Peter might justly have complained that his birth was too calmly received. For Peter's mother accepted him without demur. Women who nurse themselves more thoroughly than they nurse their babies will incredulously hear that Mrs. Paragon made little difference in her life on Peter's account until within four hours of his coming. Nevertheless Peter was a healthy baby, shapeless and mottled.
Mrs. Paragon was tall and fair, with regular features and eyes set well apart. They looked at you candidly, and you were aware of their friendly interest. They perfectly expressed the simplicity and peace of her character. She was mild and immovable; with a strength that was felt by all who dealt with her, though she rarely asserted it. She had the slow, deep life of a mother.
Mr. Paragon was at all points contrasted. He was short, and already at this time he was stout. He had had no teaching; but he was not an ignorant man. He was naturally of an active mind; and he had read extensively the literature that suited his habit of reflection.
Mr. Paragon was the son of a small tradesman, and had by the death of his parents been thrown upon the London streets. After ten years he had emerged as a managing clerk.
Had Mr. Paragon been well treated he might have reached his fortieth year sunny and charitable, with a cheerful faith in people and institutions. But living a celibate life, insufficiently fed, shabbily clothed, and never doubting his mental superiority to prosperous employers, he had naturally adopted extremely bitter views of the world.
Surmounting a shelf of Mr. Paragon's favourite books was a plaster bust of Bradlaugh. The shelf itself included Tom Paine's Rights of Man, Godwin's Political Justice, and the works of Voltaire in forty English volumes. Mr. Paragon talked the language of Godwin's philosophic day. Priests, kings, aristocracies, and governments were his familiar bogies. He went every Sunday to a Labour church where extracts from Shelley and Samuel Butler were read by the calendar; and he was a successful orator of a powerful group of rebels among the railwaymen.
Mr. Paragon was more Falstaff than Cassius to the eye. There was something a little ludicrous in Mr. Paragon, with legs well apart, hands deep in his trousers, demonstrating that religion was a device of government for the deception of simple men, and that property was theft.
Mrs. Paragon loved her husband, and ignored his opinions. He on his side found rest after the bitterness of his early years in the shelter of her wisdom. His anarchism became more and more an intellectual indulgence. Gradually the edge was taken from his temper. He began to enjoy his grievances now that they no longer pinched him. His charity, in a way that charity has, extended with his circumference. He was earning ￡4 a week, and he had in his wife a housekeeper who could make ￡4 cover the work of ￡6. Mrs. Paragon did not, like many of her friends, overtask an incompetent drudge at ￡10 a year. She saved her money, and halved her labour. Ends met; and things were decently in order. Mr. Paragon was happy; insured against reasonable disaster; with sufficient energy and spirit left at the end of a day's work to take himself seriously as a citizen and a man.
There were times when Mr. Paragon took himself very seriously indeed. On the evening of the day when Mr. Samuel, curate of the parish, called to urge Mrs. Paragon to have Peter christened, Mr. Paragon talked so incisively that only his wife could have guessed how little he intended.
No priests, he said. "That's final."
He looked in fierce dispute at Mrs. Paragon; but meeting her calm eyes, looked hastily away at Peter, who was sleeping by the fire in a clothes basket.
Mrs. Paragon was dishing up the evening meal; and Mr. Paragon saw that a reasonably large pie-dish had appeared from the oven, from which arose a browned pyramid of sliced potatoes. The kitchen was immediately filled with a savour only to be associated with Mr. Paragon's favourite supper.
Mrs. Paragon ignored the eagerness with which he drew to the table. Shepherd's pie is a simple thing, but not as Mrs. Paragon made it. Mr. Paragon, as he spooned generously into the steaming dish, had forgotten Mr. Samuel till Mrs. Paragon reminded him.
Mr. Samuel, she said, "is only doing his duty."
Mr. Paragon washed down a large mouthful of pie with small beer. Another mouthful was cooling upon the end of his fork.
Who made it his duty? he asked.
Mrs. Paragon never answered these rhetorical questions; and Mr. Paragon added, after a mouthful:
There are honest jobs.
Yes, dear; but Mr. Samuel believes in christening.
Perhaps he does. Mr. Samuel believes that the animals went in two by two.
There was a long pause. Then Mrs. Paragon left the table to serve a large suet pudding studded with raisins.
She dealt with it in silence. Mr. Paragon, as always on these occasions when they were pulling different ways, felt as if he were trying to make waves in a pool by blowing upon the surface. He could never more than superficially ruffle the spirit of his wife. He was obscurely aware that she had inexhaustible reserves.
The meal concluded without further conversation; but, when Mr. Paragon had eaten more than was good for him, he began to feel that impulsive necessity to be generous which invariably overtook him sooner or later in his differences with Mrs. Paragon. He looked at her amiably:
I see it like this, he said. "Mr. Samuel thinks he's right. But he's not going to stuff it into my boy. I'm an independent man, and I think for myself."
Yes, dear, said Mrs. Paragon. "I don't know whether Mr. Samuel is right or wrong. I want to do the best for Peter."
Mr. Paragon looked sharply at his wife. She was sitting comfortably beside the clothes basket, resting for the first time since seven o'clock in the morning. There was not the remotest suggestion that she was resisting him. Nevertheless Mr. Paragon was aware of a passive antagonism. He was sure she wanted Peter to be christened; he was also sure that none of his very reasonable views affected her in the least degree.
He was right. Mrs. Paragon liked to hear her husband talk. But logic did not count in her secure world. She knew only what she wanted and felt. Calm and unutterable sense was all her genius; and Mr. Paragon felt, rather than knew, that his books and opinions were feathers in the scale.
If Peter isn't christened, Mrs. Paragon softly pursued, "he'll be getting ideas into his head. I want him to start like other boys. Let him find out for himself whether Mr. Samuel's right or wrong. If you keep Peter away from Church he'll think there's something wrong with it."
Something wrong with it! exploded Mr. Paragon. "I'll tell you what's wrong with it."
Mr. Paragon proceeded to do so at some length. Mrs. Paragon was quite content to see Mr. Paragon spending his force. Mr. Paragon talked for a long time, ending in firm defiance.
I don't see a son of mine putting pennies into the plate for the clergyman's Easter Holiday Fund, he noisily concluded. "When my son is old enough to read Genesis, he'll be old enough to read the Origin of Species and the works of Voltaire."
Thereafter he sat for the rest of the evening by the kitchen fire reading his favourite volume of the forty—the adventures of Candide and of Pangloss.
But for a few moments the reading was interrupted, for Peter suddenly woke and yelled for food. As Mrs. Paragon sat with the child, Mr. Paragon had never felt more conscious of her serenity, of her immovable strength, of her eternity. He watched her over the pages of his book.
When he again looked into the adventures of Candide they had lost something of their zest. He wondered between the lines whether the patriarch of Ferney would have written with quite so definite an assurance and clarity if once he had looked into the eyes of Mrs. Paragon.
A few days later Peter was christened at the local church.
Miranda was thirteen years old, and she lived in the next house. She was Peter's best friend. They had soon discovered that their ideas as to a good game were similar, and for many years they had played inseparably. Already Mrs. Paragon and Mrs. Smith had decided to open a way through the wall that divided the two gardens.
To-day this breach in the wall had been filled in by Miranda with packing-cases and an old chair. Miranda stood beside her defences of the breach with sword and shield on the summit of a wall less than nine inches across.
At the wall's foot was Peter. He was his favourite hero—Shakespeare's fifth Henry.
"How yet resolves the governor of the town? This is the latest parle we will admit.
"The moment had come for Miranda to descend from the wall and deliver the keys of the city. But Miranda this morning refused the usual programme. Peter, hearing that the text of Shakespeare would not on this occasion be followed, resolved that none of the horrors of war should be spared.
He came to the attack with a battering-ram.
Saint George! Saint George! he shouted, and the ram rushed forward.
France! France! Miranda screamed, and unexpectedly emptied a pail of cold water upon Peter's head.
Peter left the ram and swiftly retreated.
Both parties were by this time lost to respect of consequences. Into Peter's mind there suddenly intruded Shakespeare's vision of himself.
"... And at his heels, Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment.
"Fire! Obviously this was the retort.
