Simon Called Peter Part 24

"Old man," he said, "I want you to let me read you a bit of this letter.

It's to my girl, but there's nothing rotten in reading it. May I?"

Langton did not move. "Carry on," he said shortly.

Peter finished and put down the sheet. The other smoked placidly and said nothing. "Well?" demanded Peter impatiently.

"I should cut out that last sentence," p.r.o.nounced the judge.

"Why? It's true."

"Maybe, but it isn't pretty."

"Langton," burst out Peter, "I'm sick of prettinesses! I've been stuffed up with them all my life, and so has she. I want to break with them."

"Very likely, and I don't say that it won't be the best thing for you to try for a little to do so, but she hasn't been where you've been or seen what you've seen. You can't expect her wholly to understand. And more than that, maybe she is meant for prettinesses. After all, they're pretty."

Peter stabbed the blotting-paper with his pen. "Then she isn't meant for me," he said.

"I'm not so sure," said Langton. "I don't know that you've stuff enough in you to get on without those same prettinesses yourself. Most of us haven't. And at any rate I wouldn't burn my boats yet awhile. You may want to escape yet."

Peter considered this in silence. Then he drew the sheets to him and added a few more words, folded the paper, put it in the envelope, and stuck it down. "Come on," he said, "let's go and post this and have a walk."

Langton got up and looked at him curiously, as he sometimes did. "Peter,"

he said, "you're a weird blighter, but there's something d.a.m.ned gritty in you. You take life too strenuously. Why can't you saunter through it like I do?"

Peter reached for this cap. "Come on," he said again, "and don't talk rot."

Out in the street, they strolled aimlessly on, more or less in silence.

The big book-shop at the corner detained them for a little, and they regarded its variegated contents through the gla.s.s. It contained a few good prints, and many more poorly executed coloured pictures of ruined places in France and Belgium, of which a few, however, were not bad.

Cheek by jowl with some religious works, a statue of Notre Dame d'Albert, and some more of Jeanne d'Arc, were a line of p.o.r.nographic novels and beyond packets of picture post-cards ent.i.tled _Theatreuses, Le Bain de la Parisienne, Les Seins des Marbre_, and so on. Then Langton drew Graham's attention to one or two other books, one of which had a gaudy cover representing a mistress with a birch-rod in her hands and a number of canes hung up beside her, while a girl of fifteen or so, with very red cheeks, was apparently about to be whipped. "Good Lord," said Langton, "the French are beyond me. This window is a study for you, Graham, in itself. I should take it that it means that there is nothing real in life. It is utterly cynical.

"'And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press, End in what All begins and ends in--Yes; Think then you are To-day what Yesterday You were--To-morrow you shall not be less,'"

he quoted.

"Yes," said Peter. "Or else it means that there are only two realities, and that the excellent person who keeps this establishment regards both in a detached way, and conceives it her business to cater for each. Let's go on."

They turned the corner, and presently found themselves outside the famous carven door of the church. "Have you ever been round?" asked Peter.

"No," said Langton; "let's go in."

They pa.s.sed through the door into the old church, which, in contrast to that at Le Havre, was bathed in the daylight that streamed through many clear windows. Together they wandered round it, saying little. They inspected an eighteenth-century statue of St. Roch, who was pulling up his robe to expose a wound and looking upwards at the same time seraphically--or, at least, after the manner that the artist of that age had regarded as seraphic. A number of white ribbons and some wax figures of feet and hands and other parts of the body were tied to him. They stood before a wonderful coloured alabaster reredos of the fourteenth century, in which shepherds and kings and beasts came to worship at the manger. They had a little conversation as to the architectural periods of the nave, choir, and transepts, and Langton was enthusiastic over a n.o.ble pillar and arch. Beyond they gazed in silence at a statue of Our Lady Immaculate in modern coloured plaster, so arranged that the daylight fell through an unseen opening upon her. Among the objects in front were a pair of Renaissance candlesticks of great beauty. A French officer came up and arranged and lit a votive candle as they watched, and then went back to stand in silence by a pillar. The church door banged and two peasants came in, one obviously from the market, with a huge basket of carrots and cabbages and some long, thin French loaves. She deposited this just inside the door, took holy water, clattered up towards the high altar, dropped a curtsy, and made her way to an altar of the Sacred Heart, at which she knelt. Peter sighed. "Come on," he said; "let's get out."

