Joan and Peter: The story of an education

When he had enlisted, and even after he had been transferred to the Flying Corps, Peter had thought very little of death. The thought of death only became prevalent in English m...

The powers that were set over Peter’s life played fast and loose with him in the matter of leave. They treated him at first as though he was a rare and precious hero—who had to...

Fear came upon Peter. He stood quite still for some moments, looking at the house and the cedars. He dropped his valise at the front door and mopped his face. Then he walked slo...

Through these months Joan maintained a strained watch upon the development and fluctuations of Peter. He wrote—variously; sometimes offhand duty notes and sometimes long and bro...

“Let me say something to you before we have done, something out of my heart. Have I ever canted patriotism to you? No! Am I an aggressive Imperialist? Am I not a Home Ruler? For...

There was a touch of dream quality in that walk for both of them. They had never been together in moonlight before. She ceased to be Joan and became at once something very stran...

The door closed behind the little servant, and Oswald found himself in a house far more heavily charged with memories than he could have expected. The furniture had been but lit...

Peter and his friends were so accustomed to jeer at the dignitaries of church and state and at kings and politicians that they could not realize that such dwarfish and comic cha...

There were two days yet before Peter went back to his work in London. Saturday dawned blue and fine, and Joan and he determined to spend it in a long tramp over the Hertfordshir...

Peter was disposed to incite Joan to a porridge-eating race. You just looked at Joan and began to eat fast very quietly, and then Joan would catch on and begin to eat fast too....

He was a boy capable of considerable reserve. He did not, like young Winterbaum, press his every thought and idea upon those about him. He could be frank where he was confident,...

When he paddled in a certain way the whole boat, he found, began to swing out and round, and when he stopped paddling it went back against the bank. But it could not go complete...

Now up to that point the ceremony went marvellously according to plan. It is true that Mary wasn’t quite got out of the way; she was obliged to follow at a distance because the...

It had been at an Anti-Suffrage meeting in West Kensington, and Aunt Phœbe had obtained access to the back row of the platform by some specious device. Among the notabilities in...

Before we go on to tell of how Joan and Peter grew up to adolescence in these schools that Oswald—assisted by Aunt Phyllis in the case of Joan—found for them, Mr. Mackinder must...

But because much has been told here of Joan’s reveries it is not to be imagined that she was addicted to brooding. It was only when her mind was unoccupied that the internal sto...

“’With what measure ye mete,’” she read, “’so shall it be meted unto you again,’ and the Standard that Man has fixed for woman recoils now upon his head. Which standard is it to...

The first effect of the young woman upon Peter was a considerable but indeterminate excitement. It was neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable, but it hung over the giddy verge of...

Huntley’s lofty scorn of the war had intensified steadily; the harsh disappointment of Joan’s patriotism had stung him to great efforts of self-justification, and he became one...

And forgetting altogether the mission upon which she had come, Aunt Phœbe turned about to make her exit from the scene. It seemed to her, perhaps justly, that it was impossible...

It seemed to him that the world that lay behind the mask of his soft, sweet Hertfordshire valley, this modern world into which Joan and Peter had just rushed off so passionately...

Joan and Peter took the substitution of Aunt Phœbe muttering like a Sibyl overhead and Aunt Phyllis, who was really amusing with odd drawings and twisted paper toys and much dan...

Joan stayed in this garden for exactly three minutes. Then she returned to Mrs. Pybus, who was engaged in some dim operations with a kettle in the kitchen. “Drat this old kitche...

But for some reason Miss Mills would not see the beauty of that. Instead of laughing, she said: “Oh, no, that’s _quite_ wrong!” which seemed to Peter just selfishly insisting on...

“I could find a harsher word for it. They smoke. Not a nice thing for children to see. I suspect them strongly of vegetarianism. From something one of them said. In which case t...

Moreover if you called “Mare-_wi_,” then when the lights came Joan would sit up in her cot and stare sleepily while you were being scolded. She would say that she _knew_ there w...

