Peter's Mother Part 24

Poor Lady Mary lifted both hands to her head, and looked at him with something like alarm in her blue eyes.

"Is it? Perhaps it is," she faltered. "Don't you like it, Peter?"

"I like the old way best," said Peter.

"But this is so much more becoming, Peter."

"A fellow doesn't care," said Peter, loftily, "whether his mother's hair is becoming or not. He likes to see her always the same as when he was a little chap."

"It is--sweet of you, to have such a thought," murmured Lady Mary. She took her courage in both hands. "But the other way is out of fashion, Peter."

"Why, mother, you never used to follow the fashions before I went away; you won't begin now, at your age, will you?"

"_At my age_" repeated Lady Mary, blankly. Then she looked at him with that wondering, pathetic smile, which seemed to have replaced already, since Peter came home, the joyousness which had timidly stolen back from her vanished youth. "At my age!" said Lady Mary; "you are not very complimentary, Peter."

"You don't expect a fellow to pay compliments to his mother," said Peter, staring at her. "Why, mother, what has come to you? And besides--"

"Besides?"

"I'm sure papa hated compliments, and all that sort of rot," Peter blurted out, in boyish fashion. "Don't you remember how fond he was of quoting, 'Praise to the face is open disgrace'?"

The late Sir Timothy, like many middle-cla.s.s people, had taken a compliment almost as a personal offence; and regarded the utterer, however gracious or sincere, with suspicion. Neither had the squire himself erred on the side of flattering his fellow-creatures.

"Oh yes, I remember," said Lady Mary; and she rose from the sofa.

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Peter. "I haven't vexed you, have I?"

She turned impetuously and threw her arms round him as he stood by the hearth, gazing down upon her in bewilderment.

"Vexed with my boy, my darling, my only son, on the very day when G.o.d has given him back to me?" she cried pa.s.sionately. "My poor wounded boy, my hero! Oh no, no! But I want only love from you to-day, and no reproaches, Peter."

"Why, I wasn't dreaming of reproaching you, mother." He hesitated.

"Only you're a bit different from what I expected--that's all."

"Have I disappointed you?"

"No, no! Only I--well, I thought I might find you changed, but in a different way," he said, half apologetically. "Perhaps older, you know, or--or sadder."

Lady Mary's white face flushed scarlet from brow to chin; but Peter, occupied with his monocle, observed nothing.

"I'd prepared myself for that," he said, "and to find you all in black. And--"

"I threw off my mourning," she murmured, "the very day I heard you were coming home." She paused, and added hurriedly, "It was very thoughtless. I'm sorry; I ought to have thought of your feelings, my darling."

"Aunt Isabella has never changed hers, has she?" said Peter.

"Aunt Isabella is a good deal more conventional than I am; and a great many years older," said Lady Mary, tremulously.

"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Peter.

She turned away, and began to gather up her scattered roses. A few moments since the roses had been less than nothing to her. What were roses, what was anything, compared to Peter? Now they crept back into their own little place in creation; their beauty and fragrance dumbly conveyed a subtle comfort to her soul, as she lovingly laid one against another, until a glowing bouquet of coppery golden hue was formed. She lifted an ewer from the old dresser, and poured water into a great silver goblet, wherein she plunged the stalks of her roses.

Why should they be left to fade because Peter had come home?

"You remember these?" she said, "from the great climber round my bedroom window? I leant out and cut them--little thinking--"

Peter signified a gloomy a.s.sent. He stood before the chimneypiece watching his mother, but not offering to help her; rather as though undecided as to what his next words ought to be.

"Peter, darling, it's so funny to see you standing there, so tall, and so changed--" But though it was so funny the tears were dropping from her blue eyes, which filled and overflowed like a child's, without painful effort or grimaces. "You--you remind me so of your father,"

she said, almost involuntarily.

"I'm glad I'm like him," said Peter.

She sighed. "How I used to wish you were a little tiny bit like me too!"

"But I'm not, am I?"

"No, you're not. Not one tiny bit," she answered wistfully. "But you do love me, Peter?"

"Haven't I proved I love you?" said Peter; and she perceived that his feelings were hurt. "Coming back, and--and thinking only of you, and--and of never leaving you any more. Why, mother"--for in an agony of love and remorse she was clinging to him and sobbing, with her face pressed against his empty sleeve--"why, mother," Peter repeated, in softened tones, "of course I love you."

The drawing-room door was cautiously opened, and Peter's aunts came into the hall on tiptoe, followed by the canon.

"Ah, I thought so," said Lady Belstone, in the self-congratulatory tones of the successful prophet, "it has been too much for poor Mary.

She has been overcome by the joy of dear Peter's return."

CHAPTER XII

"Try my salts, dear Mary," said Miss Crewys, hastening to apply the remedies which were always to be found in her black velvet reticule.

"I blame myself," said the canon, distressfully--"I blame myself. I should have insisted on breaking the news to her gently."

Lady Mary smiled upon them all. "On the contrary," she said, "I was offering, not a moment ago, to take Peter round and show him the improvements. We have been so much occupied with each other that he has not had time to look round him."

"I wish he may think them improvements, my love," said Lady Belstone.

Miss Crewys, joyously scenting battle, hastened to join forces with her sister.

"We are far from criticizing any changes your dear mother may have been induced to make," she said; "but as your Aunt Isabella has frequently observed to me, what _can_ a Londoner know of landscape gardening?"

"A Londoner?" said Peter.

"Your guardian, my boy," said the canon, nervously. "He has slightly opened out the views; that is all your good aunt is intending to say."

Peter's good aunt opened her mouth to contradict this a.s.sertion indignantly, but Lady Mary broke in with some impatience.