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

"Certainly, sir. There was a gentleman here once who did flowers beautifully, he did. But most likes us to do it for them."

She departed for the glasses. Peter saw that the florist had secured his violets, and took them first and filled a bowl. Then he walked into the bedroom and contemplated for a minute. Then he put the violets critically on the little table by the bed nearest the window, and stood back to see the result. Finding it good, he departed. When next he came in, it was to place a great bunch of roses on the mantelshelf, and a few sprays of the soft yellow and green mimosa on the dressing-table. For the sitting-room he had carnations and delphiniums, and he placed a high towering cluster of the latter on the writing-table, and a vase of the former on the mantelpiece. A few roses, left over, went on the small table that carried the reading-lamp, and he and the chambermaid surveyed the results.

"Lovely, I do think," she said; "any lady would love them. I likes flowers myself, I do. I come from the country, sir, where there's a many, and the wild flowers that Jack and I liked best of all. Specially primroses, sir." There was a sound in her voice as she turned away, and Peter heard it.

"Jack?" he queried softly.

"'E's been missing since last July, sir," she said, stopping by the door.

"Has he?" said Peter. "Well, you must not give up hope, you know; he may be a prisoner."

She shook her head. "He's dead," she said, with an air of finality. "I oughtn't to have spoke a word, but them flowers reminded me. I'm glad as how I have to do these rooms, sir. Most of them don't bother with flowers. Is there anything else you might be wanting, sir?"

"Light fires in both the grates, please," he said. "I'm so sorry about
Jack," he added.

She gave him a look, and passed out.

Peter wandered about touching this and that. Suddenly he remembered the magazines. He ran out and caught a lift about to descend, and was once more in the street. Near Leicester Square was a big foreign shop, and he entered it, and gathered of all kinds. As he went to pay, he saw La Vie Parisienne, and added that also to the bundle; Julie used to say she loved it. Back in the hotel, he sent them to his room, and glanced at his watch. He had time for tea. He went out into the lounge and ordered it, sitting back under the palms. It came, and he was in the act of pouring out a cup when he saw Donovan.

Donovan was with a girl, but so were most men; Peter could not be sure of her. It was only a glimpse he had, for the two had finished and were passing out. Donovan stood back to let her first through the great swing-doors, and then, pulling on his gloves, followed. They both disappeared.

Peter sat on, in a tumult. He had been too busy all day to reflect much, but now just what he was about to do began to overwhelm him. If Donovan met him with Julie? Well, they could pretend they had just met, they could even part, and meet again. Could they? Would Donovan be deceived for a minute? It seemed to him impossible. And he might be staying there. Suppose he met someone else. Langton? Sir Robert Doyle? His late Vicar? Hilda? Mr. Lessing? And Julie would have acquaintances too. He shook himself mentally, and lit a cigarette. Well, suppose they did; he was finished with them. Finished? Then, what lay ahead—what, after this, if he were discovered? And if he were not discovered? God knew….

His mind took a new train of thought: he was now just such a one as Donovan. Or as Pennell. As Langton? He wasn't sure; no, he thought not; Langton kept straight because he had a wife and kids. He had a centre. Donovan and Pennell had not, apparently. Well, he, Peter Graham, would have a centre; he would marry Julie. It would be heavenly. They had not spoken of it, of course, that night of the dinner, but surely Julie would. There could be no doubt after the week-end…. "I shan't marry or be given in marriage," she had said. It was like her to speak so, but of course she didn't mean it. No, he would marry; and then?

He blew out smoke. The Colonies, South Africa; he would get a job schoolmastering? He hated the idea; it didn't interest him. A farm? He knew nothing about it—besides, one wanted capital. What would he do? What did he want to do? Want—that was it; how did he want to spend his life? Well, he wanted Julie; everything else would fit round her, everything else would be secondary beside her. Of course. And as he got old it would still be the same, though he could not imagine either of them old. But still, when they did get old, his work would seem more important, and what was it to be? Probably it would have to be schoolmastering. Teaching Latin to little boys—History, Geography, Mathematics. He smiled ruefully; even factors worried him. They would hardly want Latin and Greek much in the Colonies, either. Perhaps at home; but would Julie stop at home? What would Julie do? He must ask her, sometime before Monday. Not that night—no, not that night….

He ground his cigarette into his cup, and pushed his hands into his pockets, his feet out before him. That night! He saw the sitting-room upstairs; they would go there first. Then he would suggest a dinner to her, in Soho; he knew a place that Pennell had told him of, Bohemian, but one could take anyone—at least, take Julie. It would be jolly watching the people, and watching Julie. He saw her, mentally, opposite him, and her eyes sparkling and alluring. And afterwards, warmed and fed—why, back to the hotel, to the sitting-room, by the fire. They would have a little supper, and then….

