Simon Called Peter Part 46

"I'll risk everything to-night, Peter, except your smiling at the waitress," she said. "But I must have that champagne. There's something about champagne that inspires confidence. When a man gives you the gold bottle you know that he is really serious, or as serious as he can be, which isn't saying much for most men. And not half a bottle; I've had half-bottles heaps of times at tete-a-tete dinners. It always means indecision, which is a beastly thing in anyone, and especially in a man.

It's insulting, for one thing.... Oh, Peter, do look at that girl over there. Do you suppose she has anything on underneath? I suppose I couldn't ask her, but you might, you know, if you put on that smile of yours. Do walk over, beg her pardon, and say very nicely: 'Excuse me, but I'm a chaplain, and it's my business to know these things. I see you've no stays on, but have you a bathing costume?'"

"Julie, do be quiet; someone will hear you. You must remember we're in England, and that you're talking English."

"I don't care a d.a.m.n if they do, Peter! Oh, here's the champagne, at any rate. Oh, and some soup. Well, that's something."

"I've got the fish coming," said the girl, "if you can be ready at once."

Julie seized her spoon. "I suppose I mustn't drink it?" she said. "I don't see why I shouldn't, as a matter of fact, but it might reflect on you, Peter, and you're looking so immaculate to-night. By the way, you've never had that manicure. Do send a note for the girl. I'd hide in the bathroom. I'd love to hear you. Peter, if I only thought you would do it, I'd like it better than the play. What is the play, by the way? _Zigzag?_ Oh, _Zigzag_" (She mimicked in a French accent.) "Well, it will be all too sadly true if I leave you to that bottle of fizz all by yourself.

Give me another gla.s.s, please."

"What about you?" demanded Peter. "If you're like this now, Heaven knows what you'll be by the time you've had half of this."

"Peter, you're an ignoramus. Girls like me never take too much. We began early for one thing, and we're used to it. For another, the more a girl talks, the soberer she is. She talks because she's thinking, and because she doesn't want the man to talk. Now, if you talked to-night, I don't know what you might not say. You'd probably be enormously sentimental, and I hate sentimental people. I do, really. Sentiment is wishy-washy, isn't it? I always a.s.sociate it with comedians on the stage. Look over there. Do you see that girl in the big droopy hat and the thin hands?

And the boy--one must say 'boy,' I suppose? He's a little fat and slightly bald, and he's got three pips up, and has had them for a long time. Well, look at them. He's searching her eyes, he is, Peter, really.

That's how it's done: you just watch. And he doesn't know if he's eating pea-soup or oyster-sauce. And she's hoping her hat is drooping just right, and that he'll notice her ring is on the wrong finger, and how nice one would look in the right place. To do her justice, she isn't thinking much about dinner, either; but that's sinful waste, Peter, in the first place, and bad for one's tummy in the second. However, they're sentimental, they are, and there's a fortune in it. If they could only bring themselves to do just that for fifteen minutes at the Alhambra every night, they'd be the most popular turn in London."

"That's all very well," said he; "but if you eat so fast and talk at the same time, you'll pay for it very much as you think they will. Have you finished?"

"No, I haven't. I want cheese-straws, and I shall sit here till I get them or till the whole of London zigzags round me."

"I say," said Peter to their waitress, "if you possibly can, fetch us cheese-straws now. Not too many, but quickly. Can you? The lady won't go without them, and something must be done."

"Wouldn't the management wait if you telephoned, Peter dear?" inquired Julie sarcastically. "Just say who you are, and they sure will. If the chorus only knew, they'd go on strike against appearing before you came, or tear their tights or something dreadful like that, so that they couldn't come on. Yes, now I am ready. One wee last little drop of the bubbly--I see it there--and I'll sacrifice coffee for your sake. Give me a cigarette, though. Thanks. And now my wrap."

