going to succeed, I can see no use in letting him have his fling at all. And I've more respect for the devil than to think he'd take it. It's childish to suppose the existence of two such forces at a perpetual game of cheat. Either there is no devil and there is no hell—in which case I reckon that there is no heaven either, for a heaven would not be a heaven if it were not attained, and there would be no true attainment if there were no possibility of failure—or else there are all three. And if there are all three, the devil wins out, sometimes, in the end."

"Then, God is not almighty?"

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "If I breed white mice, I don't lessen my potential power if I choose to let some loose in the garden to see if the cat will get them. Besides, in the end I could annihilate the cat if I wanted to."

"You can't think of God so," cried Arnold sharply.

"Can't I?" demanded Peter. "Well, maybe not, Arnold; I don't know that I can think of Him at all. But I can face the facts of life, and if I'm not a coward, I shan't run away from them. That's what I've been doing these days, and that's what I do not think even a man like yourself does fairly. You think, I take it, that a girl like that is damned utterly by all the canons of theology, and then, forced on by pity and tenderness, you cry out against them all that she is God's making and He will not throw her away. Is that it?"

Arnold slightly evaded an answer. "How can you save her, Graham?" he asked.

"I can't. I don't pretend I can. I've nothing to say or do. I see only one flicker of hope, and that lies in the fact that she doesn't understand what love is. No shadow of the truth has ever come her way. If now, by any chance, she could see for one instant—in fact, mind you—the face of God…. If God is Love," he added. They walked a dozen paces. "And even then she might refuse," he said.

"Whose fault would that be?" demanded the older man.

Peter answered quickly, "Whose fault? Why, all our faults—yours and mine, and the fault of men like Pennell and Donovan, as well as her own, too, as like as not. We've all helped build up the scheme of things as they are, and we are all responsible. We curse the Germans for making this damned war, and it is the war that has done most to make that girl; but they didn't make it. No Kaiser made it, and no Nietzsche. The only person who had no hand in it that I know of was Jesus Christ."

"And those who have left all and followed Him," said Arnold softly.

"Precious few," retorted Peter.

The other had nothing to say.

* * * * *

During these months Peter wrote often to Hilda, and with increasing frankness. Her replies grew shorter as his letters grew longer. It was strange, perhaps, that he should continue to write, but the explanation was not far to seek. It was by her that he gauged the extent of his separation from the old outlook, and in her that he still clung, desperately, as it were, to the past. Against reason he elevated her into a kind of test position, and if her replies gave him no encouragement, they at least served to make him feel the inevitableness and the reality of his present position. It would have been easy to get into the swim and let it carry him carelessly on—moderately easy, at any rate. But with Hilda to refer to he was forced to take notice, and it was she, therefore, that hastened the end. Just after Christmas, in a fit of temporary boldness, he told her about Louise, so that it was Louise again who was the responsible person during these months. Hilda's reply was delayed, nor had she written immediately. When he got it, it was brief but to the point. She did not doubt, she said, but that what he had written was strictly true, and she did not doubt his honour. But he must see that their relationship was impossible. She couldn't marry the man who appeared actually to like the company of such a woman, nor could she do other than feel that the end would seem to him as plain as it did to her, and that he would leave the Church, or at any rate such a ministry in it as she could share. She had told her people that she was no longer engaged in order that he should feel free, but she would ever remember the man as she had known him, whom she had loved, and whom she loved still.

It was in the afternoon that Peter got the letter, and he was just setting off for the hospital. When he had read it, he put on his cap and set off in the opposite direction. There was a walk along the sea-wall a few feet wide, where the wind blew strongly laden with the Channel breezes, and on the other side was a waste of sand and stone. In some places water was on both sides of the wall, and here one could feel more alone than anywhere else in the town.

Peter set off, his head in a mad whirl. He had felt that such a letter would come for weeks, but that did not, in a way, lessen the blow when it came. He had known, too, that Hilda was not to him what she had been, but he had not altogether felt that she never could be so again. Now he knew that he had gone too far to turn back. He felt, he could not help it, released in a sense, with almost a sense of exhilaration behind it, for the unknown lay before. And yet, since we are all so human, he was intensely unhappy below all this. He called to mind little scenes and bits of scenes: their first meeting; the sight of her in church as he preached; how she had looked at the dining-table in Park Lane; her walk as she came to meet him in the park. And he knew well enough how he had hurt her, and the thought maddened him. He told himself that God was a devil to treat him so; that he had tried to follow the right; and that the way had led him down towards nothing but despair. He was no nearer answering the problems that beset him. He might have been in a fool's paradise before, but what was the use of coming out to see the devil as he was and men and women as they were if he could see no more than that? The throne of his heart was empty, and there was none to fill it.

