{"product_id":"2940013342972","title":"SIMON CALLED PETER","description":"CHAPTER I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLondon lay as if washed with water-colour that Sunday morning, light blue\u003cbr\u003esky and pale dancing sunlight wooing the begrimed stones of Westminster\u003cbr\u003elike a young girl with an old lover. The empty streets, clean-swept, were\u003cbr\u003ebathed in the light, and appeared to be transformed from the streets of\u003cbr\u003eweek-day life. Yet the half of Londoners lay late abed, perhaps because\u003cbr\u003esix mornings a week of reality made them care little for one of magic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter, nevertheless, saw little of this beauty. He walked swiftly as\u003cbr\u003ealways, and he looked about him, but he noticed none of these things.\u003cbr\u003eTrue, a fluttering sheet of newspaper headlines impaled on the railings\u003cbr\u003eof St. Margaret's held him for a second, but that was because its message\u003cbr\u003ewas the one that rang continually in his head, and had nothing at all to\u003cbr\u003edo with the beauty of things that he passed by.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was a perfectly dressed young man, in a frock coat and silk hat of the\u003cbr\u003eLondon clergyman, and he was on his way to preach at St. John's at the\u003cbr\u003emorning service. Walking always helped him to prepare his sermons, and\u003cbr\u003ethis sermon would ordinarily have struck him as one well worth preparing.\u003cbr\u003eThe pulpit of St. John's marked a rung up in the ladder for him. That\u003cbr\u003egreat fashionable church of mid-Victorian faith and manners held a\u003cbr\u003econgregation on Sunday mornings for which the Rector catered with care.\u003cbr\u003eIt said a good deal for Peter that he had been invited to preach. He\u003cbr\u003eought to have had his determined scheme plain before him, and a few\u003cbr\u003esentences, carefully polished, at hand for the beginning and the end. He\u003cbr\u003ecould trust himself in the middle, and was perfectly conscious of that.\u003cbr\u003eHe frankly liked preaching, liked it not merely as an actor loves to sway\u003cbr\u003ehis audience, but liked it because he always knew what to say, and was\u003cbr\u003ereally keen that people should see his argument. And yet this morning,\u003cbr\u003ewhen he should have been prepared for the best he could do, he was not\u003cbr\u003eprepared at all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStrictly, that is not quite true, for he had a text, and the text\u003cbr\u003eabsolutely focused his thought. But it was too big for him. Like some at\u003cbr\u003eleast in England that day, he was conscious of staring down a lane of\u003cbr\u003etragedy that appalled him. Fragments and sentences came and went in his\u003cbr\u003ehead. He groped for words, mentally, as he walked. Over and over again\u003cbr\u003ehe repeated his text. It amazed him by its simplicity; it horrified him\u003cbr\u003eby its depth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHilda was waiting at the pillar-box as she had said she would be, and\u003cbr\u003elittle as she could guess it, she irritated him. He did not want her just\u003cbr\u003ethen. He could hardly tell why, except that, somehow, she ran counter to\u003cbr\u003ehis thoughts altogether that morning. She seemed, even in her excellent\u003cbr\u003ebrown costume that fitted her fine figure so well, out of place, and out\u003cbr\u003eof place for the first time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey were not openly engaged, these two, but there was an understanding\u003cbr\u003ebetween them, and an understanding that her family was slowly\u003cbr\u003erecognising. Mr. Lessing, at first, would never have accepted an\u003cbr\u003eengagement, for he had other ideas for his daughter of the big house in\u003cbr\u003ePark Lane. The rich city merchant, church-warden at St. John's, important\u003cbr\u003ein his party, and a person of distinction when at his club, would have\u003cbr\u003ebeen seriously annoyed that his daughter should consider a marriage with\u003cbr\u003ea curate whose gifts had not yet made him an income. But he recognised\u003cbr\u003ethat the young man might go far. \"Young Graham?\" he would say, \"Yes, a\u003cbr\u003eclever young fellow, with quite remarkable gifts, sir. Bishop thinks a\u003cbr\u003elot of him, I believe. Preaches extraordinarily well. The Rector said he\u003cbr\u003ewould ask him to St. John's one morning....\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter Graham's parish ran down to the river, and included slums in which\u003cbr\u003esome of the ladies of St. John's (whose congregation had seen to it that\u003cbr\u003ein their immediate neighbourhood there were no such things) were\u003cbr\u003einterested. So the two had met. She had found him admirable and likeable;\u003cbr\u003ehe found her highly respectable and seemingly unapproachable. From which\u003cbr\u003ecold elements much more may come than one might suppose.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47171073573104,"sku":"2940013342972","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013342972_p0.jpg?v=1763579594","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013342972","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}