Simon Called Peter Part 39

She leaned over against him and caught his hand to her breast, with a little intake of breath.

"I'll leave it all to you, my darling," she whispered.

The taxi swung into the clearing before the hospital. "Peter," said Julie, "Tommy's so sharp; I believe she'll suspect something."

"I don't care a d.a.m.n for anyone!" said Peter fiercely; "let her. I only want you."

CHAPTER VI

Peter secured his leave for Monday the 21st from Boulogne, which necessitated his leaving Le Havre at least twenty-four hours before that day. There were two ways of travelling--across country in a troop-train, or by French expresses via Paris. He had heard so much of the latter plan that he determined to try it. It had appeared to belong to the reputation of the Church.

His movement order was simply from the one port to the other, and was probably good enough either way round with French officials; but there was a paper attached to it indicating that the personnel in question would report at such a time to the R.T.O. at such a station, and the time and the station spelt troop-train unmistakably. Now, the troop-train set out on its devious journey an hour later than the Paris express from the same station, and the hour of the Paris express corresponded with the time that all decent officers go to dinner. Peter therefore removed the first paper, folded it up thoughtfully, and put it in his pocket. He then reported to the R.T.O. a quarter of an hour before the Paris train started, and found, as he expected, a N.C.O. in sole charge. The man took his paper and read it. He turned it over; there was no indication of route anywhere. "Which train are you going by, sir?" he asked.

"Paris mail," said Peter coolly. "Will you please put my stuff in a first?"

"Certainly, sir," said the man, endorsed the order to that effect, and shouldered a suit-case. Peter followed him. He was given a first to himself, and the Deputy R.T.O. saw the French inspector and showed him the paper. Peter strolled off and collected a bottle of wine, some sandwiches, and some newspapers; then he made himself comfortable.

The train left punctually. Peter lay back in his corner and watched the country slip by contentedly. He had grown up, had this young man.

He arrived in Paris with the dawn of Sunday morning, and looked out cautiously. There was no English official visible. However, his papers were entirely correct, and he climbed up the stairs and wandered along a corridor in which hands and letters from time to time indicated the lair of the R.T.O. Arriving, he found another officer waiting, but no R.T.O.

The other was "bored stiff," he said; he had sat there an hour, but had seen no sign of the Transport Officer. Peter smiled, and replied that he had no intention whatever of waiting; he only wanted to know the times of the Boulogne trains. These he discovered by the aid of a railway guide on the table, and selected the midnight train, which would land him in Boulogne in time for the first leave-boat, if the train were punctual and the leave-boat not too early. In any case, he could take the second, which would only mean Victoria a few hours later that same day. And these details settled, he left his luggage in a corner and strolled off into the city.

A big city, seen for the first time by oneself alone when one does not know a soul in it, may be intensely boring or intensely interesting. It depends on oneself. Peter was in the mood to be interested. He was introspective. It pleased him to watch the early morning stir; to see the women come out in shawls and slipshod slippers and swill down their bit of pavement; to see sleepy shopkeepers take down their shutters and street-vendors set up their stalls; to try to gauge the thoughts and doings of the place from the shop-windows and the advertis.e.m.e.nts. His first need was a wash and a shave, and he got both at a little barber's in which monsieur attended to him, while madame, in considerable _negligee_, made her toilette before the next gla.s.s. His second was breakfast, and he got it, _a l'anglaise_, with an omelette and jam, in a just-stirring hotel; and then, set up, he strolled off for the centre of things. Many Ma.s.ses were in progress at the Madeleine, and he heard one or two with a curious contentment, but they had no lesson for him, probably because of the foreign element in the atmosphere, and he did not pray. Still, he sat, chiefly, and watched, until he felt how entirely he was a stranger here, and went out into the sun.

He made his way to the river, and lingered there long. The great cathedral, with its bare January trees silhouetted to the last twig against the clear sky, its ma.s.sive b.u.t.tresses, and its cl.u.s.ter of smaller buildings, held his imagination. He went in, but they were beginning to sing Ma.s.s, and he soon came out. He crossed to the farther bank and found a seat and lit a pipe. Sitting there, his imagination awoke. He conceived the pageant of faith that had raised those walls. Kings and lords and knights, all the glitter and gold of the Middle Ages, had come there--and gone; Bishops and Archbishops, and even Popes, had had their day of splendour there--and gone; the humbler sort, in the peasant dress of the period, speaking quaint tongues, had brought their sorrows there and their joys--and gone; yet it seemed to him that they had not so surely gone. The great have their individual day and disappear, but the poor, in their corporate indistinguishableness remain. The mult.i.tude, petty in their trivial wants and griefs, find no historian and leave no monument.