Nothing in the world burns so fiercely as a well-dried bundle of straw. Within half a minute of the match there was literally a roar of flame, ascending into the crevices of Miranda's breach. She rushed into the smoke, swayed, and leaped blindly into her father's marrow-bed.
Her father's marrows had been tenderly nursed to the threshold of perfection. It was a portion of his routine to come into the garden after breakfast to inspect, feel, weigh in his hands, and liberally to discourse upon marrows. But nothing at that moment could sober Miranda. She did not care.
Peter was for the moment awed into inaction by a fire which burned more rapidly than he had intended; but he climbed at last upon the wall, saw Miranda prone among the marrows, and, surging with conquest, leaped furiously upon her.
Peter was more complicated than Miranda. Miranda did not yet know that she had ruined her father's marrows. She was mercifully made to feel and to know one thing at a time; and at this moment she felt that the only thing in the world that mattered was to kill Peter.
But Peter realised in mid-air that he, too, would soon be standing amid extended ruins of the marrow-bed. His moment of indecision was fatal. Spreading his legs, to avoid a particularly fine vegetable, he fell headlong. Miranda was swiftly upon him, and they rolled among the shoots and blossoms. Peter forgot his scruples. He drew the dagger at his belt, and stabbed.
Triumph was stillborn. He felt himself suddenly lifted from the marrow-bed, and was next aware of some vigorous blows indelicately placed.
Mrs. Smith had returned from marketing, and looked for her daughter. The fire was not difficult to perceive; it was roaring to heaven. Nor was Miranda easily overlooked, for she was in her death-agony.
Miranda calmly stood by, waiting until Mrs. Smith was free to deal with her. Miranda was always sensible. Her turn would come.
Mrs. Smith suddenly dropped Peter into the marrows, and turned the garden hose upon Peter's fire. Peter, scrambling to his feet, watched her with dry, contemptuous eyes. The fire was furiously crackling, shooting up spark and flame. It was beautiful and splendid. Peter found himself wondering in his humiliation how Mrs. Smith could so callously extinguish it.
I never saw such children, said Mrs. Smith. "I don't know what your father will say, Miranda."
Mrs. Smith was a hard-working wife. She had no time for thought or imagination. She dealt with Miranda, and children generally, by rote. "Mischief" was something that children loved, for which they were punished. It was recognised as the sort of thing serious people avoided.
I don't know what your father will say, Miranda. The phrase was automatic with Mrs. Smith. Miranda knew that her father would say less than her mother.
It was my fire, said Peter, smouldering wickedly; "and they are my marrows."
I wasn't talking to you, said Mrs. Smith; "you'd better go away."
At this point Mrs. Paragon appeared above the wall.
Peter, she said, "you might have burned the house down."
How different, Peter thought, was his mother from Mrs. Smith. His mother understood. Obviously it was wrong to burn the house down. He saw the point. His mother hadn't any theories about mischief.
Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Paragon exchanged some sentiments on the waywardness of children, and the fire being quenched, Miranda was kept indoors for the rest of the day. Peter wistfully wandered between meals about the scene of his morning's adventure. He was burning with a sense of wrong. He admitted his fault. He had imperilled the house, and he had helped to destroy his neighbour's marrows. But he felt that Mrs. Smith's view of things was perverse, and that his humiliation had been out of all proportion to his offence. At the thought of Miranda's imprisonment he savagely flushed.
Peter ended the day in a softer mood. In the evening he had seen Mr. Smith inspecting the ruins of his marrow bed. He knew exactly what Mr. Smith was feeling. He remembered how he himself had felt when Mrs. Smith had made him destroy a platform he had built in the chestnut tree at the foot of the garden.
Peter dashed through the gap in the wall. Mr. Smith, a kind little man with the temperament of an angel, looked him sorrowfully in the face. Peter's contrition was manifest and perfectly understood.
Bit of a mess, eh! said Mr. Smith with an affectation that it did not matter.
I'm sorry, said Peter. "It's a shame. I'm awfully sorry."
That's all right, said Mr. Smith. Then he added cheerfully: "Your father will put it right."
Mr. Smith, as a gardener, was the pupil of Mr. Paragon. But though he had complete confidence in his instructor, his belief that anyone would ever be able to make anything of the mangled vegetation between them was obviously pretended for Peter's sake; and Peter knew this as well as he.
Peter brushed away the necessary tears, and was about to obey an impulse to grip Mr. Smith's hand in sympathy, when Mrs. Smith called her husband sharply to supper.
Peter watched him disappear into the house with a sudden conviction that life was difficult. Already he heard the voice, thin and penetrating, of Mrs. Smith, raised in a discourse upon mischief.
Peter went in to his mother to tell her that he had apologised to Mr. Smith. He knew it would please her, and he also knew that his father, when he came home, would treat him with justice and understanding.
Mr. Paragon was intended for a gardener. Had he been put upon the land at an early age he would neither have read books nor misread men: missing these opportunities for cynicism. He might have given his name to a chrysanthemum; and in ripe age have been full of meditated wisdom.
That Mr. Paragon at this time should sensibly have softened from the bitterness of his youth, was as much due to his large garden as to the influence of his wife and the effect of his prosperity. In his oldest and toughest clothes, working as English labourers worked before they had lost the secret, Mr. Paragon in no way resembled himself as member of the Labour church and a popular orator. The land absorbed him. He handled his spade in an indescribable, professional manner. You recognised the connoisseur who gathers in his palms the rarest china. You trust the man who by mere handling of an object can convey to you a sense of its value. In the same way you trusted Mr. Paragon with a spade. When Mr. Paragon took a cutting it always struck. When he selected seeds they always were fruitful. When he built a bank or rounded the curve of a plot the result was always pleasing; and it came of itself, without reflection or difficulty. His gift was from nature. He had read no literature of gardening, and he had had no instruction. It was his charming privilege that a garden naturally blossomed under his hands.
Mrs. Paragon encouraged in every possible way her husband's love of the soil. Instinctively she divined that here he was best, and that here he was nearest herself. She was rarely without some of his flowers upon her table or pinned in her dress; and when on free days Mr. Paragon spent absorbed and laborious hours in the garden, Mrs. Paragon brought him cheese and beer, or tea and muffins, waiting at his elbow, interested and critical, while he discussed his plans, and asked her for advice which he never regarded. Had Mrs. Paragon neglected to feed him on these occasions he would not have noticed it, for he lost all count of time, and did not remember he was hungry till darkness came.
The most striking event of the year for Mr. Paragon and his house was the disposal of the season's rubbish. For twelve months it accumulated in a large hole, rotting in the rain and sun. Mr. Paragon dug it carefully into the soil at the end of the year, using it as a foundation for beds and banks. Usually the whole family assisted at the carting of the rubbish, with a box on wheels.
Peter was master of the convoy for carting the rubbish, and this was a military enterprise. Miranda harassed his operations to the best of her ability. There were ambuscades, surprises, excursions and alarms.
Mr. Smith looked upon these operations with delight. He liked to see Mr. Paragon at work in the garden. He was proud of his successful neighbour, and took real pleasure in his competence. Moreover, he delighted in Peter's lively and interesting pretences. He would himself have led the attack upon Peter's convoy had he been free of Mrs. Smith's critical and contemptuous survey from the back-parlour window. Once he had actively taken part, and Mrs. Smith discovered him on all fours among the gooseberries, whence he had intended to create a diversion in Peter's rear. The rational frigidity with which she had come from the house to inquire what he imagined himself to be doing effectually prevented a repetition.
This afternoon there was a sharp encounter. This was a great moment in Peter's life owing to a brief, almost instantaneous, passage. Miranda met Peter's onslaught in her manly fashion, and soon they were locked in a desperate embrace. Suddenly Peter saw Miranda, as it seemed to him afterwards, for the first time. Her head was flung back, her cheeks crimsonly defiant, eyes shining, and hair scattered. For Peter it was a vision. He saw with uneasy terror that Miranda was beautiful. He had a quailing instinct to release her. It passed; but Miranda met the look that came into his eyes and understood.
Who can say how softly and insensibly the change had been prepared? The books they had read; the strange couples that walked in the evening, curiously linked; the half-thoughts and surmises; queer little impulses of cruelty or tenderness that had passed between them—all were suddenly gathered up.
