Simon Called Peter by Robert Keable (read aloud .txt) 📕

"Let's go," whispered Pennell at last.

They went out, and shut the door softly behind them. As they did so, some other door was opened noisily and banged, while footsteps began to drag slowly across the stone floor and up the aisle they had come down. The new-comer subsided into a pew with a clatter on the boards, but the murmured prayers went on unbroken.

Outside the street engulfed them. The same faces passed by. A street-car banged and clattered up towards the centre of the town, packed with jovial people. Pennell looked towards it half longingly. "Great Scott, Graham! I wish, now, we hadn't come away so soon," he said.

The lower valley of the Seine is one of the most beautiful and interesting river-stretches in Northern Europe. It was the High Street of old Normandy, and feuda, barons and medieval monks have left their mark upon it. From the castle of Tancarville to the abbey of Jumièges you can read the story of their doings; or when you stand in the Roman circus at Lillebonne, or enter the ancient cloister of M. Maeterlinck's modern residence at St. Wandrille, see plainly enough the writing of a still older legend, such as appeared, once, on the wall of a palace in Babylon. On the left bank steep hills, originally wholly clothed with forest and still thickly wooded, run down to the river with few breaks in them, each break, however, being garrisoned by an ancient town. Of these, Caudebec stands unrivalled. On the right bank the flat plain of Normandy stretches to the sky-line, pink-and-white in spring with miles of apple-orchards. The white clouds chase across its fair blue sky, driven by the winds from the sea, and tall poplars rise in their uniform rows along the river as if to guard a Paradise.

Caudebec can be reached from Le Havre in a few hours, and although cars for hire and petrol were not abundant in France at the time, one could find a chauffeur to make the journey if one was prepared to pay. Given fine weather, it was an ideal place for a day off in the spring. And Peter knew it.

In the Grand Magasin Julie had talked of a day off, and a party of four had been mooted, but when he had leisure to think of it, Peter found himself averse to four, and particularly if one of the four were to be Donovan. He admitted it freely to himself. Donovan was the kind of a man, he thought, that Julie must like, and he was the kind of man, too, to put him, Peter, into the shade. Ordinarily he asked for no better companion, but he hated to see Julie and Jack together. He could not make the girl out, and he wanted to do so. He wanted to know what she thought about many things, and—incidentally, of course—what she thought about him.

He had argued all this over next morning while shaving, and had ended by cutting himself. It was a slight matter, but it argued a certain absent-mindedness, and it brought him back to decency. He perceived that he was scheming to leave his friend out, and he fought resolutely against the idea. Therefore, that afternoon, he went to the hospital, spent a couple of hours chatting with the men, and finally wound up in the nurses' mess-room for tea as usual. It was a little room, long and narrow, at the end of the biggest ward, but its windows looked over the sea and it was convenient to the kitchen. Coloured illustrations cut from magazines and neatly mounted on brown paper decorated the walls, but there was little else by way of furniture or ornament except a long table and chairs. One could get but little talk except of a scrappy kind, for nurses came continually in and out for tea, and, indeed, Julie had only a quarter of an hour to spare. But he got things fixed up for the following Thursday, and he left the place to settle with Donovan.

That gentleman's company of native labour was lodged a mile or so through the docks from Peter's camp, on the banks of the Tancarville Canal. It was enlivened at frequent intervals, day and night, by the sirens of tugs bringing strings of barges to the docks, whence their cargo was borne overseas in the sea-going tramps, or, of course, taking equally long strings to the Seine for Rouen and Paris. It was mud and cinders underfoot, and it was walled off with corrugated-iron sheeting and barbed wire from the attentions of some hundreds of Belgian refugees who lived along the canal and parallel roads in every conceivable kind of resting-place, from ancient bathing-vans to broken-down railway-trucks. But there were trees along the canal and reeds and grass, so that there were worse places than Donovan's camp in Le Havre.

Peter found his friend surveying the endeavours of a gang of boys to construct a raised causeway from the officers' mess to the orderly-room, and he promptly broached his object. Donovan was entranced with the proposal, but he could not go. He was adamant upon it. He could possibly have got off, but it meant leaving his something camp for a whole day, and just at present he couldn't. Peter could get Pennell or anyone. Another time, perhaps, but not now. For thus can the devil trap his victims.

Peter pushed back for home on his bicycle, but stopped at the docks on his way to look up Pennell. That gentleman was bored, weary, and inclined to be blasphemous. It appeared that for the whole, infernal day he had had to watch the off-loading of motor-spares, that he had had no lunch, and that he could not get away for a day next week if he tried. "It isn't everyone can get a day off whenever he wants to, padre," he said. "In the next war I shall be …" Peter turned hard on his heel, and left him complaining to the derricks.