Yet, ultimately, it was because of the Christian faith in the compa.s.sion of G.o.d for such that Notre-Dame lifted her towers to the sky. The stage for the mighty doings of Kings, it was the home of the people. As he had seen them just now, creeping about the aisles, lighting little tapers, crouched in a corner, so had they always been. Kings and Bishops figured for a moment in pomp before the altar, and then monuments must be erected to their memory. But it was not so with the poor. Peter, in a glow of warmth, considered that he was in truth one of them. And Jesus had had compa.s.sion on the mult.i.tude, he remembered. The text recalled him, and he frowned to himself.

He knocked out his pipe, and set out leisurely to find luncheon. The famous book-boxes held him, and he bought a print or two. In a restaurant near the Chatelet he got _dejeuner_, and then, remembering Julie, bought and wrote a picture-postcard, and took a taxi for the Bois. He was driven about for an hour or more, and watched the people lured out by the sun, watched the troops of all the armies, watched an aeroplane swing high over the trees and soar off towards Versailles. He discharged his car at the Arc de Triomphe, and set about deciphering the carven pictures. Then, he walked up the great Avenue, made his way to the Place de la Republique, wandered through the gardens of the Louvre, and, as dusk fell, found himself in the Avenue de l'Opera. It was very gay. He had a bock at a little marble table, and courteously declined the invitations of a lady of considerable age painted to look young. He at first simply refused, and finally cursed into silence, a weedy, flash youth who offered to show him the sights of the city in an apparently ascending scale till he reached the final lure of a _cancan_, and he dined greatly at a palace of a restaurant. Then, tired, he did not know what to do.

A girl pa.s.sing, smiled at him, and he smiled back. She came and sat down.

He looked bored, she told him, which was a thing one should not be in Paris, and she offered to a.s.sist him to get rid of the plague.

"What do you suggest?" he demanded.

She shrugged her shoulders--anything that he pleased.

"But I don't know what I want," he objected.

"Ah, well, I have a flat near," she said--"a charming flat. We need not be bored there."

Peter demurred. He had to catch the midnight train. She made a little gesture; there was plenty of time.

He regarded her attentively. "See, mademoiselle," he said, "I do not want that. But I am alone and I want company. Will you not stroll about Paris with me for an hour or two, and talk?"

She smiled. Monsieur was unreasonable. She had her time to consider; she could not waste it.

Peter took his case from his pocket and selected a note, folded it, and handed it to her, without a word. She slipped it into her bag. "Give me a cigarette," she said. "Let us have one little gla.s.s here, and then we will go on to an 'otel I know, and hear the band and see the dresses, and talk--is it not so?"

He could not have found a better companion. In the great lounge, later on, leaning back by his side, she chatted shrewdly and with merriment.

She described dresses and laughed at his ignorance. She acclaimed certain pieces, and showed a real knowledge of music. She told him of life in Paris when the Hun had all but knocked at the gates, of the gaiety of relief, of things big and little, of the flowers in the Bois in the spring. He said little, but enjoyed himself. Much later she went with him to the station, and they stood outside to say good-bye.

"Well, little girl," he said, "you have given me a good evening, and I am very grateful. But I do not even know your name. Tell it me, that I may remember."

"Mariette," she said. "And will monsieur not take my card? He may be in Paris again. He is tres agreable; I should like much to content him. One meets many, but there are few one would care to see again."

Peter smiled sadly. For the first time a wistful note had crept into her voice. He thought of others like her that he knew, and he spoke very tenderly. "No, Mariette," he said. "If I came back I might spoil a memory. Good-bye. G.o.d bless you!" and he held out his hand. She hesitated a second. Then she turned back to the taxi.

"Where would you like to go?" he demanded.

She leaned out and glanced up at the clock. "L'Avenue de l'Opera," she said, "s'il vous plait."

The man thrust in the clutch with his foot, and Mariette was lost to Peter for ever in the mult.i.tude.

In Boulogne he heard that he was late for the first boat, but caught the second easily. Remembering Donovan's advice, he got his ticket for the Pullman at once, and was soon rolling luxuriously to town. The station was bustling as it had done what seemed to him an age before, but he stepped out with the feeling that he was no longer a fresher in the world's or any other university. Declining a.s.sistance, he walked over to the Grosvenor and engaged a room, dined, and then strolled out into Victoria Street.