Peter realised the difference in his life that this moment had made for him in the late evening when Mr. Paragon was showing him a transit of Jupiter's third moon. Astronomy was a passion with Mr. Paragon. Astronomy overthrew Genesis and confounded religion. He had picked up cheap a six-inch reflecting telescope, and very frequently on fine evenings he probed the heavens for uninspected nebul?, resolved double stars, mapped the surface of the moon, followed the fascinating mutation of the variables. Peter was very soon attracted and absorbed into his father's pastime. It had a breathless appeal for him. Awed and excited, he would project his mind into the measureless dark spaces. It was an adventure. Sometimes they would rise after midnight, and these were the times Peter loved best. The extreme quiet of the hour; loneliness upon earth giving a keener edge to the loneliness of heaven; the silence of the sleeping street lending almost a terror to the imagined silence of space; the secret flavour which crept into the enterprise from the mere fact of waking while the world was asleep—all this gave to the situation, for Peter, an agreeable poignancy. Already he had discovered the appeal of Shelley, and he would repeat, pleasantly shuddering, passages of his favourite story:
"I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are.
"The contrast was striking at these times between Peter and his father. For Mr. Paragon every double star resolved was a nail in the coffin of the Established Church; every wonder of the skies, inspected and verified, was a confirmation that society was built on stubble. But for Peter these excursions were food for fancy, the stuff of his dreams. He soared into space, not as Mr. Paragon intended, to discover the fraud of priests and kings, but to voyage with Shelley's Mab through the beautiful stars.
To-night the adventure had lost its edge. Nothing could be more exciting than a transit of Jupiter's third moon. The gradual approach of the tiny moon to the edge of the planet; its momentary extinction; the slow passage of the little shadow on the cloud-bright surface—the loveliness of this miniature play was sharpened for Peter by knowledge of its immensity. Mr. Paragon gave up the telescope to Peter, and waited for breathless exclamation. But Peter was silent.
Well, said Mr. Paragon, "can't you see it?"
Yes, answered Peter indifferently.
Perhaps the focus isn't quite right, suggested Mr. Paragon. He looked anxiously at Peter. Peter's indifference was unusual.
It's all right, father, I can see it well. It's a black spot, and it's moving across.
Wonderful! said Mr. Paragon. "Think of it, Peter. Jupiter to-night is 60,000,000 miles away. It would easily hold 1300 of us, and it's got five moons. Looks as if it were made for lighting people to bed, don't it?"
Yes, father, said Peter without interest.
Peter's fancy had suddenly flown to a passage in Romeo and Juliet, hitherto passed as absurd—something about cutting up Romeo into little stars. Peter smelled the wet earth and remembered Miranda. His imagination to-night refused the cold voyage into space. His father's figures, after which his mind had so often adventurously strained, were senseless.
His attention fell suddenly asleep at the telescope.
He realised that his father was asking him whether the transit was finished. He started into watchfulness and replied, still indifferently, that it was.
Mr. Paragon was mortified. He showed Peter the wonders of the universe with a sort of proprietary satisfaction. He was proud of the size of Jupiter. He was personally exalted that the distance between the earth and the moon should be 240,000 miles. He had the pride of a conscientious cicerone; of the native who does the honours of his town. Peter to-night was disappointing.
Well, said Mr. Paragon desperately, "what do you think of it?"
It was very clear, Peter dutifully answered.
There's not many lads your age, grumbled Mr. Paragon, "that have seen a transit of Jupiter's third moon."
I know, said Peter, trying to feel excited and grateful. He had been looking forward to this evening for weeks. Why was he unable to enjoy it?
He repeated the question to himself as, half an hour later, he lay peacefully in bed. Then he found himself trying to remember the exact phrase about Romeo and the little stars.
Peter went daily to school in a dirty quarter of the town at least two miles from home. The house of the Paragons was upon the borders of the western or fashionable suburb of Hamingburgh. The school barely escaped the great manufacturing district to the east and south. It was a branch school of the great local foundation of King Edward VI. In the phrase of the local roughs, through whose courts and alleys he passed, Peter was a "grammar-cat."
He was supposed to go to school by the main road, where he was more or less under the protection of the police. For between the roughs and the grammar-cats was perpetual war; and to take the shorter route through the courts and alleys was an act of provocation. But Peter hankered after the forbidden road. His father, showing him the way to school, had stopped at a certain corner:
This, he said, "is the shortest way; but you had better go round by the main road."
Why? Peter had asked.
It's a nasty neighbourhood, said Mr. Paragon.
From that moment the shortest route became for Peter a North-West Passage. He would stand at the fatal corner, looking up the street with its numberless small entries. Then, on a memorable day, he plunged.
First he had a soaring sense of his audacity. He felt he had left the laws behind. To win through now must entirely depend on his personal resource. At the doors of an immense factory men, women, and boys stood in line, waiting for the signal to blow them into work. Peter felt with a sinking at the stomach that he was an object of curiosity. He indeed looked strangely out of place in his neat suit of a small tar, with a sailor's knot foppishly fastened at the breast. The curious eyes of the waiting group followed him up the street. He was painfully aware, as he passed, that jocular remarks in sleepy midland slang were freely exchanged upon his apparition. Higher up the street a little rough stopped for a moment and stared, then started into an alley screaming.
The street was suddenly alive. Peter, flinging self-respect to the winds, started to run. A stone caught him smartly on the heel, and he thought he was lost. But another cry was almost immediately sounded. The helmet of a policeman came glinting up the street.
The roughs vanished as quickly as they had appeared.
Peter did not again venture into this district alone. At least a dozen of his school friends lived in the western suburb. He formed them into a company, which daily took the forbidden way to school. Such was the origin of a feud whose deeds and passages would fill a chronicle. Peter's company was long remembered.
He soon made some striking discoveries. You cannot fight with a persistent enemy, even though his methods are not your methods, without touching his good points. It soon became evident that he and the roughs were less bitterly opposed than either of them was to the police. It was also clear that the men and women of the factory were "sports." They encouraged the boys quite impartially, and saw fair play.
Peter particularly remembered one morning of snow and dirt outside the big factory, when he slipped and fell, squirming with bitter pain of a snowball hard as ice in his ear. A stalwart woman with naked arms grimed with lead, picked him up and pressed him in a comfortable and friendly way against her bosom. She was in that dark hour an angel of strength and solace. The incident always lived in Peter's memory along with the faint smell in his nostrils of the factory grime.
On the morning after the transit of Jupiter's third moon Peter was late. His company had not waited. Peter had to pass his enemies alone.
He still wondered at the change which had come over him yesterday. Nothing that morning seemed of the least importance save a curious necessity to be still and inquire of himself what had happened.
He thought only of Miranda, wondering why he saw her now at a distance.
A company of roughs lay between Peter and his friends. He was cut off; but it did not seem to matter. Everything that morning was unreal. He walked quite indifferently towards them. They seemed so remote that, had they vanished into air, he would not have been surprised.
Peter pushed loftily past a handsome young rough.
Now then, said the fellow.
Let me pass, said Peter, curiously pedantic beside the other.
Not so fast.
Let go of my arm, said Peter.
Not much, said the enemy.
Peter flew into a rage.
Funk, he said, without point or reason.
Say it again.
Funk.
Who's a funk?
You are.
Are you calling me a funk?
Yes.
Say it again.
Funk.
There was a deadlock. Peter must try something else.
See this face? he inquired with deadly offensiveness, thrusting forward his countenance for exhibition.
Take it away, said the other.
Hit it, said Peter.
I shall if you don't take it away.
Just you hit it.
Peter's enemy did hit it. Immediately a ring was formed. Peter fell back into his mood of indifference to the world. This fight was a nuisance, but it had to go on.
They fought three vigorous rounds. From every court and alley spectators poured. Windows were flung up.
Then a policeman was seen, and in ten seconds the street was empty again. Peter jogged off to the main road. The roughs scattered into holes.
Peter, late for school, came up for inspection with a swollen lip and an eye which became more remarkable as time went on. But pain this morning meant as little to Peter as reproof. He was unable to take things seriously. He felt curiously above them.
Home at midday he avoided his family. He felt a necessity to be alone, to dream and to exult over something that had neither shape nor name. He went into a secret passage.