He pictured the bedroom. He would let Julie go first. He remembered reading in a novel how some newly married wife said to the fellow: "You'll come up in half an hour or so, won't you, dear?" He could all but see the words in print. And so, in half an hour or so, he would go in, and Julie would be in bed, by the violets, and he—he would know what men talked about, sometimes, in the anteroom…. He recalled a red-faced, coarse Colonel: "No man's a man till he's been all the way, I say…."

And he was a chaplain, a priest. Was he? The past months spun before him, his sermons, his talks to the wounded at the hospital, the things he had seen, the stories he had heard. He sighed. It was all a dream, a sham. There was no reality in it all. Where and what was Christ? An ideal, yes, but no more than an ideal, and unrealisable—a vision of the beautiful. He thought he had seen that once, but not now. The beautiful! Ah! What place had His Beauty in Travalini's, in the shattered railway-carriage, in the dinner at the Grand in Havre with Julie?

Julie. He dwelt on her, eyes, hair, face, skin, and lithe figure. He felt her kisses again on his lips, those last burning kisses of New Year's Night, and they were all to be his, as never before…. Julie. What, then, was she? She was his bride, his wife, coming to him consecrate—not by any State convention, not by any ceremony of man-made religion, but by the pure passion of human love, virginal, clean. It was human passion, perhaps, but where was higher love or greater sacrifice? Was this not worthy of all his careful preparation, worthy of the one centre of his being? Donovan, indeed! He wished he had stopped and told him the whole story, and that he expected Julie that night.

He jumped up, and walked out in the steps of Donovan, but with never another thought of him. A boy in uniform questioned him: "Taxi, sir?" He nodded, and the commissionaire pushed back the great swing-door. He stood on the steps, and watched the passers-by, and the lights all shaded as they were, that began to usher in a night of mystery. His taxi rolled up, and the man held the door open. "Victoria!" cried Peter, and to himself, as he sank back on the seat, "Julie!"

"Julie!" exclaimed Peter, "I should hardly have known you; you do look topping!"

"Glad rags make all that difference, old boy? Well, I am glad you did know me, anyhow. How are you? Had long to wait?"

"Only ten minutes or so, and I'm very fit, and just dying for you,
Julie."

She smiled up at him and blushed a little. "Are you, Peter? It's much the same here, my dear. But don't you think we had better get a move on, and not stop here talking all night?"

Peter laughed excitedly. "Rather," he said. "But I'm so excited at seeing you that I hardly know if I'm on my head or my heels. What about your luggage? What have you? Have you any idea where it is? There's a taxi waiting."

"I haven't much: a big suit-case, most important because it holds an evening dress—it's marked with my initials; a small leather trunk, borrowed, with a big star on it; and my dressing-case, which is here. And I think they're behind, but I wouldn't swear, because we've seemed to turn round three times in the course of the journey, but it may have been four!"

Peter chuckled. She was just the old Julie, but yet with a touch of something more shining in her eyes, and underlying even the simplest words.

"Well, you stand aside just a moment and I'll go and see," he said, and he hurried off in the crowd.

Julie stood waiting patiently by a lamp-stand while the world bustled about her. She wore a little hat with a gay pheasant's wing in it, a dark green travelling dress and neat brown shoes, and brown silk stockings. Most people looked at her as they passed, including several officers, but there was a different look in her brown eyes from that usually there, and they all passed on unhesitatingly.

It seemed to her a good while before Peter came up again, in his wake a railway Amazon with the trunk on her shoulder and the suit-case in her hand. "Sorry to keep you, dear," he said. "But there was a huge crush and next to no porters, if these are porters. It feels rotten to have a woman carrying one's luggage, but I suppose it can't be helped. Come on. Aren't you tired? Don't you want tea?"

"I am a little," she said "And I do a bit. Where are we going to get it? Do they sell teas in London, Peter, or have you taken a leaf out of my book?"

They laughed at the reminiscence. "Julie," said Peter, "this is my outfit, and you shall see what you think of it. Give me your ticket, will you? I want to see you through myself."

She handed him a little purse without a word, and they set off together. She was indulging in the feeling of surrender as if it were not a victory she had won, and he was glowing with the sense of acquisition, as if he had really acquired something.

Julie got into the taxi while Peter settled the luggage, gave directions, and paid the Amazon. Then he climbed in and pulled the door to, and they slipped out of the crowded station-yard into the roar of London. Julie put her hand in his. "Peter," she said, "do tell me where we're going. I'm dying to know. What arrangements have you made? Is it safe?"

He leaned over her, his eyes sparkling. "A kiss, first, Julie: no one
will see and it doesn't matter a damn if they do. That's the best of
London. My dear, I can hardly believe we're both here at last, and that
I've really got you." Their lips met.

Julie flung herself back with a laugh. "Oh, Peter," she said, "I shall never forget that first taxi. If you could have seen your own face! Really it was too