Peter's Mother Part 34

In the silence, many usually unheeded sounds made themselves very plainly heard.

The tapping of the great magnolia-leaves upon the windows of the south front; the rustling of the ilex; the ceaseless murmur of the river; the near twittering or distant song of innumerable birds; the steady hum of the saw-mill below; the call of the poultry-woman at the home-farm, and the shrieking response of a feathered horde flying and fighting for their food--sounds all so familiar as to pa.s.s unnoticed, save in the absence of companionship.

As Lady Mary mused alone, she could not but recall other summer afternoons, when she had not felt less lonely because her husband's voice might at any moment break the silence, and summon her to his side. Days when Peter had been absent at school, instead of, as now, at play; and when the old ladies had also been absent, taking their regular and daily drive in the big barouche.

Then she had prized and coveted the solitude of a summer afternoon on the lawn, and had stolen away to read and dream undisturbed in the shadow of the ilex.

It was now, when no vexatious restraint was exercised over her--when there was no one to reprove her for dreaming, or to criticize or forbid her chosen book--that solitude had become distasteful to her.

She was restless and dissatisfied, and the misty sunlit landscape had lost its charm, and her book its power of enchaining her attention.

She had tasted the joy of real companionship; the charm of real sympathy; of the fearless exchange of ideas with one whose outlook upon life was as broad and charitable as Sir Timothy's had been narrow and prejudiced.

She had scarcely dared to acknowledge to herself how dear John Crewys had become to her, even though she knew that she rested thankfully upon the certainty of his love; that she trusted him in all things; that she was in utter sympathy with all his thoughts and words and ways.

Yet she had wished him to go, that she might be free to devote herself to her boy--to be very sure that she was not a light and careless mother, ready to abandon her son at the first call of a stranger.

And John Crewys had understood as another might not have understood.

His clear head and great heart had divined her feelings, though perhaps he would never quite know how pa.s.sionately grateful she was because he had divined them; because he had in no way fallen short of the man he had seemed to be.

She had sacrificed John to Peter; and John, who had shown so much wisdom and delicacy in leaving her alone with her son, was avenged; for only his absence could have made clear to her how he had grown into the heart she had guarded so jealously for Peter's sake.

She knew now that Peter's companionship made her more lonely than utter solitude.

The _joie de vivre_, which had distinguished her early days, and was inherent in her nature, had been quenched, to all appearance, many years since; but the spark had never died, and John had fanned it into brightness once more.

His strong hand had swept away the cobwebs that had been spun across her life; and the drooping soul had revived in the sunshine of his love, his comradeship, his warm approval.

Timidly, she had learnt to live, to laugh, to look about her, and dare utter her own thoughts and opinions, instead of falsely echoing those she did not share. Lady Mary had recovered her individuality; the serene consciousness of a power within herself to live up to the ideal her lover had conceived of her.

But now, in his absence, that confidence had been rudely shaken. She had come to perceive that she, who charmed others so easily, could not charm her sullen son. It was part of the penalty she paid for her quick-wittedness, that she could realize herself as Peter saw her, though she was unable to present herself before him in a more favourable light.

"I must be myself--or n.o.body," she thought despairingly. But Peter wanted her to be once more the meek, plainly dressed, low-spirited, silent being whom Sir Timothy had created; and who was not in the least like the original laughing, loving, joyous Mary Setoun.

It did not occur to her, in her sorrowful humility, that possibly her qualities stood on a higher level than Peter's powers of appreciation.

Yet it is certain that people can only admire intelligently what is good within their comprehension; and their highest flights of imagination may sometimes scarcely touch mediocrity.

The n.o.blest ideals, the fairest dreams, the subtlest reasoning, the finest ethics, contained in the writings of the mighty dead, meant nothing at all to Sir Timothy. His widow knew that she had never heard him utter one high or n.o.ble or selfless thought. But with, perhaps, pardonable egotism, she had taken it for granted that Peter must be different. Whatever his outward humours, he was _her_ son; rather a part of herself, in her loving fancy, than a separate individual.

The moment of awakening had been long in coming to Lady Mary; the moment when a mother has to find out that her personality is not necessarily reproduced in her child; that the being who was once the unconscious consoler of her griefs and troubles may develop a nature perfectly antagonistic to her own.

She had kept her eyes shut with all her might for a long time, but necessity was forcing them open.

Perhaps her a.s.sociation with John Crewys made it easier to see Peter as he was, and not as she had wished him to be.

And yet, she thought miserably to herself, he had certainly tried hard to be affectionate and kind to her--and probably it did not occur to him, as it did to his mother, how pathetic it was that he should have to try.

Peter did not think much about it.

Sometimes, during his short stay at Barracombe, he had walked through a game of croquet with his mother--it was good practice for his left hand--or he listened disapprovingly to something she inadvertently (forgetting he was not John) read aloud for his sympathy or admiration; or he took a short stroll with her; or bestowed his company upon her in some other dutiful fashion. But these filial attentions over, if he yawned with relief--why, he never did so in her presence, and would have been unable to understand that Lady Mary saw him yawning, in her mind's eye, as plainly as though he had indulged this bad habit under her very nose. He bestowed a portion of his time on his aunts in much the same spirit, taking less trouble to be affectionate, because they were less exacting, as he would have put it to himself, than she was.