This secret passage was intimately bound up with his life of adventure. The gardens of Peter's road met at the bottom the gardens of a parallel highway. The two rows were parted by a line of trees and a wall. On the farther side of the wall a thick hedge, planted a few feet from the foot of the wall, had been trained to meet it overhead. After many years it formed a natural green tunnel between the gardens. This tunnel, cleared of dead shoots and leaves, was large enough for Peter and Miranda to crawl from end to end of the wall's foot, and gave them access, after pioneering, to the trees which rose regularly from the midst of the hedge.
Peter to-day climbed into the secret passage, not for adventure but to be alone. The old life seemed very remote. Could he really have believed that the tree against which he leaned was a fortress that had cost him ten thousand men?
A humble bee bustled into the shade and fell, overloaded with pollen. Peter watched it closely. Already he found himself seeing little things—their beauty and a vague impulse in himself to express it.
Peter's indifference to the impertinent call of the things of yesterday was quite wonderful.
Hullo! said Mr. Paragon at dinner, "you've been fighting."
Yes, father, said Peter.
Goodness gracious! Mrs. Paragon exclaimed. "Look at Peter's face!"
Yes, mother, said Peter.
Tell us about it, my boy, twinkled Mr. Paragon.
There's nothing to tell, father.
Was he a big boy? Mr. Paragon asked.
Middling.
Did you beat him?
No, father.
Did he beat you?
No, father.
Mr. Paragon looked at Peter with misgiving.
Mary, said Mr. Paragon in the late evening, "Peter's growing up."
They were sitting together in the garden, Mr. Paragon smoking a pipe after supper. It was warm and quiet, with occasional light noises from the wood and the near houses. It was Mr. Paragon's moment of peace—a time for minor meditations, softened by the stars and the flowers, equally his by right of conquest.
Mrs. Paragon sighed. She divined a coming rift between herself and Peter.
He is very young, she protested.
He was always older than his years, said Mr. Paragon; and, after a silence, he added: "Don't lose touch with the boy, Mary. We have got to help him over these discoveries. Life's too fine to be picked up anyhow."
It's not easy to keep with the young. There's so much to understand.
Mrs. Paragon said this a little sadly, and Mr. Paragon felt bound to comfort her.
Peter's a good boy, he said.
Meantime Peter in his attic was not asleep. It was his habit, shut in his room for the night, to climb through the skylight, and sit upon a flat and cozy space of the roof by the warm chimney. There he was frequently joined by Miranda from the attic of the next house.
But Peter sat this evening at the window. The garden was quick with faint play of the wind; and Peter's ears were sensitive to small noises of the trees.
There was a faint tapping upon the wall. Peter was instantly alert, and as instantly amazed at the effect upon himself of this familiar signal. He had heard it a hundred times. It was thus that he and Miranda communicated with one another when they went up to their nook by the chimney.
He looked into the dark room. The signal was repeated, but he sat by the window like alabaster, his heart beating in his ears.
The knocking ceased, and for a long while Peter sat still as a stone. Then he sprang at the cord of the skylight window, opened it and crept out. Miranda was perched between the chimneys. It was quite dark. Peter could only see that she was staring away from him.
Miranda! His voice trembled and broke, but she did not move.
He knew now he had not been dreaming. Miranda, too, was changed. He felt it in the poise of her averted face and in her silence.
He waited to say he knew not what, and stayed there, a queer figure sitting astride the slates. Miranda's arm lay along the skylight. He touched her.
She caught her breath, and Peter knew she was crying.
Miranda, he called, "why are you crying?"
She turned in the dark and a tear splashed on his hand.
I'm not crying! she flashed. "I thought you were never coming," she added inconsequently.
It was Peter's first encounter with a woman. He was for a moment checked.
Miranda! he said; and again his voice trembled and broke on the name. Miranda, in a single day as old as a thousand years, vibrated to the word half-uttered. She dropped her head into her hands, and wept aloud.
Peter held her tight, speaking now at random.
I always meant to come, he quavered. "You know I always meant to come. Miranda, don't cry so. I was afraid when first I heard you knocking."
You'll always love me, Peter.
For ever and ever.
Every little sound was exaggerated. There was a low mutter of voices in the garden below. Peter saw the glow of his father's pipe. So near it seemed, he fancied he could smell the tobacco.
Mr. and Mrs. Paragon, talking of Peter, sat later than usual. Before going to bed, they went into the attic, and stood together for a while. Peter had fallen happily asleep. Miranda was comforted, and he was lifted above all the heroes. The shadow of adolescence lay upon him. His mother saw it, and, as she kissed him, it seemed as if she were bidding him farewell upon a great adventure.
Peter in common daylight carefully examined his face in the looking-glass. His left eye was a painter's palette. He ruefully remembered that the fight had yet to be finished. He was bound to offer his adversary an opportunity of completing the good work, and he distinctly quailed. Peter was this morning upon solid earth. The crisis was past. He knew now that he had quickly to be a man, to get knowledge and wealth and power.
Boys at Peter's branch of the foundation of King Edward VI could no higher ascend into knowledge than the binomial theorem. Peter, not yet fifteen, was already head of the school—the favourite pupil of his masters, easily leading in learning and cricket. Already it was a question whether he should or should not proceed to the High School where Greek and the Calculus were to be had.
Peter's career was already a problem. Mr. Paragon inclined to believe that the best thing for a boy of fifteen was to turn into business, leaving Greek to the parsons. Mrs. Paragon had different views. Peter was yet unaware of this discussion, nor had he wondered what would happen when the time came for leaving his first school.
Peter's company raised a chorus when they beheld him. They explained to Peter what his face was like. They were proud of it. A terrible and bloody fellow was their captain.
When Peter met his adversary each noted with pleasure that the other was honourably marked.
The handsome rough thrust out a large red hand.
Take it or leave it, he said.
Peter took it. The bells were calling in a final burst, and he passed rapidly on with his company. It was peace with honour.
Peter was in a resolute grapple with the binomial theorem when a call came for him to go into the headmaster's room. Peter, delicately feeling his battered face, followed the school-porter with misgiving.
Paragon, said the headmaster, "I don't like your face. It isn't respectable."
Peter writhed softly, aware that he was ironically contemplated.
This fighting in the streets, continued the headmaster, "is becoming a public nuisance. I should be sorry to believe that any of our boys provoked it. I hope it was self-defence."
Mostly, sir, said Peter.
I rely upon you, Paragon, to avoid making the school a nuisance to the parish.
I realise my responsibility, sir.
Peter was quite serious, and the headmaster did not smile.
Now, Paragon, he said, "I want to talk to you about something else. I have just written to your father. Do you know what you would like to do when you leave school?"
No, sir, said Peter.
Peter had, in fancy, invented posts for himself that would tax to the fullest extent his complicated genius. He had lived a hundred lives. Nevertheless, bluntly asked whether he had thought about his future, he as bluntly answered "No," and knew in a moment that the answer was dreadfully true. His cloud cuckooland of battle and success, magnificent with pictures of himself in all the great attitudes of history, vanished at a simple question. He was rapidly growing old.
The headmaster continued, pitilessly sensible.
I want you to go on with your education, he said. "You have done very well with us here. I have written to your father urging him to send you to the High School where it will be possible for you to qualify for the University. I want you, before you see your father, to make up your mind what you want to do."
Peter left the headmaster's room with a sense of loss. The glamour had gone out of life. His future, vast and uncertain, had in a moment narrowed to a practical issue. Should he go on to another school, or into some office of the town? These were dreary alternatives. Already he was fifteen years old, and he had somehow to be the most famous man in the world within the next five years.
Peter's father went that day to visit his brother-in-law.
Henry Prout, Peter's uncle and godfather, had at this time retired from the retailing of hardware. He was wealthy, an alderman of the town, and a bachelor. He took a father's interest in his nephew. There was a tacit, very indefinite assumption that in all which nearly concerned his sister's son Henry had a right to be consulted.
When Peter heard his father had gone round to his uncle's house he knew his career was that evening to be decided.
Henry Prout was a copy in gross of his sister. Mrs. Paragon was queenly and fair. Henry was large and florid. Mrs. Paragon was amiable and full of peace. Henry was genial and lazy. Mrs. Paragon equably accepted life from a naturally perfect balance of character, Henry from a naturally perfect confidence in the inclinations of his rosy and abundant flesh.
