Simon Called Peter Part 3

He disappeared, leaving the door open and, Donovan opening a newspaper, Graham stared out of window to wait. From the far corners came sc.r.a.ps of conversation, from which he gathered that Jenks and the Major were going over the doings of the night before. He caught a word or two, and stared the harder out of window.

Outside the English country was rushing by. Little villas, with back-gardens running down to the rail, would give way for a mile or two to fields, and then start afresh. The fog was thin there, and England looked extraordinarily homely and pleasant. It was the known; he was conscious of rushing at fifty miles an hour into the unknown. He turned over the sc.r.a.ppy conversation of the last few minutes, and found it savoured of the unknown. It was curious the difference uniform made. He felt that these men were treating him more like one of themselves than men in a railway-carriage had ever treated him before; that somehow even his badges made him welcome; and yet that, nevertheless, it was not he, Peter Graham, that they welcomed, or at least not his type. He wondered if padres in France were different from priests in England. He turned over the unknown Drennan in his mind. Was it because he was a good priest that the men liked him, or because they had discovered the man in the parson?

The waiter brought in the breakfast--porridge, fish, toast, and the rest--and they fell to, a running fire of comments going on all the time.

Donovan had had j.a.panese marmalade somewhere, and thought it better than this. The Major wouldn't touch the beastly margarine, but Jenks thought it quite as good as b.u.t.ter if taken with marmalade, and put it on nearly as thickly as his toast. Peter expanded in the air of camaraderie, and when he leaned back with a cigarette, tunic unb.u.t.toned and cap tossed up on the rack, he felt as if he had been in the Army for years. He reflected how curious that was. The last two or three years or so of Boy Scouts and hospitals and extra prayer-meetings, attended by the people who attended everything else, seemed to have faded away. There was hardly a gap between that first war evening which he remembered so clearly and this. It was a common experience enough, and probably due to the fact that, whereas everything else had made little impression, he had lived for this moment and been extraordinarily impressed by that Sunday. But he realised, also, that it was due as much to his present companions. They had, seemingly, accepted him as he had never been accepted before. They asked practically no questions. So far as he could see, he made no difference to them. He felt as if he were at last part of a great brotherhood, in which, chiefly, one worried about nothing more important than j.a.panese marmalade and margarine.

"We're almost there, boys," said Bevan, peering out of window.

"Curse!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jenks. "I hate getting my traps together in a train, and I loathe the mob on the boat."

"I don't see why you should," said Donovan. "I'm blest if I bother about anything. The R.T.O. and the red-caps do everything, and you needn't even worry about getting a Pullman ticket this way over. Hope it's not rough, though." He let a window down and leaned out. "Looks all right," he added.

Peter got up with the rest and began to hang things about him. His staringly new Sam Browne irritated him, but he forgot it as the train swung round the curve to the landing-stage.

"Get a porter and a truck, Donovan," said the Major, who was farthest from the door.

They got out nonchalantly, and Peter lit a cigarette, while the others threw remarks at the man as to luggage. Then they all trooped off together in a crowd that consisted of every variety of rank and regiment and section of the British Empire, plus some Waacs and nurses.

_The Pride of Folkestone_ lay alongside, and when they got there she seemed already full. The four of them got jammed at the gangway and shoved on board, handing in and receiving papers from the official at the head as they pa.s.sed him. Donovan was in front, and as he stepped on deck he swung his kit-bag back to Peter, crying:

"Lay hold of that, padre, and edge across the deck. Get up ahead of the funnel that side. I'll get chairs. Jenko, you rotter, get belts, and drop eyeing the girl!"

"Jolly nice bit of fluff," said Jenks meditatively, staring fixedly across the deck.

"Where?" queried the Major, fumbling for his eyegla.s.s.

"Get on there, please, gentlemen," called a ship's official.

"d.a.m.n it! mind my leg!"

"Cheerio, old son, here we are again!"

"I say, Tommy, did you get to the Alhambra last night, after all? What?

Well, I couldn't see you, anyhow."

To which accompaniment, Peter pushed his way across the deck. "Sorry, padre," said a V.A.D. who blocked the way, bending herself back to let him pa.s.s, and smiling. "Catch hold," called out Donovan, swinging a couple of chairs at him. "No, sir, it's not my chair"--to a Colonel who was grabbing at one already set out against the rail.

The Colonel collected it and disappeared, Jenks appearing a moment later, red-faced, through the crush. "You blamed fool," he whispered, "it's that girl's. I saw her put one here and edged up on it, only some fool got in my way. Still (hopefully), perhaps she'll come back."

Between them they got four chairs into a line and sat down, all, that is, save Jenks, who stood up, in a bland and genial way, as if to survey the crowd impartially. How impartially soon appeared. "d.a.m.n!" he exploded.

"She's met some other females, weird and woolly things, and she's sitting down there. No, by Jove! she's looking this way."