She rose, the cigarette in her fingers, smiling at him. Peter hastily followed, walking on air. He was beginning to realise how often he failed to understand Julie, and to see how completely she controlled her apparently more frivolous moods; but he loved her in them. He little knew, as he followed her out, the tumult of thoughts that raced through that little head with its wealth of brown hair. He little guessed how bravely she was already counting the fleeting minutes, how resolutely keeping grip of herself in the flood which threatened to sweep her--how gladly!--away.

A good revue must be a pageant of music, colour, scenery, song, dance, humour, and the impossible. There must be good songs in it, but one does not go for the songs, any more than one goes to see the working out of a plot. Strung-up men, forty-eight hours out of the trenches, with every nerve on edge, must come away with a smile of satisfaction on their faces, to have a last drink at home and sleep like babies. Women who have been on nervous tension for months must be able to go there, and allow their tired senses to drink in the feast of it all, so that they too may go home and sleep. And in a sense their evening meant all this to Peter and Julie; but only in a sense.

They both of them bathed in the performance. The possible and impossible scenes came and went in a bewildering variety, till one had the feeling that one was asleep and dreaming the incomprehensible jumble of a dream, and, as in a nice dream, one knew it was absurd, but did not care. The magnificent, brilliant staging dazzled till one lay back in one's chair and refused to name the colours to oneself or admire their blending any more. The chorus-girls trooped on and off till they seemed countless, and one abandoned any wish to pick the prettiest and follow her through. And the gay palace of luxury, with its hundreds of splendidly dressed women, its men in uniform, its height and width and gold and painting, and its great arching roof, where, high above, the stirring of human hearts still went on, took to itself an atmosphere and became sentient with humanity.

Julie and Peter were both emotional and imaginative, and they were spellbound till the notes of the National Anthem roused them. Then, with the commonplaces of departure, they left the place. "It's so near," said Julie in the crowd outside; "let's walk again."

"The other pavement, then," said Peter, and they crossed. It was cold, and Julie clung to him, and they walked swiftly.

At the entrance Peter suggested an hour under the palms, but Julie pleaded against it. "Why, dear?" she said. "It's so cosy upstairs, and we have all we want. Besides, the lounge would be an anti-climax; let's go up."

They went up, and Julie dropped into her chair while Peter knelt to poke the fire. Then he lit a cigarette, and she refused one for once, and he stood there looking into the flame.

Julie drew a deep sigh. "Wasn't it gorgeous, Peter?" she said. "I can't help it, but I always feel I want it to go on for ever and ever. Did you ever see _Kismet?_ That was worse even than this. I wanted to get up and walk into the play. These modern things are too clever; you know they're unreal, and yet they seem to be real. You know you're dreaming, but you hate to wake up. I could let all that music and dancing and colour go on round me till I floated away and away, for ever."

Peter said nothing. He continued to stare into the fire.

"What do you feel?" demanded Julie.

Peter drew hard on his cigarette, and then he blew out the smoke. "I don't know," he said. "Yes, I do," he added quickly; "I feel I want to get up and preach a sermon."

"Good Lord, Peter! what a dreadful sensation that must be! Don't begin now, will you? I'm beginning to wish we'd gone into the lounge after all; you surely couldn't have preached there."

Peter did not smile. He went on as if she had not spoken, "Or write a great novel, or, better still, a great play," he said.

"What would be the subject, then, you Solomon, or the t.i.tle, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Peter dreamily. "_All Men are Gra.s.s_, _The Way of all Flesh_--no, neither of those is good, and besides, one at least is taken. I know," he added suddenly, "I would call it _Exchange_, that's all. My word, Julie, I believe I could do it." He straightened himself, and walked across the room and back again, once or twice. "I believe I could: I feel it tingling in me; but it's all formless, if you understand; I've no plot. It's just what I feel as I sit there in a theatre, as we did just now."

Julie leaned forward and took the cigarette she had just refused. She lit it herself with a half-burnt match, and Peter stood and watched her, but hardly saw what she was doing. She was as conscious of his preoccupation as if it were something physical about him.

"Explain, my dear," she said, leaning back and staring into the fire.

