Simon Called Peter
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
1921
She never lived, maybe, but it is truer to say that she never dies. Nor shall she ever die. One may believe in God, though He is hard to find, and in Women, though such as Julie are far to seek.
The glamour of no other evil thing is stronger than the glamour of war. It would seem as if the cup of the world's sorrow as a result of war had been filled to the brim again and again, but still a new generation has always been found to forget. A new generation has always been found to talk of the heroisms that the divine in us can manifest in the mouth of hell and to forget that so great a miracle does not justify our creation of the circumstance.
Yet if ever war came near to its final condemnation it was in 1914-1918. Our comrades died bravely, and we had been willing to die, to put an end to it once and for all. Indeed war-weary men heard the noise of conflict die away on November 11, 1918, thinking that that end had been attained. It is not yet three years ago; a little time, but long enough for betrayal.
Long enough, too, for the making of many books about it all, wherein has been recorded such heroisms as might make God proud and such horror as might make the Devil weep. Yet has the truth been told, after all? Has the world realized that in a modern war a nation but moves in uniform to perform its ordinary tasks in a new intoxicating atmosphere? Now and again a small percentage of the whole is flung into the pit, and, for them, where one in ten was heavy slaughter, now one in ten is reasonable escape. The rest, for the greater part of the time, live an unnatural life, death near enough to make them reckless and far enough to make them gay. Commonly men and women more or less restrain themselves because of to-morrow; but what if there be no to-morrow? What if the dice are heavily weighted against it? And what of their already jeoparded restraint when the crisis has thrown the conventions to the winds and there is little to lighten the end of the day?
Robert Keable
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SIMON CALLED PETER
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO JULIE
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
PART I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
PART II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
Part at least of Julie's programme was fulfilled to the letter, for they lay long in bed talking—desultory, reminiscent talk, which sent Peter's mind back over the months and the last few days, even after Julie was asleep in the bed next his. Like a pageant, he passed, in review scene after scene, turning it over, and wondering at significances that he had not before, imagined. He recalled their first meeting, that instantaneous attraction, and he asked himself what had caused it. Her spontaneity, freshness, and utter lack of conventionality, he supposed, but that did not seem to explain all. He wondered at the change that had even then come about in himself that he should have been so entranced by her, He went over his early hopes and fears; he thought again of conversations with Langton; and he realised afresh how true it was that the old authorities had dwindled away; that no allegiance had been left; that his had been a citadel without a master. And then Julie moved through his days again—Julie at Caudebec, daring, iconoclastic, free; Julie at Abbeville, mysterious, passionate, dominant; Julie at Dieppe—ah, Julie at Dieppe! He marvelled that he had held out so long after Dieppe, and then Louise rose before him. He understood Louise less than Julie, perhaps, and with all the threads in his hand he failed to see the pattern. He turned over restlessly. It was easy to see how they had come to be in London; it would have been more remarkable if they had not so come together; but now, what now? He could not sum up Julie amid the shifting scenes of the last few days. She had been so loving, and yet, in a way, their love had reached no climax. It had, indeed, reached what he would once have thought a complete and ultimate climax, but plainly Julie did not think so. And nor did he—now. The things of the spirit were, after all, so much greater than the things of the flesh. The Julie of Friday night had been his, but of this night…? He rolled over again. What had she meant at the play? He told himself her tears were simple emotion, her laughter simple reaction, but he knew it was not true….