He made a half-start forward, and the Major kicked his shins. "Blast!" he exploded; "why did you do that, you fool?"

"Don't be an infant, Jenko, sit down. You can't start a flirtation across the blooming deck. Here, padre, can't you keep him in order?"

Peter half raised himself from his chair at this, and glanced the way the other was looking. Through the crush he saw, clearly enough for a minute, a girl of medium height in a nurse's uniform, sideways on to him. The next second she half-turned, obviously smiling some remark to her neighbour, and he caught sight of clear brown eyes and a little fringe of dark hair on the forehead of an almost childish face. The eyes met his. And then a sailor blundered across his field of vision.

"Topping, isn't she?" demanded Jenks, who had apparently been pulled down into his chair in the interval.

"Oh, I don't know," said Graham, and added deliberately: "Rather ordinary, I thought."

Jenks stared at him. "Good Lord, padre," he said, "where are your eyes?"

Peter heard a little chuckle behind, and glanced round to see Donovan staring at him with amus.e.m.e.nt written all across his face. "You'll do, padre," he said, taking a pipe from his pocket and beginning to fill it.

Peter smiled and leant back. Probably for the first time in five years he forgot for a moment what sort of a collar it was around his neck.

Sitting there, he began to enjoy himself. The sea glittered in the sun and the Lees stretched out opposite him across the shining gulf.

Sea-birds dipped and screamed. On his left, Major Bevan was talking to a flying man, and Peter glanced up with him to see an aeroplane that came humming high up above the trees on the cliff and flew out to sea.

"d.a.m.ned fine type!" said the boy, whose tunic, for all his youth, sported wings. "Fritz can't touch it yet. Of course, he'll copy it soon enough, or go one better, but just at present I think it's the best out. Wish we'd got some in our circus. We've nothing but ..." and he trailed off into technicalities.

Peter found himself studying Donovan, who lay back beyond Jenks turning the pages of an ill.u.s.trated magazine and smoking. The eyes interested him; they looked extraordinarily clear, but as if their owner kept hidden behind them a vast number of secrets as old as the universe. The face was lined--good-looking, he thought, but the face of a man who was no novice in the school of life. Peter felt he liked the Captain instinctively. He carried breeding stamped on him, far more than, say, the Major with the eyegla.s.s. Peter wondered if they would meet again.

The siren sounded, and a bustle began as people put on their life-belts.

"All life-belts on, please," said a young officer continually, who, with a bra.s.sard on his arm, was going up and down among the chairs. "Who's that?" asked Peter, struggling with his belt.

"Some poor bloke who has been roped in for crossin' duty," said Jenks.

"Mind my chair, padre; Bevan and I are going below for a wet. Coming, skipper?"

"Not yet," said Donovan; "the bar's too full at first for me. Padre and I'll come later."

The others stepped off across the crowded deck, and Donovan pitched his magazine into Bevan's chair to retain it.

"You're from South Africa?" queried Peter.

"Yes," replied the other. "I was in German West, and came over after on my own. Joined up with the brigade here."

"What part of Africa?" asked Peter.

"Basutoland, padre. Not a bad place in a way--decent climate, topping scenery, but rather a stodgy crowd in the camps. One or two decent people, but the majority mid-Victorian, without a blessed notion except the price of mealies, who quarrel about nothing half the time, and talk tuppenny-ha'penny scandal the rest. Good Lord! I wish we had some of the perishers out here. But they know which side of the bread the b.u.t.ter is.

Bad time for trade, they say, and every other trader has bought a car since the war. Of course, there's something to be said for the other side, but what gets my goat is their pettiness. I'm for British East Africa after the war. There's a chap written a novel about Basutoland called 'The Land of To-morrow,' but I'd call it 'The Land of the Day before Yesterday.' I suppose some of them came over with an a.s.sortment of ideas one time, but they've struck no new ones since. I don't advise you to settle in a South African dorp if you can help it, padre."

"Don't suppose I shall," said Peter. "I've just got engaged, and my girl's people wouldn't let her out of England."

"Engaged, are you? Thank your stars you aren't married. It's safer not to be out here."

"Why?"

Donovan looked at him curiously. "Oh, you'll find out fast enough, padre," he said. "Wonder what you'll make of it. Rum place just now, France, I can tell you. There's the sweepings of half the world over there, and everything's turned upside down. Fellows are out for a spree, of course, and you can't be hard on a chap down from the line if he goes on the bust a bit. It's human nature, and you must allow for it; don't you think so?"

"Human nature can be controlled," said Peter primly.

"Can it?" retorted the other. "Even the cloth doesn't find it too easy, apparently."

"What do you mean?" demanded Peter, and then added: "Don't mind telling me; I really want to know."

Donovan knocked out his pipe, and evaded. "You've got to be broad-minded, padre," he said.