§ 9
After the first violent rupture that Mr. Grimes had organized, Joan and Peter parted and met again in a series of separations and resumptions. They went off to totally dissimilar atmospheres, Joan to the bracing and roughening air of Highmorton and Peter first to the brightness of White Court and then to the vigorous work and play of Caxton; and each time they returned for the holidays to Margate or Limpsfield or Pelham Ford changed, novel, and yet profoundly familiar. Always at first when holidays brought them together again they were shy with each other and intensely egotistical, anxious to show off their new tricks and make the most of whatever small triumphs school life had given them. Then in a day or so they would be at their ease together like a joint that has been dislocated and has slipped into place again. Cambridge at last brought them nearer together, and ended this series of dislocations. After much grave weighing of the situation by Miss Fairchild, the principal of Newton Hall, Peter, when Joan came up, was given the status of a full brother.
They grew irregularly, and that made some quaint variations of relationship. Peter, soon after he went to Caxton, fell to expanding enormously. He developed a chest, his limbs became great things. There was a summer bitten into Joan’s memory when he regarded her as nothing more than a “leetle teeny female tick,” and descanted on the minuteness of her soul and body. But he had lost some of his lightness, if none of his dexterity and balance, as a climber, and Joan got her consolations among the lighter branches of various trees they explored. Next Christmas Joan herself had done some serious growing, and the gap was not so wide. But it was only after her first term at Newnham that Joan passed from the subservience of a junior to the confidence of a senior. She did it at a bound. She met him one day in the narrow way between Sidney Street and Petty Cury. Her hair was up and her eyes were steady; most of her legs had vanished, and she had clothes like a real woman. We do not foregather even with foster brothers in the streets of Cambridge, but a passing hail is beyond the reach of discipline. “Hullo, Petah!” she said, “what a gawky great thing you’re getting!”
Peter, a man in his second year, was so taken aback he had no adequate reply.
“You’ve grown too,” he said, “if it comes to that”;—a flavourless reply. And there was admiration in his eyes.
An encounter for subsequent regrets. He thought over it afterwards. The cheek of her! It made his blood boil.
“So long, Petah,” said Joan, carrying it off to the end....
They were sterner than brother and sister with each other. There was never going to be anything “soppy” between them. At fourteen, when Peter passed into the Red Indian phase of a boy’s development, when there can be no more “blubbing,” no more shirking, he carried Joan with him. She responded magnificently to the idea of pluck. Spartan ideals ruled them both. And a dark taciturnity. Joan would have died with shame if Peter had penetrated the secret romance of Joan Stubland, and the days of Peter’s sagas were over for ever. When Peter was fifteen he was consumed by a craving for a gun, and Oswald gave him one. “But kill,” said Oswald. “If you let anything get away wounded——”
Peter took Joan out into the wood at the back. He missed a pigeon, and then he got one.
“Pick it up, Joan,” he said, very calmly and grandly.
Joan was white to the lips, but she picked up the bloodstained bird in silence. These things had to happen.
Then out of a heap of leaves in front darted a rabbit. Lop, lop, lop, went its little white scut. Bang! and over it rolled, but it wasn’t instantly killed. Horror came upon Joan. She was nearest; she ran to the wretched animal, which was lying on its side and kicking automatically, and stood over it. Its eyes were bright and wide with terror. “Oh, how am I to kill it?” she cried, with agony in her voice; “what am I to do-o?” She wrung her hands. She felt she was going to pieces, giving herself away, failing utterly. Peter would despise her and jeer at her. But the poor little beast! The poor beast! There is a limit to pride. She caught it up. “Petah!” she cried quite pitifully, on the verge of a whimper.
Peter had come up to her. He didn’t look contemptuous. He was white-lipped too. She had never seen him look scared before. He snatched the rabbit from her and killed it by one, two, three—she counted—quick blows—she didn’t see. But she had met his eyes, and they were as distressed as hers. Just for a moment.
Then he was a fifth form boy again. He examined his victim with an affectation of calm. “Too far back,” he said. “Bad shot. Mustn’t do that again.”...
The rabbit was quite still and limp now, dangling from Peter’s hand, its eye had glazed, blood dripped and clotted at its muzzle, but its rhythmic desperate kicking was still beating in Joan’s brain.
Was this to go on? Could she go on?
Peter’s gun and the pigeon were lying some yards away. He regarded them and then looked down at the rabbit he held.
“Now I know I can shoot,” he said, and left the sentence unfinished.
“Bring the pigeon, Joan,” he said, ending an indecision, and picked up his gun and led the way back towards the house....
“We got a pigeon and a rabbit,” Joan babbled at tea to Oswald. “Next time, Petah’s going to let me have the gun.”
Our tone was altogether sporting.
But there was no next time. There were many unspoken things between Joan and Peter, and this was to be one of them. For all the rest of their lives neither Joan nor Peter went shooting again. Men Peter was destined to slay—but no more beasts. Necessity never compelled them, and it would have demanded an urgent necessity before they would have faced the risk of seeing another little furry creature twist and wriggle and of marking how a bright eye glazes over. But they were both very bitterly ashamed of this distressing weakness. They left further shooting for “tomorrow,” and it remained always tomorrow. They said nothing about their real feelings in the matter, and Peter cleaned and oiled his new gun very carefully and hung it up conspicuously over the mantelshelf of their common room, ready to be taken down at any time—when animals ceased to betray feeling.