He was now all but cornered. There was nobody else he particularly cared to ask unless it were Arnold, and he could not imagine Arnold and Julie together. It appeared to him that fate was on his side; it only remained to persuade Julie to come alone. He pedalled back to mess and dinner, and then, about half-past eight, strolled round to the hospital again. It was late, of course, but he was a padre, and the hospital padre, and privileged. He knew exactly what to do, and that he was really as safe as houses in doing it, and yet this intriguing by night made him uncomfortable still. He told himself he was an ass to think so, but he could not get rid of the sensation.

Julie would be on duty till 9.30, and he could easily have a couple of minutes' conversation with her in the ward. He followed the railway-track, then, along the harbour, and went in under the great roof of the empty station. On the far platform a hospital train was being made ready for its return run, but, except for a few cleaners and orderlies, the place was empty.

An iron stairway led up from the platform to the wards above. He ascended, and found himself on a landing with the door of the theatre open before him. There was a light in it, and he caught the sound of water; some pro. was cleaning up. He moved down the passage and cautiously opened the door of the ward.

It was shaded and still. Somewhere a man breathed heavily, and another turned in his sleep. Just beyond the red glow of the stove, with the empty armchairs in a circle before it, were screens from which came a subdued light. He walked softly between the beds towards them, and looked over the top.

Inside was a little sanctum: a desk with a shaded reading-lamp, a chair, a couch, a little table with flowers upon it and a glass and jug, and on the floor by the couch a work-basket. Julie was at the desk writing in a big official book, and he watched her for a moment unobserved. It was almost as if he saw a different person from the girl he knew. She was at work, and a certain hidden sadness showed clearly in her face. But the little brown fringe of hair on her forehead and the dimpled chin were the same….

"Good-evening," he whispered.

She looked up quickly, with a start, and he noticed curiously how rapidly the laughter came back to her face. "You did startle me, Solomon," she said. "What is it?"

"I want to speak to you a minute about Thursday," he said. "Can I come in?"

She got up and came round the screens. "Follow me," she said, "and don't make a noise."

She led him across the ward to the wide verandah, opening the door carefully and leaving it open behind her, and then walked to the balustrade and glanced down. The hospital ship had gone, and there was no one visible on the wharf. The stars were hidden, and there was a suggestion of mist on the harbour, through which the distant lights seemed to flicker.

"You're coming on, Solomon," she said mockingly. "Never tell me you'd have dared to call on the hospital to see a nurse by night a few weeks ago! Suppose matron came round? There is no dangerous case in my ward."

"Not among the men, perhaps," said Peter mischievously. "But, look here, about Thursday; Donovan can't go, nor Pennell, and I don't know anyone else I want to ask."

"Well, I'll see if I can raise a man. One or two of the doctors are fairly decent, or I can get a convalescent out of the officers' hospital."

She had the lights behind her, and he could not see her face, but he knew she was laughing at him, and it spurred him on. "Don't rag, Julie," he said, "You know I want you to come alone."

There was a perceptible pause. Then: "I can't cut Tommy," she said.

"Not for once?" he urged. She turned away from him and looked down at the water. It is curious how there come moments of apprehension in all our lives when we want a thing, but know quite well we are mad to want it. Julie looked into the future for a few seconds, and saw plainly, but would not believe what she saw.

When she turned back she had her old manner completely. "You're a dear old thing," she said, "and I'll do it. But if it gets out that I gadded about for a day with an officer, even though he is a padre, and that we went miles out of town, there'll be some row, my boy. Quick now! I must get back. What's the plan?"

"Thanks awfully," said Peter. "It will be a rag. What time can you get off?"

"Oh, after breakfast easily—say eight-thirty."

"Right. Well, take the tram-car to Harfleur—you know?—as far as it goes. I'll be at the terminus with a car. What time must you be in?"

"I can get late leave till ten, I think," she said.

"Good! That gives us heaps of time. We'll lunch and tea in Caudebec, and have some sandwiches for the road home."

"And if the car breaks down?"

"It won't," said Peter. "You're lucky in love, aren't you?"

She did not laugh. "I don't know," she said. "Good-night."

And then Peter had walked home, thinking of Hilda. And he had sat by the sea, and come to the conclusion that he was a rotter, but in the web of Fate and much to be pitied, which is like a man. And then he had played auction till midnight and lost ten francs, and gone to bed concluding that he was certainly unlucky—at cards.

As Peter sat in his car at the Harfleur terminus that Thursday it must be confessed that he was largely indifferent to the beauties of the Seine Valley that he had professedly come to see. He was nervous, to begin with, lest he should be recognised by anyone, and he was in one of his troubled moods. But he had not long to wait. The tram came out, and he threw away his cigarette and walked to meet the passengers.

Julie looked very smart in the grey with its touch of scarlet, but she was discontented with it. "If only I could put on a few glad rags," she said as she climbed into