Part 3

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.

VII

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 mediæval 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.

VIII

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.

IX

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.