Peter's Mother Part 43

On this October day, the heather yet st.u.r.dily bore a few last rosy blossoms, and the ripe blackberries shone like black diamonds on the straggling brambles. Here and there a belated furze-bush erected its golden crown.

Over the dim purple of the distant hills, a brighter purple line proclaimed the sea. Closer at hand, on a ridge exposed to every wind of heaven, sighed a little wood of stunted larch and dull blue pine, against a clear and brilliant sky.

Sarah was enthroned on a mossy stone, beneath the yellowing foliage of a sheltering beech.

Her glorious ruddy hair was uncovered, and a Tyrolese hat was hung on a neighbouring bramble, beside a little tweed coat. She wore a loose white canvas shirt, and short tweed skirt; a brown leather belt, and brown leather boots.

Being less indifferent to creature-comforts than to the preservation of her complexion, Miss Sarah was paying great attention to the contents of a market-basket by her side. She had chosen a site for the picnic near a bubbling brook, and had filled her gla.s.s with clear sparkling water therefrom, before seating herself to enjoy her cold chicken and bread and b.u.t.ter, and a slice of game-pie.

Peter was very far from feeling any inclination towards displaying the hilarity which an outdoor meal is supposed to provoke. He was obliged to collect sticks, and put a senseless round-bottomed kettle on a damp reluctant fire; to himself he used much stronger adjectives in describing both; he relieved his feelings slightly by saying that he never ate lunch, and by gloomily eying the game-pie instead of aiding Sarah to demolish it.

"It wouldn't be a picnic without a kettle and a fire; and we _must_ have hot water to wash up with. I brought a dish-cloth on purpose,"

said Sarah. "I can't think why you don't enjoy yourself. You used to be fond of eating and drinking--_anywhere_--and most of all on the moor--in the good old days that are gone."

"I am not a philosopher like you," said Peter, angrily.

"I am anything but that," said Sarah, with provoking cheerfulness. "A philosopher is a thoughtful middle-aged person who puts off enjoying life until it's too late to begin."

"I hate middle-aged people," said Peter.

"I am not very fond of them myself, as a rule," said Sarah, indulgently. "They aren't nice and amusing to talk to, like you and me; or rather" (with a glance at her companion's face), "like _me_; and they aren't picturesque and fond of spoiling us, as _really_ old people are. They are just busy trying to get all they can out of the world, that's all. But there are exceptions; or, of course, it wouldn't be a rule. Your mother is an exception. No one, young or old, was ever more picturesque or--or more altogether delicious. It was I who taught her that new way of doing her hair. By-the-by, how do you like it?"

"I don't like it at all," growled Peter.

"Perhaps you preferred the old way," said Sarah, turning up her short nose rather scornfully. "Parted, indeed, and brushed down flat over her ears, exactly like that horrid old Mrs. Ash!"

"Mrs. Ash has lived with us for thirty years," said Peter, in a tone implying that he desired no liberties to be taken with the names of his faithful retainers.

"That doesn't make her any better looking, however," retorted Sarah.

"In fact, she might have had more chance of learning how to do her hair properly anywhere else, now I come to think of it."

"Of course everything at Barracombe is ugly and old-fashioned," said Peter, gloomily.

"Except your mother," said Sarah.

"Sarah! I can't stand any more of this rot!" said Peter, starting from his couch of heather. "Will you talk sense, or let me?"

Sarah shot a keen glance of inquiry at his moody face.

"Well," she said, in resigned tones, "I did hope to finish my lunch in peace. I saw there was something the matter when you came striding up the hill without a word, but I thought it was only that you found the basket too heavy. Of course, if I had known it was only to be lunch for one, I would not have put in so many things; and certainly not a whole bottle of papa's best claret. In fact, if I had known I was to picnic practically alone, I would not have crossed the river at all."

Then she saw that Peter was in earnest, and with a sigh of regret, Sarah returned the dish of jam-puffs to the basket.

"I couldn't talk sense, or even listen to it, with those heavenly puffs under my very nose," she said. "Now, what is it?"

"I hate telling you--I hate talking of it," said Peter, and a dark flush rose to his frowning eyebrows. He threw himself once more at Sarah's feet, and turned his face away from her, and towards the blue streak of distant sea. "John Crewys wants to marry--my mother," he said in choking tones.