It was all so familiar and it was all so different. He stood aloof and looked at himself, and played with the thought. It was incredible that he was the Peter Graham of less than a year before, and that he walked where he had walked a score of times. He went up Whitehall, and across the Square, and hesitated whether or not he should take the Strand. Deciding against it, he made his way to Piccadilly Circus and chose a music-hall that advertised a world-famous comedian. He heard him and came out, still laughing to himself, and then he walked down Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner, and stood for a minute looking up Park Lane. Hilda ought to come down, he said to himself amusedly. Then, marvelling that he could be amused at all at the thought, he turned off for his hotel.

It is nothing to write down, but to Peter it was very much. Everything was old, but everything was new to him. At his hotel he smoked a cigarette in the lounge just to watch the men and women who came and went, and then he declined the lift and ascended the big staircase to his room. As he went, it struck him why it was that he felt so much wiser than he had been; that he looked on London from the inside, whereas he had used to look from the outside only; that he looked with a charity of which he had never dreamed, and that he was amazingly content. And as he got into bed he thought that when next he slept in town he would not be alone. He would have crossed Tommy's Rubicon.

Next morning he went down into the country to relations who did not interest him at all; but he walked and rode and enjoyed the English countryside with zest. He went to the little country church on the Sunday twice, to Matins and Evensong, and he came home and read that chapter of Mr. Wells' book in which Mr. Britling expounds the domestication of G.o.d.

And he had some fierce moments in which he thought of Louise, and of Lucienne's sister, and of Mariette, and of Pennell, and, last of all, of Jenks, and asked himself of what use a domesticated G.o.d could be to any of them. And then on the Thursday he came up to meet Julie.

It thrilled him that she was in England somewhere and preparing to come to him. His pulses beat so as he thought of it that every other consideration was temporarily driven from his mind; but presently he caught himself thinking what ought to be done, and of what she would be like. He turned it over in his mind. He had known her in France, in uniform, when he was not sure of her; but now, what would she be like?

He could not conceive, and he banished the idea. It would be more splendid when it occurred if he had made no imaginary construction of it.

His station was King's Cross, and he took a taxi to a big central hotel in the neighbourhood of Regent Street. And as he pa.s.sed its doors they closed irrevocably on his past.

The girl at the bureau looked up and smiled. "Good-morning," she said.

"What can I do for you? We are very full."

"Good-morning," he replied. "I expect you are, but my wife is coming up to town this afternoon, and we have only a few days together. We want to be as central as possible. Have you a small suite over the week-end?"

"I don't know," she said, and pulled the big book toward her. She ran a finger down the page. "Four-twenty," she said--"double bedroom, sitting-room, and bathroom, how would that do?"

"It sounds capital," said Peter. "May I go and see it?"

She turned in her seat, reached for a key, and touched a b.u.t.ton. A man appeared, soundlessly on the thick, rich carpet. "Show this officer four-twenty, will you?" she said, and turned to someone else. What means so much to some of us is everyday business to others.

Peter followed across the hall and into a lift. They went up high, got out in a corridor, took a turn to the right, and stopped before a door numbered 420. The man opened it. Peter was led into a little hall, with two doors leading from it. The first room was the sitting-room. It was charmingly furnished and very cosy, a couple of good prints on the walls, wide fireplace, a tall standard lamp, some delightfully easy chairs--all this he took in at a glance. He walked to the window and looked out. Far below was the great thoroughfare, and beyond a wilderness of roofs and spires. He stood and gazed at it. London seemed a different, place up there. He felt remote, and looked again into the street. Its business rolled on indifferent to him, and unaware. He glanced back into the snug pretty little room. How easy it all was, how secure! "This is excellent," he said, "Show me the bedroom."

"This way, sir," said, the man.

The bedroom was large and airy. A pretty light paper covered the walls, and two beds stood against one of them, side by side. The sun shone in at the big double windows and fell on the white paint of the woodwork, the plate-gla.s.s tops of the toilet-tables, and the thick cream-coloured carpet. A door was open on his right. He walked across, and looked in there too. A tiled bathroom, he saw it was, the clean towels on the highly polished bra.s.s rail heated by steam, the cork-mat against the wall, the shower, douche, and spray all complete, even the big cake of delicious-looking soap on its sliding rack across the bath. He looked as a man in a fairy-story might look. It was as if an enchanted palace, with the princess just round the corner, had been offered him. Smiling at the conceit, he turned to the man. "I didn't notice the telephone," he said; "I suppose it is installed?"

"In each room, sir," said the man.