Uncle Henry had one large regret. He had had no education, and he greatly envied the people who had. His admiration for the results of education was really a part of his indolence. He admired the readiness and ease with which educated people disposed of problems which cost him painful efforts of the brain. Education was for Uncle Henry a royal way to the settlement of every difficult thing. If you had education, life was an arm-chair. If you had it not, life was a necessity to think things laboriously out for yourself.
Uncle Henry had made up his mind that Peter should have the best education money could buy. Peter, he determined, should learn Greek.
Well, George, he said in his comfortable thick voice, "what's it going to be?"
He was not yet alluding to Peter's career, but to some bottles on the little table between them.
Half and half, said George.
Help yourself, said Henry, adding, as Mr. Paragon portioned out his whisky, "How's sister?"
Up to the mark every time.
She's all right. There's not a more healthy woman in England than sister.
Henry paused a little in reflection upon the virtues of Mrs. Paragon. He then continued.
How's the boy?
I'll tell you what, said Mr. Paragon, "he's growing up."
Fifteen next December.
Old for his age, said Mr. Paragon, nodding between the lines.
Uncle Henry thoughtfully compressed his lips.
Well, he said, "I suppose the boy will have to find out what he's made of."
He's very thick next door, suggested Mr. Paragon with a meaning eye.
I've noticed her, George. She'll soon be finding out a thing or two for herself.
There's a handsome woman there, said Mr. Paragon.
Well enough.
They paused again in contemplation of possibilities in Miranda.
I've had a letter, said Mr. Paragon at last. The headmaster's sheet was handed over, and carefully deciphered.
Writes a shocking hand, said Uncle Henry. "That's education. Peter's hand," he added contentedly, "is worse. I can't make head or tail of what Peter writes."
Henry mixed himself another whisky. "They seem to think a great lot of him," he said thoughtfully. "That about the Scholarships, for instance. They say he'll get the ￡30. Then he goes to the High School and gets ￡50, and ￡80 at the University. Think of that, George."
I don't hold with it, Mr. Paragon broke out.
Education, Henry began.
Education yourself, interrupted Mr. Paragon. "What's the good of all that second-hand stuff?"
It helps.
Yes. It helps to make a nob of my son. It's little he'll learn at the University except to take off his hat to people no better than himself.
Can't you trust him?
Peter's all right, Mr. Paragon jealously admitted.
There's no harm in a bit of Greek. You talk as if it was going to turn him straight off into a bishop.
Uncle Henry paused, and, desiring to make a point, took the hearthrug.
I can't understand you, he continued, with legs well apart. "If Peter is going to have my money, he's got to learn how to spend it. Look at myself. I have had sense to make a bit of money, but I've got no more idea of spending it than a baby. I want Peter to learn."
That's all right, said Mr. Paragon. "But what's going to happen to Peter when he gets into the hands of a lot of doctors?"
Peter must take his chance.
It's well for you to talk. You're as blue as they're made, and a churchwarden of the parish.
Uncle Henry solemnly put down his glass. "George," he said, "it does not matter to a mortal fool what I am, nor what you are. Peter's got to find things out for himself. He'll get past you and me; and, whether he comes out your side or mine, he'll have more in his head."
Uncle Henry ended with an air of having closed the discussion, and, after some friendly meditation, whose results were flung out in the fashion of men too used to each other's habit of thought to need elaborate intercourse, Mr. Paragon rose and went thoughtfully home.
By the time he reached the Kidderminster Road he had definitely settled the question of Peter's career. Peter should get knowledge. He should possess the inner fortress of learning. He should be the perfect knight of the oppressed people, armed at all points. Thus did Mr. Paragon reconcile his Radical prejudices with his fatherly ambition.
Arrived home, he showed the headmaster's letter to Mrs. Paragon.
She read it with the pride of a mother who knows the worth of her boy, but nevertheless likes it to be acknowledged.
Mr. Paragon watched her as she read.
Yes, he said, answering her thoughts, "Peter's all right."
Mrs. Paragon handed back the letter.
I suppose, suggested Mr. Paragon, airily magnificent, "he had better go on with his education?"
Of course, said Mrs. Paragon.
Mr. Paragon knew at once that if he had persisted in taking Peter from school he would have had to persuade his wife that it was right to do so. He also knew that this would have been very difficult.
Fortunately, however, he had decided otherwise. He could flatter himself now that he had settled this grave question himself. It was true, in a sense, that he had. Mr. Paragon had not for nothing lived with his wife for nearly seventeen years.
Peter was not happy at the High School. It is disconcerting, when you have been First Boy and a Captain, to be put among inferior creatures to learn Greek. Peter had risen with his former friends from the lowest to the highest; they had grown together in sport and learning. Now he found himself in a middle form, an interloper among cliques already established. Moreover, the boys at the High School, where education for such as could not obtain a foundation scholarship was more expensive than at the lower branches, were of a superior quality, with nicer manners and a more delicate way of speaking. He was a stranger.
At sixteen Peter was almost a man. His father had always met him upon an intellectual equality. They had talked upon the gravest matters. Peter had voraciously read a thousand books which he did not altogether understand. It needed only physical adolescence to show him how far he had outstripped the friends of his age.
The lot of a precocious boy is not a happy one, and Peter paid the penalty. He made not a single friend during his two years at the new school. He lived gravely after his own devices, quiet, observant, superficially accessible to the kind advances of his masters and classfellows, but profoundly unaffected.
Nevertheless these years were the most important of Peter's life, wherein he learned all that his father was able to teach him. Peter, years after he had outlived much of his early wisdom, yet looked back upon this time as peculiarly sacred to his father. From him he learned to accept naturally the perplexing instincts that now were arisen within him. Peter escaped the usual unhappy period of surmise and shamefast perplexity.
More particularly these were the glorious years of Peter and Miranda. Peter found in Miranda the perfect maid, and Miranda, eager for knowledge and greedy of adoration, reaching after the life of a woman with the mind and body of a girl, found in Peter the pivot of the world. In these years were laid the foundations of an incredible intimacy. Daily they grew in a perpetual discovery of themselves. Peter opened to Miranda the store of his knowledge. There was perfect confidence. At an age when the secrets of life are the subject of uneasy curiosity at best, and at worst of thoughtless defamation, Peter and Miranda talked of them as they talked of their bees (Peter's latest craze); of the stars; of the poets they loved (Miranda was not yet altogether a woman: she loved the poets); of the life they would lead in the friendly world.
Miranda was the more thrown upon Peter as neither of her parents was able to direct her. Her mother was entirely unimaginative. Her fierce affection for Miranda showed itself in a continual insistence that she should "behave"; read and eat only what was good for her; and be as well, if not better, dressed than the children of her neighbours. For her father Miranda had some affection, but she could not respect him. She saw him continually overridden by her mother, and already she overtopped him in stature by a head.
The months went quickly by, and soon it was the eve of Peter's journey to Oxford as the candidate for an open scholarship. Peter was nervously excited. Every little detail, in his heightened sensibility, seemed important. It was late summer, a warm night, the room filling rapidly with shadows. Miranda sat by the window, her face to the fallen sun.
The men were talking politics. Their lifted voices grated upon Peter's thoughts. It was a time of strikes and rioting. Mr. Paragon, as an orator, was urgently requested in the streets of Hamingburgh. He was full of his theme, and extremely angry with Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith was an entirely amiable little man, but he delighted in the phrases of battle. He talked politics in a soldier's terms. He was perpetually storming the enemy's position or turning his rear. The English political situation was in Mr. Smith's view never far removed from war and revolution. He delighted in images of violence. The mildest of small men, whose nerves were shattered by an unexpected noise, he was always ready to talk of the prime duty of governments to stamp out rebellion in blood. Mr. Smith could not pull a cracker at Christmas without shutting his eyes and getting as far as possible from the explosion; but, politically, he was a Prussian.
Shoot them down!
Mr. Smith was repeating a formula by now almost mechanical.
To Peter it was desperately familiar. The men's voices every now and then were overborne by Mrs. Smith in one of her perpetual recommendations to Miranda.
Take your elbows off the sill, Miranda.
Yes, mother.
Miranda answered with the mechanical obedience of a child who makes allowances.
She turned at the same time into the room, full of the contrast between the beauty of the garden and the two absurd figures in dispute upon the hearthrug. She looked over to Peter in the shadow.