Langton marched on before him, and held the door back as they stepped into the street. "Well, philosopher," he demanded, "what do you make of that?"

Peter smiled. "What do you?" he said.

"Well," said Langton, "it leaves me unmoved, except when I'm annoyed by the way their wretched images spoil the church, but it is plain that they like it. I should say one of your two realities is there. But I find it hard to forgive the bad art."

"Do you?" said Peter, "I don't. It reminds me of those appalling enlargements of family groups that you see, for example, in any Yorkshire cottage. They are unutterably hideous, but they stand for a real thing that is honest and beautiful--the love of home and family. And by the same token, when the photographs got exchanged, as they do in Mayfair, for modern French pictures of nude women, or some incredible Futurist extravagance, that love has usually flown out of the window."

"Humph!" said Langton--"not always. Besides, why can't a family group be made artistically, and so keep both art and love? I should think we ought to aim at that."

"I suppose we ought," said Peter, "but in our age the two don't seem to go together. Goodness alone knows why. Why, hullo!" he broke off.

"What's up now?" demanded Langton.

"Why, there, across the street, if that isn't a nurse I know from Havre, I don't know who it is. Wait a tick."

He crossed the road, and saw, as he got near, that it was indeed Julie.

He came up behind her as she examined a shop-window. "By all that's wonderful, what are you doing here?" he asked.

She turned quickly, her eyes dancing. "I wondered if I should meet you,"

she said. "You see, your letter told me you were coming here, but I haven't heard from you since you came, and I didn't know if you had started your tour or not. _I_ came simply enough. There's a big South African hospital here, and we had to send up a batch of men by motor.

As they knew I was from South Africa, they gave me the chance to come with them."

"Well, I _am_ glad," said Peter, devouring the sight of her. "Wait a minute; I must introduce you to Langton. He and I are together, and he's a jolly good chap."

He turned and beckoned Langton, who came over and was introduced. They walked up the street a little way together. "Where are you going now?"

asked Peter.

"Back to the hospital," said Julie. "A car starts from the square at twelve-forty-five, and I have to be in for lunch."

"Have you much to do up there?" asked Peter.

"Oh no," she said, "my job's done. I clear off the day after to-morrow.

We only got in last night, so I get a couple of days' holiday. What are you doing? You don't look any too busy."

Peter glanced across at Langton and laughed. "We aren't," he said. "The whole stunt's a wash-out, if you ask me, and we're really expecting to be sent back any day. There's too much doing now for lectures. Is the hospital full?"

"Packed," said Julie gravely. "The papers say we're falling back steadily so as not to lose men, but the facts don't bear it out. We're crammed out. It's ghastly; I've never known it so bad."

Peter had hardly ever seen her grave before, and her face showed a new aspect of her. He felt a glow of warmth steal over him. "I say," he said, "couldn't you dine with us to-night? We're at the Angleterre, and its tremendously respectable."

She laughed, her gravity vanishing in a minute. "I must say," she said, "that I'd love to see you anywhere really respectable. He's a terrible person for a padre--don't you think so, Captain Langton?"

"Terrible," said Langton. "But really the Angleterre is quite proper. You don't get any too bad a dinner, either. Do come, Miss Gamelyn."

She appeared to consider. "I might manage it," she said at last, stopping just short of entering the square; "but I haven't the nerve to burst in and ask for you. Nor will it do for you to see me all the way to that car, or we shall have a dozen girls talking. If you will meet me somewhere," she added, looking at Peter, "I'll risk it. I'll have a headache and not go to first dinner; then the first will think I'm at the second, and the second at the first. Besides, I've no duty, and the hospital's not like Havre. It's all spread out in huts and tents, and it's easy enough to get in. Last, but not least, it's Colonial, and the matron is a brick. Yes, I'll come."

"Hurrah!" said Peter. "I tell you what: I'll meet you at the cross-roads below the hospital and bring you on. Will that do? What time? Five-thirty?"

"Heavens! do you dine at five-thirty?" demanded Julie.

"Well, not quite, but we've got to get down," said Peter, laughing.

"All right," said Julie, "five-thirty, and the saints preserve us. Look here, I shall chance it and come in mufti if possible. No one knows me here."

"Splendid!" said Peter. "Good-bye, five-thirty."