John Palmer

“ 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. ”

“ This feeling had first invaded him as at York he had seen his baggage mysteriously vanishing, by no act of his own, into a strange car which started off even as he himself was being wrapped in warm rugs for the race to Highbury. It was confirmed later, when, reaching his room with Marbury, he had found the things which had so swiftly vanished at York faultlessly spread for his evening wear. Peter was rapidly putting forth roots in this new soil. Every moment some unexpected thing appeared, to be at once included in his total impression of a new life, to become part of the common round. ”

“ The breath in his nostrils was that same air from the sea which had met Peter upon the terrace. Nature was knit in a friendly vitality, mysteriously opposed to all the categories. The categories were somehow mystically shattered beneath the iron of the horse's beating hoofs; were shredded by the wind which noisily fluttered Peter's coat.
That same evening he attended a fashionable lecture, wherein it was explained that marriage was an affair of State. The theme touched in Peter a strain of feeling that had slept from the moment he had lost Miranda. ”

“ But the lure was true, for he found it also in Miranda—the look he had seen in her eyes years ago when first he had kissed her. She seemed to be giving herself to him—to give and give again, with treasures uncounted to follow. Yet it was not mere giving, but a passing of virtue from one to the other.
"I am glad we waited until now," Peter said in a note so low that it hardly reached her. "Why were you so wise to send me away? Each day has added to you. I cannot believe I shall ever hold you. It seems like wanting the whole world." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Was there, after all, something in Peter's ineradicable contempt for politics? Did they not rub the finer edges from a man?
Peter, after all, was his friend. He saw him with a pang, eager and impetuous; and knew how savagely his sister's marriage with Wenderby would tear him. There was nothing tangibly ignoble—nothing that a man of worldly years would boggle at—in Wenderby's proposal to Lady Mary. Nevertheless Haversham realised that young Marbury twelve months ago would have recoiled with a faint disgust from this attempt upon his sister. ”

“ Peter eagerly bent forward. "You remember," he said softly, "a night upon the terrace at Highbury?"
Lady Mary looked at him, terror waiting to spring at her heart.
"I hardly know," Peter continued, "whether I still believe all that I believed at Highbury. It is all too insolent, and some of it is foolish and cruel. I have seen ugly and brutal things. I am beginning to see that there are no classes. Rank is nothing at all. There are only people."
Why did he talk like that to-night? It was intolerable.
"You are wrong," she cried out. "Wealth is nothing, and there are bad shoots in an old tree. ”

“ Haversham had told him that Wenderby was a charming fellow. Peter wondered whether he would ever be a charming fellow; and, in a fit of misgiving, began to exhaust the possibilities of self-contempt. He had had a glimpse of the beautiful life; but suppose he were not worthy to enter. Suppose Haversham could not be the friend of a young colt who had nothing in the world to fit him for an agreeable part in the social comedy. Suppose he would never again come into touch with exquisite creatures like Lady Mary. ”

“ Peter was amazed at the diversity of the stalls—substantial dames, platitudes in flesh and blood, whom he instinctively matched with the men who lunched solidly to the east of Fleet Street; women, beside them, who breathed ineffable distinction; vivacious young girls bright with pleasure and health; women, beside them, boldly putting a final touch to an elaborate complexion. Other parts of the house were more of a kind. The balcony beneath him presented a solid front of formal linen and dresses in the mean of fashion. ”

“ Atterbury was roseate and sanguine; but he looked at Peter as gravely as he could.
"I hope you are not hankering after the admiration of Vivette," he said. "She isn't safe."
"What do you mean?" asked Peter.
[Pg 281]
"She looks upon everything nice in life as a sort of sugar-plum. If she likes you, Peter, she will eat you."
"You mean she is a wicked woman?"
"Not at all," twinkled Atterbury. "I mean she is a small child who happens to be greedy. She would think no more harm of making a hearty meal of your ingenuous self than I should of swallowing an oyster." ”

“ The next morning Peter was early in the breakfast room. Only Lady Mary was there. She was looking for weather at the window.
"Let me get you some breakfast," said Peter, after they had greeted.
"Not for the world," she answered, lifting lids at a side table. "I love breakfast. It's the only time when food seems to matter. I wouldn't think of letting anybody choose my breakfast."
"There, at any rate, we agree," said Peter.
"Do you like breakfast, too?"
"It's an Oxford habit."
"Then you haven't given up Oxford altogether?" said Lady Mary, speaking as one who had heard something. ”