His eyes were full of her, burning with delight.
Miranda, meeting his look, felt suddenly too glad for endurance. She burst from her seat.
Her mother's voice, thin and penetrating, was plainly heard above the ground-bass of political argument.
Where are you going, Miranda?
Into the garden, mother, patiently answered Miranda, and with never a look at Peter she went.
The men talked on. Peter quietly followed Miranda into the garden, unnoticed except by his mother.
Mrs. Paragon had read the lines of her son's face. She sighed as he slipped away, knowing that at that moment the world held for Peter but one thing really precious. She smiled, not bitterly, but with indulgence, upon the talking fathers.
Peter and Miranda sat for many minutes without a word. The evening was perfect, the shining of stars in a violet sky mocked on earth with the shining of great clusters of evening primrose. How full the night seemed! The stars were very secret, but the secret waited to be told.
I shall not be able to bear it, said Miranda suddenly.
Four days, said Peter.
But after that.
Eight weeks at a time.
But Miranda's heart sank at the eternity of eight weeks.
Protesting with her, Peter at last said:
I'm always with you, Miranda.
She turned and found he was looking where Mirza glittered with its companion star. He had written her a poem in which he had likened Mirza to himself, eternally passing through heaven with his tiny friend.
Miranda felt to-night how empty was this fancy.
You are going away, she said, "and you have never——" She stopped, frightened and ashamed. She wished to run from the place, and she was glad of the dark.
The feeling passed, and she lifted her head, looking at Peter. Her eyes were full of challenge and of fear, of confession, of reserve—the courage of a maid—proud to be as yet untouched, but happy in surrender.
All that I have—and how beautiful it is!—is yours, was what Peter read.
The tears rushed into her eyes. They both were crying as Peter kissed her. It was the first kiss of lovers two years old, the first delicate breach of their chastity.
Miranda lifted her head upon Peter's arm.
I want to be with you always, she said. "I cannot bear you to go away."
Footsteps intruded. Uncle Henry had come, God-speeding his nephew. Peter had been missed, and Uncle Henry was coming to find him. Peter felt as if the world were advancing to rob him of something too precious to be lawfully his. He wanted to save Miranda from this intrusion.
Good-bye, darling! he whispered.
She understood.
Hold me near to you, Peter, she said. They kissed a second time, lingering on the peril of discovery. She ran lightly away as Uncle Henry parted the bushes and thrust his great head towards the seat.
Hullo, Peter, my boy, is that you?
Yes, Uncle.
I thought I would look round to wish you luck.
Thank you, Uncle.
Somebody did not want to see me, said Uncle Henry, crossly following Miranda with his eyes.
Peter flashed an indignant look upon his uncle. He could not tell him why Miranda had gone away; how she was too precious to suffer the contact of dull earth.
They walked into the house. For Peter the rest of the evening passed in a dream. He made his plans for an early breakfast, received the last advice as to his trains and the disposition of his money, and went as soon as possible to his bedroom under the eaves.
Miranda was at the window as Peter drove off next morning in a hansom-cab. The sun was shining, the earth green after rain. Peter was starting on his first unaccompanied journey in his first hansom-cab, and he was unable to feel as miserable as he should. Miranda gave him a smile that struggled to be free of sadness at losing him for four days, and of envy at his adventure. Peter knew how she felt, and he was angry with himself for being happy.
The miles flew quickly by. Peter soon began to wonder in pleasant excitement what Oxford was like.
At Oxford station he was immediately sensible of the advantages of a town where a great many people live only to anticipate the wishes of young gentlemen. In Hamingburgh only people with great presence of mind can succeed in being attended to by the men who in that independent city put themselves, as cabmen, porters, and shop assistants, into positions of superiority to the public. Peter was amazed at the deference with which his arrival upon the platform was met. The whole town seemed only anxious that he should reach his lodgings as quickly and as comfortably as possible.
Peter's impressions thereafter were fierce and rapid. His four days were a wonderful round of visits. He perused the colleges, the gardens, and the river. He called upon old schoolfellows for whom the life of Oxford was already commonplace; who had long since forgotten that they were living in one of the loveliest of medi?val towns; who blindly perambulated the cloisters, weighing the issues of a Test Match. He visited professors by invitation, and listened for the first time in his life to after-dinner conversation incredibly polite. After his papers were written for the day, he could make a quiet meal and issue adventurously into the streets, eagerly looking into the career at whose threshold he had arrived.
Peter was in a city of illusion. He constructed the life, whose outward activities he so curiously followed, from the stones of Oxford, and saw, as it seemed to him, an existence surrendered to lovely influences of culture and the awful discipline of knowledge. With reverence he encountered in the quadrangle of the college whose hospitality he was seeking, a majestic figure, silver-haired, of dreaming aspect, passing gravely to his pulpit of learning. This was that famous Warden, renowned in Europe as the author of many books wherein the mightiest found themselves corrected.
Later in the day he enviously saw the inhabitants of this happy world, who in the morning had followed the Warden in to his lecture to get wisdom, issue from their rooms (whose windows opened within rustle of the trees and prospect of a venerable lawn) dressed for the field or river. It particularly impressed Peter that in this attire they should take their way unconcerned through the streets of the town. No one would have dared, in Hamingburgh, to be thus conspicuous. How debonair and free was life in this heavenly city!
At evening Peter walked in the streets and quadrangles, getting precious glimpses of an interior studiously lit, with groups, as he fancied them, of sober scholars in grave debate upon their studies of the morning; or, perhaps, in pleasant reminiscence of their games of the afternoon. Sometimes Peter would hear a burst of laughter or see through the panes of a college window a group of men deep in poker or bridge. Peter then remembered wild tales of the license of young bloods, and was not displeased. It added a zest to his meditations.
Peter's last evening focussed his impressions. It was the agreeable habit of the dons of Gamaliel College to invite their candidates to dinner when the trial was over. Peter accepted the invitation with dismay. It was the first time he had ever proposed to take an evening meal by way of dinner; he was afraid.
Nevertheless, the reality was quite pleasant. His first impression of the dons of Gamaliel was of their kindly interest in himself. He seemed to be specially selected for attention. The Warden in his welcome looked perusingly at him. Peter's instinct, quick to feel an atmosphere, warned him, as they talked, that he was being tactfully drawn. He noticed also the smiles that occasionally passed when he plunged into some vigorous opinion about the books he hated or loved. Insensibly he grew more cautious, and, as the dinner advanced, he was amazed to hear himself, as though he were listening to someone else, saying things in a new way. Peter was beginning to acquire the Oxford manner. His old life was receding. He caught vaguely at a memory of Miranda, but she lived in another world. Here he sat a king of the earth. A beautifully spoken, white-haired servant at his elbow filled his glass with golden wine, and as he accepted regally of delicate meats from dishes respectfully offered, he heard himself, in tones already grown strangely in tune with those of his companions, contributing discreet opinions.
Peter, too, was drinking. He discovered how easy it was to talk at ease, to sparkle, to throw out, in grand disorder, the thronging visions of his brain. Far from shrinking in diffidence from the necessity to assert himself and to be prominent, he began now actively to intervene.
Peter never remembered how first they came to talk of bees. But he did not for years forget the dramatic circumstances of this conversation. He never lost the horror with which he realised immediately after the event that he had contradicted the Reverend Warden, and that the whole table was waiting for him to make his contention good.
Well, Mr. Paragon, how do you explain all this?
The room had suddenly become silent. All the little conversations had gone out. For the first time Peter felt that an audience was hanging upon him. He flushed, set his teeth, and talked. He talked with enthusiasm, tempered instinctively with the Oxford manner. His enthusiasm delighted the dons of Gamaliel, to whom it was very strange, and his experience interested them. Peter loved his bees and handled them well. When he had ended his account, all kinds of questions were asked. More than ever he felt elated and sure of himself. He emptied yet another glass of the golden wine.
I'm becoming quite brilliant, he thought.
Then he saw that the Warden was speaking into an ear of the white-haired servant, glancing with ever so slight a gesture at Peter's empty glass. This time the servant in passing round the table omitted Peter.