Julie?

CHAPTER V

The sea-wall ended not far from Donovan's camp of mud and cinders, and having got there, Peter thought he would go on and get a cup of tea. He crossed the railway-lines, steered through a great American rest camp, crossed the canal, and entered the camp. It was a cheerless place in winter, and the day was drawing in early with a damp fog. A great French airship was cruising around overhead and dropping down towards her resting-place in the great hangar near by. She looked cold and ghostly up aloft, the more so when her engines were shut off, and Peter thought how chilly her crew must be. He had a hankering after Donovan's cheery humour, especially as he had not seen him for some time. He crossed the camp and made for the mess-room.

It was lit and the curtains were drawn, and, at the door, he stopped dead at the sound of laughter. Then he walked quickly in. "Caught out, by Jove!" said Donovan's voice. "You're for it, Julie."

A merry party sat round the stove, taking tea. Julie and Miss Raynard were both there, with Pennell and another man from Donovan's camp. Julie wore furs and had plainly just come in, for her cheeks were glowing with exercise. Pennell was sitting next Miss Raynard, but Donovan, on a wooden camp-seat, just beyond where Julie sat in a big cushioned chair, looked out at him from almost under Julie's arm, as he bent forward. The other man was standing by the table, teapot in hand.

One thinks quickly at such a time, and Peter's mind raced. Something of the old envy and almost fear of Donovan that he had had first that day in the hospital came back to him. He had not seen the two together for so long that it struck him like a blow to hear Donovan call her by her Christian name. It flashed across his mind also that she knew that it was his day at the hospital, and that she had deliberately gone out; but it dawned on him equally quickly that he must hide all that.

"I should jolly well think so," he said, laughing. "How do you do, Miss Raynard? Donovan, can you give me some tea? I've come along the sea-wall, and picked up a regular appetite. Are you in the habit of taking tea here, Julie? I thought nurses were not allowed in camps."

She looked at him quickly, but he missed the meaning of her glance.
"Rather," she said; "I come here for tea about once a week, don't I,
Jack? No, nurses are not allowed in camps, but I always do what's not
allowed as far as possible. And this is so snug and out of the way. Mr.
Pennell, you can give me a cigarette now."

The other man offered Peter tea, which he took. "And how did the festivities go off at Christmas?" he asked.

"Oh, topping," said Julie. "Let me see, you were at the play, so I needn't talk about that; but you thought it good, didn't you?"

"Rippin'" said Peter.

"Well," said Julie, "then there was the dance on Boxing Night. We had glorious fun. Jack, here, behaved perfectly abominably. He sat out about half the dances, and I should think he kissed every pretty girl in the room. Then we went down to the nurses' quarters of the officers' hospital and made cocoa of all things, and had a few more dances on our own. They made me dance a skirt dance on the table, and as I had enough laces on this time, I did. After that—but I don't think I'll tell you what we did after that. Why didn't you come?"

Peter had been at a big Boxing Night entertainment for the troops in the Y.M.C.A. Central Hall, but he did not say so. "Oh," he said, "I had to go to another stunt, but I must say I wish I'd been at yours. May I have another cup of tea?"

The third man gave it to him again, and then, apologizing, left the room.
Donovan exchanged glances with Julie, and she nodded.

"I say, Graham," said Donovan, "I'll tell you what we've really met here for to-day. We were going to fix it up and then ask you; but as you've dropped in, we'll take it as a dispensation of Providence and let you into the know. What do you say to a really sporting dinner at the New Year?"

"Who's to be asked?" queried Peter, looking round. "Fives into a dinner won't go."

"I should think not," cried Julie gaily. "Jack, here, is taking me, aren't you?" Donovan said "I am" with great emphasis, and made as if he would kiss her, and she pushed him off, laughing, holding