“ Two days after, at a college ceremony which required the men to answer to their names, Peter heard with distaste that a new title was being called. He looked contemptuously round, and to his dismay saw his new friend rise in answer. Marbury smiled pleasantly at Peter and chaffed him in the best of humour.
The friendship rapidly grew. Marbury was all that a man of lively interest and fancy can be who has mixed from a boy with polite citizens of the world. He knew all that Peter had yet to learn; but Peter's world of ideas attracted him as a country unexplored. ”

“ Every sensation died in Peter. He stood in the darkness, hearing small noises of water, the light patter of soot dislodged from the chimney, the creak and rustle of a house deserted.
When his eyes were used to the dark, he moved towards a glimmer from the hall-door. He could not yet believe what he saw. He expected the silence of his dream to break. Mechanically he went through the house, standing at last under the eaves of Miranda's attic-room. ”

“ Peter's adventure would not with her have ended perfectly; but neither would it have ended in a fruition merely brutal. She realised how gradually he was losing grip of himself, and saw him soon as tinder for any woman with brains and a high temperature. She saw him slipping his self-respect. She would last night have saved him from the worst. There was friendliness and grace enough between them to justify their passion. But Vivette was now differently inspired. Surely Peter could be braced and stiffened. ”

“ Peter turned to the farmer's granddaughter. She smiled at him, and he understood. He was filled with a desolating sense of the futility of resisting the event.
"I've no quarrel with you," he drearily protested to the man, "why do you force it?"
"It's late to talk of forcing."
"Forcing? I don't understand."
Again Peter turned to the woman. Her metallic outfacing of his question flashed the truth at him.
"He knows that you have insulted me."
The words came from her on a low malicious note.
"Are you going to fight?" the man blazed at him, flinging his weapon to the ground. ”

“ Peter met Georgian poets, independent critics and reviewers, mystics of every degree, diagrammatic and futurist painters, musicians who wrote in pentametric scales, social reformers, suspected dramatists—everybody who had proved anything, or destroyed anything, or knew how the world should be run; experts upon constitutional government in the Far East, upon beautiful conduct in garden cities, upon the incidence of taxation, upon housing and sanitation, upon sweated labour, upon sex and marriage, upon vaccination and physical culture, upon food-bases, oriental religion and Hindu poetry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peter felt that Miranda was right. He would come to her with a mind blown fresh by the sea. No wraith of an experience unshared would survive into the perfect day of their marriage. The scattered rays of his passion were to be focussed anew in a dedication absolute and untroubled. ”

“ Lady Mary's marriage made Peter think. Already Vivette was an obsession, serious enough to be noticed by his friends, and to interfere with his work. Peter began to be frightened, and secretly ashamed. His last years seemed all to be bound up with women. Was he never to be free of his foolish sensibility? Was he to fall helplessly from figure to figure as opportunity called him? There was work to do, but his fancy was perpetually caught and held in one monotonous lure. ”

“ It seemed as if Nature was standing there bidding the earth be still till the creature she had vowed to subdue was beaten down. Peter flung his thoughts to the blank silence of the place, and they returned, reverberating and enforced.
Suddenly a shot shivered the silence into quick echoes. Peter guessed the farmer was in the warren after rabbits. Thinking to meet him and get away from the intolerable obsession of the day, he started to climb the hill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The contours of the country here were gradual and vast, but the speed at which they ran defeated monotony. The line of the greater banks shifted perpetually as they flew. Their colour came and went, changing at every mile the palette of the spread gorse and heather. Peter's joy was complete when from a high point of the moors he discovered the sea alive with the sun.
The meetings began at noon with an informal handshaking of farmers in a tiny market-town not far from Sandhaven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ostensibly Lady Mary was still supreme, but, curiously as it seemed to Peter, though her sacrifice and the wonder of her great career set her higher in his admiration, it had made this admiration less tremulously personal. The ecstasy had gone out of it. It no longer shut out the undistinguished world. He discovered now that he had other friends; that he was liked by some of them; that their liking was gratifying and merited some small return.
Since Haversham had been claimed by his public and hereditary life, Peter had become attached to a frequent visitor at Arlington Street. ”

“ The perpetual roar and motion of this multitude soothed Peter, and gradually crushed in him all sense of personal loss. He began to feel how small was his drop of sorrow. At a crossing of many streets he saw a man knocked down by a horse. The hum and drift of London hardly paused. The man was quickly lifted into a cab and hurried away. Many passengers in the waiting omnibuses on the pavement were unaware that anything had happened. The incident profoundly affected Peter. In this great torrent of lives it seemed that the mischance of one was of no importance. ”

“ 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. ”