Peter was quick to understand. He arrested himself in the act of saying something foolish. Clearly the wine had gone into his head. He wondered whether he would be able to stand up when the time came. He sank suddenly into himself, answering when he was appealed to directly, but otherwise content to watch the table. He thought with remorse of Miranda, almost forgotten amid the excitement of these last days. He saw again the garden as it looked on the evening of his farewell. He wanted to be away from these strange people, from the raftered hall, the table soft-lit, beautiful with silver and glass. The voices went far-off. Only when his neighbour touched him on the shoulder did he notice that his companions were moving.
The Warden bade him a cordial good-bye. He smiled at Peter in a way that made his heart leap with a conviction that he had been successful.
I wonder, Peter said to himself as he walked back to his rooms—"I wonder if I am really drunk?" He had never felt before quite as he did to-night. Now that he was in the open, he wanted to leap and to sing.
The municipal band was playing as he turned into the street. Round it were gathered in promenade an idle crowd of young shopkeepers, coupled, or desirous of being coupled, with girls of the town.
Peter noticed a handsome young woman at the edge of the crowd, hanging upon the arm of a young man. She was closely observing him as he came up. It seemed to Peter that she mischievously challenged him. Her companion was staring vacantly at the bandsmen. Peter paused irresolutely, flushed a burning red, and passed hastily away.
He was astonished and humiliated at his physical commotion. The music sounded hatefully the three-four rhythm of surrender. He was yet able to hear it as he stood under the window of his room. He saw again the enigmatic eyes of the girl, the faint welcome of her smile, so slight as to be no more than a shadow, the coquettish recoil of her shoulders as he paused.
He turned into his lodgings, and ten o'clock began to strike on the Oxford bells. He waited for several minutes till the last had sounded. Oxford, for Peter, was to the end a city of bells. He never lost the impression of his first night as he lay, too excited for sleep, his thoughts interrupted with the hours as they sounded, high and low, till the last straggler had ended. It always profoundly affected him, this converse at night between turret and turret of the sleeping stones. It came at last to emphasize his impression of Oxford as a place whose actual and permanent life was in the walls and trees, whose men were shadows.
To-night the bells invited Peter to look into the greater life he expected to lead in this place. The scattered glimpses of a beautiful world at whose threshold he stood were now united in a hope that soon he would permanently share it within call of the hours as melodiously in this grey city they passed.
The fumes of the evening were blown away; the band in the street was no longer heard. Peter, awake in bed, heard yet another striking of the hour. He was looking back to his last evening with Miranda. How did she come into this new life? He thought of her sleeping, parted by a wall's breadth from his empty room at home, and was invaded with a desire to be near her greater than his envy of anything that sounded in the striking bells.
Miranda. He repeated the syllables to himself as the bells were striking, and fell asleep upon her name.
Peter, home after his first important absence, found that his former life had shrunk. He had seen things on a generous scale. Only for four days had he been away, but it was an epoch.
He went immediately to find Miranda, trembling with impatience. But he was struck shy when they met. Peter had imagined this meeting as a perfect renewal of their last moments together. He had seen himself thrilling into a passionate welcome, taking up his life with Miranda where it had abruptly ceased with the arrival of Uncle Henry four days ago. But at sight of her the current of his eagerness was checked. It was that curious moment of lovers who have lived through so many meetings in imagination that the actual moment cannot be fulfilled.
You're back, she said awkwardly, hardly able to look at him.
I've just this moment come. Peter thought it was the staring daylight that put this constraint upon them. Then he saw in his fancy the welcome he had expected—very different from this—and, as though he were acting something many times rehearsed, he kissed Miranda with an intended joy.
Miranda's constraint was now broken.
I have missed you dreadfully, she whispered.
She held him tight, urged by the piteous memory of four empty days; and Peter, rising at her passion, strained her truthfully towards him. The disillusion of meeting fell away from them both.
Soon he was talking to her of Oxford, and the great life he had shared. He did not realise that a strain of arrogant enthusiasm came into his tale—a suggestion that in these last four days he had flapped the wings of his ambition in high air and dazzling sunshine. Miranda was chilled, feeling she had been in the cold, divining that Peter had a little grown away from her in the things he recounted with such unnecessary joy. At last she interrupted him.
You haven't missed me, Peter.
But I have, answered Peter, passing in a breath to tell of his encounter with the dons of Gamaliel. Miranda put her hand into his, but Peter, graphically intent upon his tale, insensibly removed it for a necessary gesture.
I don't want to hear, said Miranda suddenly.
She slipped from where they sat, and, killing him with her eyes, walked abruptly away.
Peter was struck into dismay. Remorse for his selfish intentness upon glories Miranda had not shared shot him through. But he stayed where she had left him, sullenly resentful. She need not have been so violent. How ugly was her voice when she told him she did not want to hear. Peter noticed in her swinging dress a patched rent, and her dusty shoes down at the heel. Spitefully he called into his mind, for contrast and to support him in his resentment, the quiet and ordered beauty of the life he had just seen. He retired with dignity to the house, and made miserable efforts to forget that Miranda was estranged.
Mrs. Paragon wanted to hear all that Peter had seen and done. Peter told again his tale without enthusiasm. Then his father also must hear. Peter talked of Oxford, wondering, as he talked, where Miranda had gone, and whether she would forgive him even if he admitted he was to blame. His experiences now had lost all their charm. He had taken a vain pleasure in glorifying them to Miranda, but the glory now was spoiled.
Mr. Paragon was delighted to hear Peter describing his first serious introduction to polite company without seeming violently pleased. Clearly Oxford was not going to corrupt him. Peter spoke almost with distaste of his fine friends.
Well, my boy, said Mr. Paragon, "you don't seem to think much of this high living."
It's all right, father, answered Peter, absently dwelling on Miranda.
What did you talk about? Mostly trash, I suppose?
Yes, father. Peter was now at Miranda's feet, asking her to forgive him.
A little later Mr. Smith came in, and the time passed heavily away. Mr. Smith was trying to dissuade Mr. Paragon from taking part in an angry demonstration of railway men who had struck work in the previous week. Already there had been rioting. To-night Mr. Paragon was to address a meeting in the open air, and his talk was loud and bitter. Peter heard all this rhetoric with faint disgust. He was at that time in all things his father's disciple. But to-night his brain was dancing between a proud girl, with eyes that hurt, swinging away from him in her patched frock and dusty shoes, and a long, low-lit table elegant with silver and glass. He could not listen to these foolish men; and when Mr. Smith had reached the summit of his theme in a call to "shoot them down," and when his father was clearly making ready utterly to destroy his enemy, Peter went impatiently from the room.
Mrs. Paragon made ready her husband for the meeting without regarding Mr. Smith's gloomy fears of disorder and riot. It had always been Mr. Paragon's amusement to speak in public, and she had decided that politics could have no serious results. For a few minutes she watched him diminish up the long street, and then returned to the kitchen where Mr. Smith, balancing on his toes, talked still of the dark necessities of blood and iron.
Two hours later Peter's father was brought home dead, with a bullet in his brain.
Peter sat stonily where Miranda left him earlier in the day. It was now quite dark, the evening primrose shining in tall clusters, very pale, within reach of his hand. Since a cab had jingled into hearing, stopped beside the house, and jingled away, hardly a sound had broken into his thoughts. Each rustle of the trees or lightest noise of the garden raised in him a riot of excitement; for he felt that Miranda would come, and he lived moment by moment intensely waiting. He was sure she would not be able to sleep without making her peace.
Several times he moaned softly, and asked for her aloud. Once he was filled with bitterest anger, and started to go back into the house. He hated her. His brilliant future should not be linked with this rude and shabby girl. Then, in sharp remorse, he asked to be forgiven. Tears of self-pity had followed tears of anger and tears of utter pain, and had dried on his cheeks as he rigidly kept one posture on the narrow bench. He felt to-night that he had the power to experience and to utter all the sorrow of the world, and mixed with his pain there were sensations of the keenest luxury.
At last a footstep sounded. He began to tremble unendurably; but in the next instant he knew it was not Miranda. He had not recovered from his disappointment when his mother stood beside him.
He looked at her vaguely, not yet recalled from his raging thoughts. She called his name, and there was something in her voice that startled him. The moon which was now coming over the house poured its light upon her face. Swiftly Peter was aware of some terrible thing struggling for expression. His mother's eyes were clouded as though she was dazed from the effect of some hard and sudden blow. Her lips were drawn tight as though she suffered. She stood for a moment, and once or twice just failed to speak.
