PETER
By
E. F. BENSON
Author of “Mike,” “The Countess of Lowndes Square,” etc.
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First published 1922
PETER
| CHAPTER I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV. |
CHAPTER I
The two who mattered were lounging on the cushioned seat in the lowwindow, of which the lower panes had been pushed quite up in order toadmit the utmost possible influx of air. Little came in, for theafternoon was sultry and windless, but every now and then some currentmoved outside, some trickle of comparative coolness from the grass andtrees of the Green Park, sufficient to stir the girl’s hair. On thishigh floor of the house of flats London seemed far remote; the isolationas of an aeroplane, as of a ship at sea, protected them from externalintrusion.
Inside the room a party of four were assembled round the tea-table; thehostess, mother of the girl who sat in the window-seat, was wondering,without impatience, as was becoming to so chinned and contented a face,when Mrs. Alston would cease gesticulating with her sandwich and eat it,instead of using it as a conductor’s baton to emphasize her points inthe discourse to which nobody was listening. The sandwich had already alarge semicircular bite out of it, which penetrated well past itscentre, and one more application (if she would only make it) to thatcapacious mouth would render it reasonable to suppose that she hadfinished her tea. Mrs. Heaton herself{2} had done so; so also had thestout grey-haired man with the varnished face, and as for Mrs.Underwood, she had long ago drunk her cup of hot water and refused anyfurther nourishment. But while Mrs. Alston brandished her crescent of asandwich, and continued talking as if somebody had contradicted her, itwas impossible to suggest a move to the bridge-table that stood readywith new packs and sharpened pencils a couple of yards away. To the boyand girl in the window that quartette of persons seemed of supremeunimportance both by reason of their age and of the earnest futility oftheir conversation. They talked eagerly about dull things like politicsand prices instead of being flippant, in the modern style, aboutinteresting things. Between them and the younger generation there wasthe great gulf digged by the unrelenting years, and set on fire by thewar. It was not flaring and exploding any longer, but lay there insmouldering impassable clinkers.
“H