Simon Called Peter | Page 2

for ever to-morrow. A man arrived, weary and dirty
and craving for excitement, in some unknown town; in half an hour he
had stepped into the gay glitter of wine and women's smiles; in half a
dozen he had been whirled away. The days lingered and yet flew; the
pages were twirled ever more dazzlingly; only at the end men saw in a
blinding flash whither they had been led.
These things, then, are set out in this book. This is its atmosphere. They
are truly set out. They are not white-washed; still less are they pictured
as men might have seen them in more sober moments, as the Puritan
world would see them now. Nor does the book set forth the author's
judgment, for that is not his idea of a novel. It sets out what Peter and
Julie saw and did, and what it appeared to them to be while they did it.
Very probably, then, the average reader had better read no further than
this....
But at any rate let him not read further than is written. The last page has
been left blank. It has been left blank for a reason, because the curtain
falls not on the conclusion of the lives of those who have stepped upon
the boards, but at a psychological moment in their story. The Lord has
turned to look upon Peter, and Julie has seen that He has looked. It is
enough; they were happy who, going down into the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, saw a vision of God's love even there. For the Christ
of Calvary moved to His Cross again but a few short years ago; and it
is enough in one book to tell how Simon failed to follow, but how Jesus

turned to look on Peter.
R.K.

PART I
Ah! is Thy love indeed A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed, Suffering
no flowers except its own to mount? Ah! must-- Designer infinite!-- Ah!
must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
FRANCIS THOMPSON.

CHAPTER I
London lay as if washed with water-colour that Sunday morning, light
blue sky and pale dancing sunlight wooing the begrimed stones of
Westminster like a young girl with an old lover. The empty streets,
clean-swept, were bathed in the light, and appeared to be transformed
from the streets of week-day life. Yet the half of Londoners lay late
abed, perhaps because six mornings a week of reality made them care
little for one of magic.
Peter, nevertheless, saw little of this beauty. He walked swiftly as
always, and he looked about him, but he noticed none of these things.
True, a fluttering sheet of newspaper headlines impaled on the railings
of St. Margaret's held him for a second, but that was because its
message was the one that rang continually in his head, and had nothing
at all to do with the beauty of things that he passed by.
He was a perfectly dressed young man, in a frock coat and silk hat of
the London clergyman, and he was on his way to preach at St. John's at
the morning service. Walking always helped him to prepare his
sermons, and this sermon would ordinarily have struck him as one well
worth preparing. The pulpit of St. John's marked a rung up in the ladder
for him. That great fashionable church of mid-Victorian faith and
manners held a congregation on Sunday mornings for which the Rector

catered with care. It said a good deal for Peter that he had been invited
to preach. He ought to have had his determined scheme plain before
him, and a few sentences, carefully polished, at hand for the beginning
and the end. He could trust himself in the middle, and was perfectly
conscious of that. He frankly liked preaching, liked it not merely as an
actor loves to sway his audience, but liked it because he always knew
what to say, and was really keen that people should see his argument.
And yet this morning, when he should have been prepared for the best
he could do, he was not prepared at all.
Strictly, that is not quite true, for he had a text, and the text absolutely
focused his thought. But it was too big for him. Like some at least in
England that day, he was conscious of staring down a lane of tragedy
that appalled him. Fragments and sentences came and went in his head.
He groped for words, mentally, as he walked. Over and over again he
repeated his text. It amazed him by its simplicity; it horrified him by its
depth.
Hilda was waiting at the pillar-box as she had said she would be, and
little as she could guess it, she irritated him. He did