Peter, she said at last, "I have to tell you something."
Peter stared at her, quickly beginning to fear.
Don't be frightened, dear boy. Peter saw the first tears gather and fall.
Mother, you are hurt.
Her tears now fell rapidly as she stooped and strained Peter towards her. She could not bear to see his face as she told him.
Something terrible has happened. There has been a fight in the streets and father——
Her arms tightened about him. Peter knew his father was dead.
We are alone, Peter, she said at last.
Then she rose, and there were no more tears. Erect in the moonlight, she seemed the statue of a mourning woman.
He is lying in our room, Peter. Won't you come?
Peter instinctively shuddered away. Then, feeling as though a weight had just been laid on him, he asked:
Can I help you, mother? Is there anything to do?
Uncle Henry is here. Come when you can.
Peter watched her move away towards the house. Self died outright in him as, filled with worship, he saw her, grave and beautiful, going to the dead man.
Soon he wondered why, now that trouble had really come, he could not so easily be moved. The tears, which so readily had started from his eyes as he had brooded on his quarrel with Miranda, would not flow now for his father. His imagination could not at once accept reality. He sat as his mother had left him, sensible of a gradual ache that stole into his brain. Time passed; and, at last, as the ache became intolerable, he heard himself desperately repeating to himself the syllables:
Never, Never.
He would never again see his father. Then his brain at last awoke in a vision of his father, an hour ago or so, confronting Mr. Smith. Peter's emotion first sprang alive in a sharp remorse. He had that evening found his father insufferable.
Peter could no longer sit. He walked rapidly up and down the garden, giving rein to self-torment. He had always thought of his father, and now remembered him most vividly, as one who had read with him the books which first had opened his mind. His father shone now upon Peter crowned with all the hard, bright literature of revolt.
A harsh cry suddenly broke up the silence of the garden. A newsboy ran shrieking a special edition, with headlines of riot and someone killed.
The cry struck Peter motionless. He had realised so far that his father was dead. Now he remembered the riot. The newsboy had shouted of a charge of soldiers.
Why had Peter not accepted his father's gospel? Why had he not stood that evening by his father's side? The enemies of whom his father had so often talked to Peter were real, and had struck him down. All the idle rhetoric that had slept unregarded in Peter's brain now rang like a challenge of trumpets. He saw his father as one who had tried to teach him a brave gospel of freedom, who had resisted tyranny, and died for his faith.
Peter cursed the oppressor with clenched hands. In the tumble of his thoughts there intruded pictures, quite unconnected, of the life he had known at his first school—encounters with the friendly roughs, their common hatred of the police, the comfortable, oily embrace of the woman who had picked him from the snow. He felt now that he was one of these struggling people, that he ought that night to have stood with his father. In contrast with the warm years in which he had gloried in the life of his humbler school his later comparative solitude coldly emphasized his kinship with the dispossessed.
Scarcely twenty-four, hours ago Peter had feasted with the luxurious enemies of the poor. He had come from them, vainglorious and eager to claim their fellowship. For this he had been terribly punished. Peter felt the hand of God in all this. It seemed like destiny's reward for disloyalty to all his father had taught.
He went into the house, and soon was looking at the dead man. His mother moved about the room, obeying her instinct to put all into keeping with the cold severity of that still figure. Peter looked and went rapidly away. He felt no tie of blood or affection. He was looking at death—at something immensely distant.
Nevertheless, as he went from the oppressive house, this chill vision of death consecrated in his fancy the figure, legendary now, of a martyred prophet of revolt. By comparison he hardly felt his personal loss of a father.
As he passed into the garden, he saw into the brilliantly lighted room next door. Mr. Smith sprawled with his head on the table, sobbing like a child. Peter, in a flash, remembered him as he had stood not two hours ago beside his father, shrilly repeating an hortation to shoot them down. In that moment Peter had his first glimpse of the irony of life. He felt impulsively that he ought to comfort that foolish bowed figure whose babble had been so rudely answered.
Then, as Mr. Smith was seen to wipe his watery eyes with a spotted handkerchief, Peter grew impatient under that sting of absurdity which in life pricks the holiest sorrow. He turned sharply away, and in the path he saw Miranda.
She put out her arm with a blind gesture to check the momentum of his recoil from the lighted window. He caught at her hand, but his fingers closed upon the rough serge of her sleeve. His passion leaped instantly to a climax. It was one of those rare moments when feeling must find pictured expression; when every barrier is down between emotion and its gesture. Miranda stood before him, the reproach of his disloyalty, a perfect figure of the life he must embrace. His hand upon her dress shot instantly into his brain a memory of that mean moment when he had nursed his wrongs upon her homeliness. A fierce contrition flung him without pose or premeditation on his knees beside her. As she leaned in wonder towards him, he caught the fringe of her frayed skirt in his hands, and, in a moment of supreme dedication, kissed it in a passion of worship.
The interim between the death of Peter's father and Peter's ascent into Oxford was filled with small events which impertinently buzzed about him. Even his father's funeral left no deep impression. It was formal and necessary. Peter was haunted, as the ceremony dragged on, with a reproachful sense that he was not, as he should, responding to its solemnity. Passion, of love or grief or adoration, came to Peter by inspiration. He could not punctually answer. He marvelled how easily at the graveside the tears of his friends and neighbours were able to flow. He himself had buried his father upon the night of his father's death, and had started life anew. The funeral was for him no more than the ghost of a dead event.
Next came the removal of Mrs. Paragon into the well-appointed house of Uncle Henry. Henry had arranged that henceforth his sister should live with him; that Peter should look to him as a guardian, and think of himself as his uncle's inheritor. All these new arrangements passed high over Peter's head. They were a background of rumour and confusion to days of exquisite sensibility and peace. Only one thing really mattered. Uncle Henry's house was in the fashionable road that ran parallel to that in which Peter was born, so that Peter could reach Miranda by way of the garden, which met hers at the wall's end.
Adolescence carried him high and far, winging his fancy, giving to the world forms and colours he had never yet perceived. His passion, unaware of its physical texture, had almost disembodied him. Miranda focussed the rays of his soul, and drew his energy to a point. He was pure air and fire. Standing on the high balcony of his new room, he felt that, were he to leap down, he must float like gossamer. Or, as he lay in the grass beside Miranda, staring almost into the eye of the sun, he acknowledged a kinship with the passing birds, imagined that he heard the sap of the green world ebb and flow; or, pressing his cheeks to the cool earth, he would seem to feel it spinning enormously through space.
They talked hardly at all, and then it was of some small intrusion into their happy silence—the chatter of a bird in distress or the ragged flying of a painted moth. Only seldom did Peter turn to assure himself that Miranda was still beside him. He was absorbed with his own vast content and gratitude for the warm and lovely world, his precious agony of aspiration towards the inexpressible, his sense of immense, unmeasured power. Miranda was his precious symbol. Uttered in her, for his intimate contemplation, he spelled the message with which the air was burdened, which shivered on the vibrating leaves, and burned in the summer heat. When, after long gazing into blue distances of air, he turned to find Miranda, it seemed that the blue had broken and yielded its secret.
From the balcony of his room at night he saw things so lovely that he stood for long moments still, as though he listened. The trees, massed solemnly together, waited sentiently to be stirred. The stars drew him into the deep. Voices broke from the street. Light shining from far windows, and the smoke of chimneys fantastically grouped, filled him with a sense of pulsing, intimate life; a world of energy whose stillness was the measure of its power, the slumber of a bee's wing.
One of the far lighted windows belonged to Miranda. He was content to know she was there, and recalled, clear in his mind's eye, the lines and gestures of her face. The beauty he saw there had seemed almost to break his heart. It wavered upon him alternate with the stars and the dark trees of the garden. Loveliness and a perpetual riddle delicately lurked in the corners of her mouth. Sometimes, when they were together, he would lay his finger very softly on Miranda's lips.
He rarely kissed her. The flutter of his pulse died under an ecstasy bodiless as his passion for the painted sky. He did not yet love the girl who sometimes with a curious ferocity flung her arms about him and crushed his face against her shabby dress. Rather he loved the beauty of the world and his inspired ability, through her, to embrace it.