"Is that all?" said Sarah. "I've seen that for ages. Aren't you glad?"

"Glad!" said Peter.

"I thought," Sarah said innocently, "that _you_ wanted to marry _me_?"

"Sarah!"

"Well!" said Sarah. She looked rather oddly at Peter's rec.u.mbent figure. Then she pushed the loosened waves of her red hair from her forehead with a determined gesture. "Well," she said defiantly, "isn't that one obstacle to our marriage removed? Your aunts will go to the Dower House, and your mother will leave Barracombe, and you'll have the place all to yourself. And you dare to tell me you're sorry?"

"Yes," said Peter, sitting up and facing her, "I dare."

"I'm glad of that," said Sarah. Her deep voice softened. "I should have thought less of you if you hadn't dared."

Suddenly she rose from her mossy throne, shook the crumbs off her skirt, and looked down upon Peter with blue eyes sparkling beneath her long lashes, and the fresh red colour deepening and spreading in her cheeks, until even the tips of her delicate ears and her creamy throat turned pink.

"_Well_," said Sarah, "go and stop it. Make your mother sorry and ashamed. It would be very easy. Tell her she's too old to be happy.

But say good-bye to me first."

"Sarah!"

"Why is it to be all sunshine for you, and all shade for her?" said Sarah. "Hasn't she wept enough to please you? Mayn't she have her St.

Martin's summer? G.o.d gives it to her. Will _you_ take it away?"

"Sarah!"

He looked up at her crimsoned tearful face in dismay. Was this Sarah the infantile--the pink-and-white--the seductive, laughing, impudent Sarah? And yet how pa.s.sionately Peter admired her in this mood of virago, which he had never seen since the days of her childish rages of long ago.

"Why do you suppose," said Sarah, disdainfully, "that I've been letting you follow _me_ about all this summer, and desert _her_; except to show her how little you are to be depended upon? To bring home to her how foolish she'd be to fling away her happiness for your sake. _You_, who at one word from me, were willing to turn her out of her own home, to live in a wretched little villa at your very door.

Don't interrupt me," said Sarah, stamping, "and say you weren't willing. You told her so. I meant you to tell her, and yet--I could have killed you, Peter, when I heard her sweet voice faltering out to me, that she would be ready and glad to give up her place to her boy's wife, whenever the time should come."

"_She_ told you?" cried Peter.

"But she didn't say you'd asked her," cried Sarah, scornfully. "_I_ knew it, but she never guessed I did. She was only gently smoothing away, as she hoped, the difficulties that lay in the path to _your_ happiness. Oh, that she could have believed it of me! But she thinks only of your happiness. _You_, who would s.n.a.t.c.h away hers this minute if you could. She never dreamt I knew you'd said a word."

She paused in her impa.s.sioned speech, and the tears dropped from the dark blue eyes. Sarah was crying, and Peter was speechless with awe and dismay.

"I think she would have died, Peter," said Sarah, solemnly, "before she would have told me how brutal you'd been, and how stupid, and how selfish. I meant you to show her all that. I thought it would open her eyes. I was such a fool! As if anything could open the eyes of a mother to the faults of her only son."

Peter looked at her with such despair and grief in his dark face that her heart almost softened towards him; but she hardened it again immediately.

"Do you mean that you--you've been playing with me all this time, Sarah? They--everybody told me--that you were only playing--but I've never believed it."

"I _meant_ to play with you," said Sarah, turning, if possible, even redder than before; "I meant to teach you a lesson, and throw you over. And the more I saw of you, the more I didn't repent. You, who dared to think yourself superior to your mother; and, indeed, to any woman! Kings are enslaved by women, you know," said Miss Sarah, tossing her head, "and statesmen are led by them, though they oughtn't to be. And--and poets worship them, or how could they write poetry?

There would be nothing to write about. It is reserved for boys and savages to look down upon them."

She sat scornfully down again on her boulder, and put her hands to her loosened hair.

"I can't think why a scene always makes one's hair untidy," said Sarah, suddenly bursting into a laugh; but the whiteness of Peter's face frightened her, and she had some ado to laugh naturally. "And I am lost without a looking-gla.s.s," she added, in a somewhat quavering tone of bravado.

She pulled out a great tortoise-sh.e.l.l dagger, and a heavy ma.s.s of glorious red-gold hair fell about her piquant face, and her pretty milk-white throat, down to her waist.