But Peter had little thought for this. Now and again, at a corner, he
would glance back, his mind on Julie in the following car, while every
church tower gave him pause for thought. He tried to draw the man beside
him on religion, but without any success, though he talked freely enough
of other things. He was for the Colonies after the war, he said. He'd
knocked about a good deal in France, and the taste for travel had come to
him. Canada appeared a land of promise; one could get a farm easily, and
his motor knowledge would be useful on a farm these days. Yes, he had a
pal out there, a Canadian who had done his bit and been invalided out of
it. They corresponded, and he expected to get in with him, the one's
local knowledge eking out the other's technical. No, he wasn't for
marrying yet awhile; he'd wait till he'd got a place for the wife and
kiddies. Then he would. The thought made him expand a bit, and Peter
smiled to himself as he thought of his conversation with Langton over the
family group. It struck him to test the man, and as they passed a wayside
Calvary, rudely painted, he drew his attention to it. "What do you think
of that?" he asked.
The man glanced at it, and then away. "It's all right for them as like
it," he said. "Religion's best in a church, it seems to me. I've seen
chaps mock at them crucifixes, sir, same as they wouldn't if they'd only
been in church."
"Yes," said Peter; "but I suppose some men have been helped by them who
never would have been if they had only been in church. But don't you
think they're rather gaudy?"
"Gaudy, sir? Meanin' 'ighly painted? No, not as I knows on. They're more
like what happened, I reckon, than them brass crosses we have in our
churches."
They ran into Eu for lunch, and drew up in the market-square. Peter
went round to the girls' car, greeted Julie, and was introduced. He
led them to an old inn in the square, and they sat down to luncheon
in very good humour. The other girls were ordinary enough, and Julie
rather subdued for her. Afterwards they spent an hour in the church and
a picture-postcard shop, and it was there that Julie whispered: "Go on
in your own car. At Dieppe, go to the Hôtel Trois Poissons and wait for
me. I found out yesterday that a woman I know is a doctor in Dieppe, and
she lives there. I'll get leave easily to call. Then I can see you. If
we travel together these girls'll talk; they're just the sort."
Peter nodded understanding, and they drifted apart. He went out to see if
the cars were ready and returned to call the nurses, and in a few minutes
they were off again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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