Peter was not happy at the High School. It is disconcerting, when you
have been First Boy and a Captain, to be put among inferior creatures to
learn Greek. Peter had risen with his former friends from the lowest to
the highest; they had grown together in sport and learning. Now he found
himself in a middle form, an interloper among cliques already
established. Moreover, the boys at the High School, where education for
such as could not obtain a foundation scholarship was more expensive
than at the lower branches, were of a superior quality, with nicer
manners and a more delicate way of speaking. He was a stranger.
At sixteen Peter was almost a man. His father had always met him upon an
intellectual equality. They had talked upon the gravest matters. Peter
had voraciously read a thousand books which he did not altogether
understand. It needed only physical adolescence to show him how far he
had outstripped the friends of his age.
The lot of a precocious boy is not a happy one, and Peter paid the
penalty. He made not a single friend during his two years at the new
school. He lived gravely after his own devices, quiet, observant,
superficially accessible to the kind advances of his masters and
classfellows, but profoundly unaffected.
Nevertheless these years were the most important of Peter's life,
wherein he learned all that his father was able to teach him. Peter,
years after he had outlived much of his early wisdom, yet looked back
upon this time as peculiarly sacred to his father. From him he learned
to accept naturally the perplexing instincts that now were arisen within
him. Peter escaped the usual unhappy period of surmise and shamefast
perplexity.
More particularly these were the glorious years of Peter and Miranda.
Peter found in Miranda the perfect maid, and Miranda, eager for
knowledge and greedy of adoration, reaching after the life of a woman
with the mind and body of a girl, found in Peter the pivot of the world.
In these years were laid the foundations of an incredible intimacy.
Daily they grew in a perpetual discovery of themselves. Peter opened to
Miranda the store of his knowledge. There was perfect confidence. At an
age when the secrets of life are the subject of uneasy curiosity at
best, and at worst of thoughtless defamation, Peter and Miranda talked
of them as they talked of their bees (Peter's latest craze); of the
stars; of the poets they loved (Miranda was not yet altogether a woman:
she loved the poets); of the life they would lead in the friendly world.
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.