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

Peter helped him up. The subaltern glanced at his badges and smiled. "He's in good company anyway, padre," he said. "If you're leaving the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness, here's one to bring home rejoicing." He slammed the door. "Right-o!" he said to the guard; "they're all aboard now." The man comprehended the action, and waved a flag. The train started after the manner of French trains told off for the use of British soldiers, and Jenks collapsed on the seat.

"Damned near thing that!" he said unsteadily; "might have missed the bloody boat! I saw my little bit, though. She's a jolly good sort, she is. Blasted strong stuff that French brandy, though! Whiskies at the club first, yer know. Give us a hand, padre; I reckon I'll just lie down a bit…. Jolly good sort of padre, eh, skipper? What?"

Peter helped him into his place, and then came and sat at his feet, opposite Langton, who smiled askance at him. "I'll read a bit," he said. "Jenks won't trouble us further; he'll sleep it off. I know his sort. Got a book, padre?"

Peter said he had, but that he wouldn't read for a little, and he sat still looking at the country as they jolted past in the dusk. After a while Langton lit his candle, and contrived a wind-screen, for the centre window was broken, of a newspaper. Peter watched him drowsily. He had been up early and travelled already that day. The motion helped, too, and in half an hour or so he was asleep.

He dreamt that he was preaching Langton's views on the Sermon on the Mount in the pulpit of St. John's, and that the Canon, from his place beside the credence-table within the altar-rails, was shouting at him to stop. In his dream he persisted, however, until that irate dignitary seized the famous and massive offertory-dish by his side and hurled it in the direction of the pulpit. The clatter that it made on the stone floor awoke him.

He was first aware that the train was no longer in motion, and next that Langton's tall form was leaning half out of the window. Then confused noises penetrated his consciousness, and he perceived that light flickered in the otherwise darkened compartment. "Where are we?" he demanded, now fully awake. "What's up?"

Langton answered over his shoulder. "Some where outside of a biggish town," he said; "and there's the devil of a strafe on. The whole sky-line's lit up, but that may be twenty miles off. However, Fritz must have advanced some."

He was interrupted by a series of much louder explosions and the rattle of machine-gun fire. "That's near," he said. "Over the town, I should say—an air-raid, though it may be long-distance firing. Come and see for yourself."

He pulled himself back into the carriage, and Peter leaned out of the window in his turn. It was as the other had said. Flares and sudden flashes, that came and went more like summer-lightning than anything else, lit up the whole sky-line, but nearer at hand a steady glow from one or two places showed in the sky. One could distinguish flights of illuminated tracer bullets, and now and again what he took to be Very lights exposed the countryside. Peter saw that they were in a siding, the banks of which reached just above the top of the compartments. It was only by craning that he could see fields and what looked like a house beyond. Men were leaning out of all the windows, mostly in silence. In the compartment next them a man cursed the Huns for spoiling his beauty sleep. It was slightly overdone, Peter thought.

"Good God!" said, his companion behind him. "Listen!"

It was difficult, but between the louder explosions Peter concentrated his senses on listening. In a minute he heard something new, a faint buzz in the air.

"Aeroplanes," said Langton coolly. "I hope they don't spot us. Let me see. Maybe it's our planes." He craned out in Peter's place. "I can't see anything," he said, "and you can hear they're flying high."

Down the train everyone was staring upwards now. "Christ!" exclaimed Langton suddenly, "some fool's lighting a pipe! Put that match out there," he called.

Other voices took him up. "That's better," he said in a minute. "Forgive my swearing, padre, but a match might give us away."

Peter was silent, and, truth to tell, terrified. He tried hard not to feel it, and glanced at Jenks. He was still asleep, and breathing heavily. He pressed his face against the pane, and tried to stare up too.

"They're coming," said Langton suddenly and quickly. "There they are, too—Hun planes. They may not see us, of course, but they may…." He brought his head in again and sat down.

"Is there anything we can do?" said Peter.

"Nothing," said Langton, "unless you like to get under the seat. But that's no real good. It's on the knees of the gods, padre, whatever gods there be."

Just then Peter saw one. Sailing obliquely towards them and lit by the light of a flare, the plane looked serene and beautiful. He watched it, fascinated.

"It's very low—two hundred feet, I should say," said Langton behind him. "Hope he's no pills left. I wonder whether there's another. Let's have a look the other side."

He had scarcely got up to cross the compartment when the rattle of a machine-gun very near broke out. "Our fellows, likely," he exclaimed excitedly, struggling with the sash, but they knew the truth almost as he spoke.

Langton ducked back. A plane on the other side was deliberately flying up the train, machine-gunning. "Down, padre, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, and threw himself on the floor.

Peter couldn't move. He heard the splintering of glass and a rending of woodwork, some oaths, and a sudden cry. The whirr of an engine filled his ears and seemed, as it were, on top of them. Then there was a crash all but at his side, and next instant a half-smothered groan and a dreadful gasp for breath.