Neither Joan nor Peter seemed to have any definite purpose in life. Their impulses were not focused. They were drawn hither and thither. That was the essential failure of their...

The playroom (it was the old nursery rechristened) was indeed better. It was all glorious with paper chains of green and white festooned from corner to corner. On the floor to t...

“I’d like to know just what does belong to the natural life of man and what is artificial,” said Oswald. “If a ploughed field belongs then a plough belongs. And if a plough belo...

Under the brotherly auspices of Peter she joined the Cambridge University Fabian Society. Peter belonged to it, but he explained that he didn’t approve of it. He was in it for i...

“With any one. A man’s in love with women in general, but women fall in love with men in particular. We’re the choosers. Naturally. We want a man, that man and no other, and all...

At times Wilmington would embark on a series of propositions to demonstrate with mathematical certitude that if the men and material wasted at Loos had been used in the Dardanel...

For Peter, convalescent again and no longer fit for any form of active service—he was lamed now as well as winged—was to take up a minor administrative post next week at Adastra...

This sort of work he thought of doing and which seemed the only thing now that he could possibly do, wasn’t, he reflected uncomfortably, by any means the work that he could do b...

One corner of this room was occupied by a pianola piano and a large untidy collection of classical music rolls; right and left of the fireplace the bookshelves bore an assortmen...

The new movement seemed to men of Oswald’s generation to come as thunderstorms will sometimes come, as the militant suffragette had seemed to come, suddenly out of a clear sky....

How easy was life in those days—at least, for countless thousands of independent people! It was the age of freedom—for the independent. They went where they listed; the world wa...

“Darkness Ogre” was more exciting in a dreadful kind of way than Ogre. It was only played in winter, and all the blinds and curtains were drawn and all the lights put out. You d...

Hitherto Joan had had a very few flirtations; the extremest thing upon her conscience was Bunny Cuspard’s kiss. She had the natural shilly-shally of a girl; she was strongly mov...

He turned over Sycamore’s letter again, and it seemed no longer a jest and an insult that Arthur had made him Peter’s guardian. Sycamore’s phrases did somehow convey the hesitat...

Early one summer morning in England, in the year 1893 in the reign—which seemed in those days to have been going on for ever and to be likely to go on for evermore—of Queen Vict...

In those days science was at its maximum of aggressive hopefulness. With the idea of scientific progress there was also bound up in many British minds the idea of a racial missi...

“It’s just boredom that’s got them. It isn’t any disposition to _make_. Labour is bored, women are bored, all Ireland is bored. I suppose Russia is bored and Germany is getting...

But now when Oswald sought in the newspapers for signs of this waking up that he desired, he found instead this tremendous reiteration of the ideas of the New Imperialism, acqui...

These Americans amused and interested him tremendously. He had met hardly any Americans before so as to talk to them at all intimately, but they suffered from an inhibition of F...

“Oh, he’s clean. It’s catching,” said Peter, and seemed to reflect. “And in a sort of way lately old Troop’s taken to swatting. It’s pathetic.” Then with a shade of anxiety, “I...

Considering everything, Ulster was at that time as comfortably and honourably out of the war as any part of the world, and all that seemed needed to keep it safely out to the en...

Such was the impression formed by Oswald. To his eyes these great schools, architecturally so fine, so happy in their out-of-door aspects, so pleasant socially, became more and...

“Have you any idea,” he said, “what the empire might be? Have you thought of these hundreds of millions to whom we might give light—_had_ we light? Are we to be a possessing and...

Late that night Joan sat in her room thinking. Presently she unlocked her writing-desk and took out and re-read a letter. It was from Huntley in Cornwall, and it was very tender...

His one eye wandered from the brightly-lit stage to the rows and rows of faces in the great dim auditorium about him, rested on Peter, and then went back to those others. This,...

With his first journey into Africa all his memories became brighter and clearer and as if a hotter sun shone upon them. Everything before that time was part of the story of a yo...