The scheme of renting a house in London had duly been laid before him, and rejected most decisively by the young gentleman. His father had never taken a house in town, and he could see no necessity for it. His aunts were lost in admiration for their nephew's firmness. Peter had inherited somewhat of his father's dictatorial manner, and their flattery did not tend to soften it. When his aged relatives misp.r.o.nounced the magic word _kopje_, or betrayed their belief that a _donga_ was an inaccessible mountain--he brought the big guns of his heavy satire to bear on the little target of their ignorance without remorse. He mistook a loud voice, and a habit of laying down the law, for manly decision, and the gift of leadership; and imagined that in talking down his mother's gentle protests he had convinced her of his superior wisdom.

When he had made it sufficiently clear, however, that he did not wish Lady Mary to accompany him to town, young Sir Peter made haste to depart thither himself, on the very reasonable plea that he required a new outfit of clothes.

Was it possible that his departure brought a dreadful relief to the mother who had prayed day and night, for eight-and-twenty months, that her son might return to her?

She tried and tried, on her knees in her own room, to realize what her feelings would have been if Peter had been killed in South Africa.

She tried to recall the first ecstasy of joy at his home-coming. She remembered, as she might have remembered a dream, the hours of agony she had pa.s.sed, looking out over these very blue hills, and dumbly beseeching G.o.d to spare her boy--her only son--out of all the mothers'

sons who were laying down their lives for England.

A terrible thought a.s.sailed her now and then, like an ugly spectre that would not be laid--that if Peter had died of his wound--if he had fallen as so many of his comrades had fallen, in the war--he would have been a hero for all time; a glorious memory, safely enshrined and enthroned above all these miserable petty doubts and disappointments.

She cast the thought from her in horror and piteous grief, and reiterated always her pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude for his preservation. But, nevertheless, the living, breathing Peter was a daily and hourly disappointment to the mother who loved him. His ways were not her ways, nor his thoughts her thoughts; and often she felt that she could have found more to say to a complete stranger, and that a stranger would have understood her better.

The old ladies, returning from their drive, generally took a little turn upon the terrace. This const.i.tuted half their daily exercise, since their morning walk consisted of a stroll round the kitchen garden.

"It prevents cramp after sitting so long," one would say to the other.

"And it is only right to show the gardener that we take an interest,"

the other would reply.

The gardener translated the interest they took into a habit of fault-finding, which nearly drove him mad.

"It du spile the vine weather vor I," he would frequently grumble to his greatest crony, James Coachman, who, for his part, bitterly resented the abnormal length of the daily drives. "Zure as vate, when I zits down tu my tea, c.u.mes a message from one are t'other on 'em, an' oop I goes. 'Yu bain't been lukin' round zo careful as 'ee shude; there be a bit o' magnolia as want nailding oop, my gude man.' 'Oh, be there, mum?' zays I. 'Yiss, there be; an' thart I'd carl yure attention tu it,' zess she, are zum zuch. 'Thanky, mum, I'm zure,'

zezz I."

"I knows how her goes on," groaned James Coachman.

"Mother toime 'tis zummat else," said the aggrieved gardener. "'Thic 'ere geranum's broke, Willum; but ef yu tuke it vor cuttings, zo vast's iver yu cude, 'twon't take no yarm, Willum. Yu zee as how us du take a turble interest.' Ah! 'tis arl I can du tu putt oop wi' 'un; carling a man from's tea, tu tark zuch vamous vule's tark."

Lady Mary was not much less weary than the gardener and coachman of the old sisters' habits of criticism. But only the shadow of their former power of vexing her remained, now that they could no longer appeal to Sir Timothy to join them in reproving his wife. She was no more to be teased or exasperated into alternate submission and rebellion.

Their cousin John, the administrator of Barracombe, had chosen from the first to place her opinions and wishes above all their protests or advice. They said to each other that John, before he grew tired of her and went away, had spoilt poor dear Mary completely; but their hopes were centred on Peter, who was a true Crewys, and who would soon be his own master, and the master of Barracombe; when he would, doubtless, revert to his father's old ways.

They chose to blame his mother for his sudden departure to London, and remarked that the changes in his home had so wrought upon the poor fellow, that he could not bear to look at them until he had the power of putting them right again.

A deeply resented innovation was the appearance of the tea-table on the lawn before the windows, in the shade of the ilex-grove, which sheltered the western end of the terrace from the low rays of the sun.

During the previous summer, on their return from a drive, they had found their cousin John in his white flannels, and Lady Mary in her black gown, serenely enjoying this refreshment out-of-doors; and the poor old ladies had hardly known how to express their surprise and annoyance.

In vain did their sister-in-law explain that she had desired a second tea to be served in the hall, in their usual corner by the log fireplace.

It had never been the custom in the family. What would Ash say? What would he think? How could so much extra trouble be given to the servants?

"The servants have next to nothing to do," Lady Mary had said; and young John had actually laughed, and explained that he had had a conversation with Ash which had almost petrified that tyrant of the household.

Either Ash would behave himself properly, and carry out orders without grumbling, or he would be superseded. _Ash_ superseded!

This John had said with quite unruffled good humour, and with a smile on his face, as though such an upheaval of domestic politics were the simplest thing in the world. Though for years the insolence and the idleness of Ash had been favourite grievances with Lady Belstone and Miss Crewys, they were speechlessly indignant with young John.