He couldn't speak. He heard Langton say, "Hit, anyone?" and then Jenks' "They've got me, skipper," in a muffled whisper, and he noticed that the hard breathing had ceased. At that he found strength and voice and jumped up. He bent over Jenks. "Where have you got it, old man?" he said, and hardly realised that it was himself speaking.

The other was lying just as before, on his back, but he had pulled his knees up convulsively and a rug had slipped off. In a flare Peter saw beads of sweat on his forehead and a white, twisted face.

He choked back panic and knelt down. He had imagined it all before, and yet not quite like this. He knew what he ought to say, but for a minute he could not formulate it. "Where are you hit, Jenks?" was all he said.

The other turned his head a little and looked at him. "Body—lungs, I think," he whispered. "I'm done, padre; I've seen chaps before."

The words trailed off. Peter gripped himself mentally, and steadied his voice. "Jenks, old man," he said. "Just a minute. Think about God—you are going to Him, you know. Trust Him, will you? 'The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, saveth us from all sin.'"

The dying man, moved his hand convulsively. "Don't you worry, padre," he said faintly; "I've been—confirmed." The lips tightened a second with pain, and then: "Reckon I won't—shirk. Have you—got—a cigarette?"

Peter felt quickly for his case, fumbled and dropped one, then got another into his fingers. He hesitated a second, and then, put it to his own lips, struck a match, and puffed at it. He was in the act of holding it to the other when Langton spoke behind him:

"It's no good now, padre," he said quietly; "it's all over."

And Peter saw that it was.

The planes did not come back. The officer in charge of the train came down it with a lantern, and looked in. "That makes three," he said. "We can do nothing now, but we'll be in the station in a bit. Don't show any lights; they may come back. Where the hell were our machines, I'd like to know?"

He went on, and Peter sat down in his corner. Langton picked up the rug, and covered up the body. Then he glanced at Peter. "Here," he said, holding out a flask, "have some of this."

Peter shook his head. Langton came over to him. "You must," he said; "it'll pull you together. Don't go under now, Graham. You kept your nerve just now—come on."

At that Peter took it, and drained the little cup the other poured out for him. Then he handed it back, without a word.

"Feel better?" queried the other, a trifle curiously, staring at him.

"Yes, thanks," said Peter—"a damned sight better! Poor old Jenks! What blasted luck that he should have got it!… Langton, I wish to God it had been me!"

"And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter."

The charm of the little towns of Northern France is very difficult to imprison on paper. It is not exactly that they are old, although there is scarcely one which has not a church or a château or a quaint medieval street worth coming far to see; nor that they are particularly picturesque, for the ground is fairly flat, and they are all but always set among the fields, since it is by agriculture far more than by manufacture that they live. But they are clean and cheerful; one thinks of them under the sun; and they are very homely. In them the folk smile simply at you, but not inquisitively as in England, for each bustles gaily about his own affairs, and will let you do what you please, with a shrug of the shoulders. Abbeville is very typical of all this. It has its church, and from the bridge over the Somme the backs of ancient houses can be seen leaning half over the river, which has sung beneath them for five hundred years; and it is set in the midst of memories of stirring days. Yet it is not for these that one would revisit the little town, but rather that one might walk by the still canal under the high trees in spring, or loiter in the market-place round what the Hun has left of the statue of the famous Admiral with his attendant nymphs, or wander down the winding streets that skirt the ancient church and give glimpses of its unfinished tower.

Peter found it very good to be there in the days that followed the death of Jenks. True, it was now nearer to the seat of war than it had been for years, and air-raids began to be common, but in a sense the sound of the guns fitted in with his mood. So great a battle was being fought within him that the world could not in any case have seemed wholly at peace, and yet in the quiet fields, or sauntering of an afternoon by the river, he found it easier than at Havre to think. Langton was almost his sole companion, and a considerable intimacy had grown up between them. Peter found that his friend seemed to understand a great deal of his thoughts without explanation. He neither condoled nor exhorted; rather he watched with an almost shy interest the other's inward battle.

They lodged at the Hôtel de l'Angleterre, that hostelry in the street that leads up and out of the town towards Saint Riquier, which you enter from a courtyard that opens on the road and has rooms that you reach by means of narrow, rickety flights of stairs and balconies overhanging the court. The big dining-room wore an air of gloomy festivity. Its chandeliers swathed in brown paper, its faded paint, and its covered upholstery, suggested that it awaited a day yet to be when it should blossom forth once more in glory as in the days of old. Till then it was as merry as it could be. Its little tables filled up of an evening with the new cosmopolitan population of the town, and old Jacques bustled round with the good wine, and dropped no hint that the choice brands were nearly at an end in the cellar.

Peter and Langton