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Updated: June 13, 2025
The British do not expect their very young men to be too knowing or too fatally bright; they mark the promise rather than the performance of youth, and spaciously allow time for the process of development. And so Peter Champneys found himself curiously at home in democratically oligarchic England.
And now here was Berkeley Hayden, quite as imperious as Chadwick Champneys had ever been, and who was quite as successful in getting what he wanted. Anne had welcomed Mr. Hayden gladly. She was honestly delighted to see him. Florence had taught her, signally, the depths of her own lack of culture, and this biting knowledge increased her respect for Mr. Berkeley Hayden.
"Peter Champneys," said Peter's wife, and literally shook in her shoes. Her clasp tightened. Marcia put her arms around her, and felt, to her surprise, that Anne was frightened. "You are sure?" "Yes. I heard it accidentally, but I am sure. You know how pretty the Arno is at the spot where we picnicked. We strolled about, and I didn't want to talk to anybody, so I slipped away by myself.
Nobody but Peter Champneys could or would have borne with Emma Campbell's contrary fits, but as neither of them realized this they managed to get along beautifully. Peter was well aware that when the car that had suddenly appeared in the night had just as suddenly disappeared in the morning in a cloud of dust on the Riverton Road, Emma's peace of mind had vanished also.
There is a France that artists love more than they may ever love any woman. Peter Champneys knew that France. Nobody hated and loathed war more than he, born and raised in a land, and among a people, stripped and darkened by it. And that had been but a drop in the bucket, compared with what was now threatening France. He couldn't idly stand by and see that happen!
In my day marriage was binding. No respectable husband or wife ever dreamed of divorce!" "But they were real husbands and wives, weren't they?" asked Nancy. "All husbands and wives are real husbands and wives!" he thundered. She considered this and him carefully. "Then you don't want Mr. Peter Champneys and me ever to be divorced? I thought maybe you might."
He could do a gentle and generous deed. And perhaps he also was finding the heavy chain of his promise to his uncle, of his marriage to herself, galling and wearisome. She reached a woman's swift decision. "I'm going to be a better sport," said she. "I'm going to reward Peter Champneys by setting him free. I shall have our marriage annulled."
She thought that if she had been allowed to pick them out for herself, instead of having been hypnotized "bulldozed" is what she called it into plain old dowdy duds by two shopwomen and a Jew manager, she'd have given him more for his money. Mr. Champneys, looking her over critically, admitted that the girl was at least presentable.
But she had persisted, and as the case was simple and quite clear her freedom was a foregone conclusion, though there were, of course, the usual formalities, the usual wearisome delays. She had closed the Champneys house, and gone to Marcia, who wanted her. Jason, too, had insisted that she should make her home with them for the time being.
And oddly enough, out of this welter of her thoughts, there came to her memory a screened bed in a hospital ward, and a dying gutter-girl looking at her with unearthly eyes and telling her in a thin whisper: "I wanted to see if you was good enough for him. You ain't. But remember what I'm tellin' you you could be." Pierre Peter Champneys!
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