"I don't know that I can," he replied, and she felt as if he did not speak to her. "It's the bigness of it all, the beauty, the triumphant success. It's drawn that great house full, lured them in, the thousands of them, and it does so night after night. Tired people go there to be refreshed, and sad people to be made gay, and people sick of life to laugh and forget it. It's the world's big anodyne. It offers a great exchange. And all for a few shillings, Julie, and for a few hours. The sensation lingers, but one has to go again and again. It tricks one into thinking, almost, that it's the real thing, that one can dance like mayflies in the sun. Only, Julie, there comes an hour when down sinks the sun, and what of the mayflies then?"

Julie shifted her head ever so little. "Go on," she said, looking up intently at him.

He did not notice her, but her words roused him. He began to pace up and down again, and her eyes followed him. "Why," he said excitedly, "don't you see that it's a fraudulent exchange? It's a fraudulent exchange that it offers, and it itself is an exchange as fraudulent as that which our modern world is making. No, not our modern world only. We talk so big of our modernity, when it's all less than the dust--this year's leaves, no better than last year's, and fallen to-morrow. Rome offered the same exchange, and even a better one, I think--the blood and l.u.s.t and conflict of the amphitheatre. But they're both exchanges, offered instead of the great thing, the only great thing."

"Which is, Peter?"

"G.o.d, of course--Almighty G.o.d; Jesus, if you will, but I'm not in a mood for the tenderness of that. It's G.o.d Himself Who offers tired and sad people, and people sick of life, no anodyne, no mere rest, but stir and fight and the thrill of things n.o.bly done--n.o.bly tried, Julie, even if n.o.bly failed. Can't you see it? And you and I to-night have been looking at what the world offers--in exchange."

He ceased and dropped into a chair the other side of the fire. A silence fell on them. Then Julie gave a little shiver. "Peter, dear," she said tenderly, "I'm a little tired and cold."

He was up at once and bending over her. "My darling, what a beast I am!

I clean forgot you for a minute. What will you have? What about a hot toddy? Shall I make one?" he demanded, smiling. "Donovan taught me how, and I'm really rather good at it."

She smiled back at him, and put her hand up to smooth his hair. "That would be another exchange, Peter," she said, "and I don't want it. Only one thing can warm me to-night and give me rest."

He read what she meant in her eyes, and knelt beside the chair to put his arms around her. She leaned her face on his shoulder, and returned the kisses that he showered upon her. "Poor mayflies," she said to herself, "how they love to dance in the sun!"

CHAPTER IX

Ever after that next day, the Sat.u.r.day, will remain in Peter's memory as a time by itself, of special significance, but a significance, except for one incident, very hard to place. It began, indeed, very quietly, and very happily. They breakfasted again in their own room, and Julie was in one of her subdued moods, if one ever could say she was subdued.

Afterwards Peter lit a cigarette and strolled over to the window. "It's a beastly day," he said, "cloudy, cold, windy, and going to rain, I think.

What shall we do? Snow up in the hotel all the time?"

"No," said Julie emphatically, "something quite different. You shall show me some of the real London sights, Westminster Abbey to begin with. Then we'll drive along the Embankment and you shall tell me what everything is, and we'll go and see anything else you suggest. I don't suppose you realise, Peter, that I'm all but absolutely ignorant of London."

He turned and smiled on her. "And you really _want_ to see these things?"

he said.

"Yes, of course I do. You don't think I suggested it for your benefit?

But if it will make you any happier, I'll flatter you a bit. I want to see those things now, with you, partly because I'm never likely to find anyone who can show me them better. Now then. Aren't you pleased?"

At that, then, they started. Westminster came first, and they wandered all over it and saw as much as the conditions of war had left for the public to see. It amused Peter to show Julie the things that seemed to him to have a particular interest--the Chapter House, St. Faith's Chapel, the tomb of the Confessor, and so on. She made odd comments. In St.

Faith's she said: "I don't say many prayers, Peter, but here I couldn't say one."