Peter's Mother Part 40

"Perhaps I am a little mad," said poor Lady Mary. "People go mad sometimes, who have been too long--in prison--they say." Then she saw his real alarm, and laughed till she cried. "I am not really mad," she said. "Do not be frightened, Peter. I--I was only joking."

"It is enough to frighten anybody when you go on like that," said Peter, relieved, but angry. "Talking of prison, and rus.h.i.+ng about all over the world--I see no joke in that."

"Why should I be the only one who must not rush all over the world?"

said Lady Mary.

"You must know perfectly well it would be preposterous," said Peter, sullenly, "to break up all your habits, and leave Barracombe and--and all of us--and start a fresh life--at your age. And if this is how you mock at me and all my plans, I'm sorry I ever took you into my confidence at all. I might have known I should repent it," he said; and a sob of angry resentment broke his voice.

"Indeed, I am not mocking at you, Peter," she said, sorely repentant and ashamed of her outburst. "Forgive me, darling! I see it was--not the moment. You do not understand. You are thinking only of Sarah, as is natural just now. It was not the moment for me to be talking of myself."

"You never used to be selfish," said Peter, thawing somewhat, as she threw her arms about him, and rested her head against his shoulder.

She laughed rather sadly. "But perhaps I am growing selfish--in my old age," said Peter's mother.

Later, Lady Mary sought John Crewys in the smoking-room. He sprang up, smiled at her, and held out his hand.

"So Peter has been confiding his schemes to you?"

"How did you know?"

"I only guessed. When a man seeks a _tete-a-tete_ so earnestly, it is generally to talk about himself. Did the schemes include--Sarah?"

"They include Sarah--marriage--travelling--London--change of every kind."

"Already!" cried John, "Bravo, Peter! and hurray for one-and-twenty!

And you are free?"

"Oh, no; I am not to be free."

"What! Do his schemes include you?"

"Not altogether."

"That is surely illogical, if yours are to include him?"

She smiled faintly. "I am to be always here, to look after the place when he and Sarah are travelling or in London. I am to live with his aunts. He wants to be able to think of me as always waiting here to welcome him home, as--as I have been all his life. Not actually in this house, because--Sarah--my little Sarah--wouldn't like that, it seems; but in the Dower House, close by."

"I see," said John. "How delightfully ingenuous, and how pleasingly unselfish a very young man can sometimes be!"

"Ah! don't laugh at me, John," she said tremulously. "Indeed, just now, I cannot bear it."

"Laugh at you, my queen--my saint! How little you know me!" said John, tenderly. "It was at Peter that I was presuming to smile."

"Is it a laughing matter?" she said wistfully.

"I think it will be, Mary."

"I tried so hard to tell him," said Lady Mary, "but I couldn't.

Somehow he made it impossible. He looks upon me as quite, quite old."

John laughed outright. A laugh that rang true even to Lady Mary's sensitive perceptions.

"But didn't _you_ look upon everybody over thirty as, quite old when you were one-and-twenty? I'm sure I did."

"Perhaps. But yet--I don't know. I am his mother. It is natural he should feel so. He made me realize how preposterous it was for me, the mother of a grown-up son, to be thinking selfishly of my own happiness, as though I were a young, fresh girl just starting life."

"I had hoped," said John, quietly, "that you might be thinking a little of my happiness too."

"Oh, John! But your happiness and mine seemed all the same thing," she said ingenuously. "Yet he thinks of my life as finished; and I was thinking of it as though it were beginning all over again. He made me feel so ashamed, so conscience-stricken." She hid her face in her hands. "How could I tell him?"

"I think," said John, "that the time has come when he must be told. I meant to put it off until he attained his majority; but since he has broached the subject of your leaving this house himself, he has given us the best opportunity possible. And I also think--that the telling had better be left to me."

CHAPTER XVIII

John Crewys stood on the walk below the terrace, with Peter by his side, enjoying an after-breakfast smoke, and watching a party of sportsmen climbing up the bracken-clothed slopes of the opposite hillside. A dozen beaters were toiling after the guns, among whom the short and st.u.r.dy figure of Colonel Hewel was very plainly to be distinguished. A boy was leading a pony-cart for the game.

Sarah had accepted an invitation to dine and spend the evening with her beloved Lady Mary at Barracombe; but Peter had another appointment with her besides, of which Lady Mary knew nothing. He was to meet her at the ferry, and picnic on the moor at the top of the hill, on his side of the river. But through all the secret joy and triumph that possessed him at the remembrance of this rendezvous, he could not but sigh as he watched the little procession of sportsmen opposite, and almost involuntarily his regret escaped him in the half-muttered words--

"I shall never shoot again."

"There are things even better worth doing in life," said John, sympathetically.

"Colonel Hewel wouldn't give in to that," said Peter.

"He's rather a one-idea'd man," John agreed. "But if you asked him whether he'd sacrifice all the sport he's ever likely to enjoy, for one chance to distinguish himself in action--why, you're a soldier, and you know best what he'd say."

Peter's brow cleared. "You've got a knack," he said, almost graciously, "of putting a fellow in a good humour with himself, Cousin John."

"I generally find it easier to be in a good humour with myself than with other people," said John, whimsically. "One expects so little from one's self, that one is scarcely ever disappointed; and so much from other people, that nothing they can do comes up to one's expectations."

"I don't know about that," said Peter, bluntly. "Old Crawley says _you_ take it out of yourself like anything. Since I came back this time, he's been holding forth to me about all you've done for me and the estate, and all that. I didn't know my father had left things in such a mess. And that was a smart thing you did about buying in the farm, and settling the dispute with the Crown, which my father used to be so worried over. I see I've got a good bit to thank you for, Cousin John. I--I'm no end grateful, and all that."

"All right," said John. "Don't bother to make speeches, old boy."

"I must say one thing, though," said Peter, awkwardly. "I was against all the changes, and thought they might have been left till I came home; but I didn't realize it was to be now or never, as old Crawley puts it, and that I'm not to have the right to touch my capital when I come of age."

"The whole arrangement was rather an unusual one; but everything's worked out all right, and, as far as the estate goes, you'll find it in pretty fair order to start upon, and values increased," said John, quietly. "But Crawley has the whole thing at his fingers' ends, and the interest of the place thoroughly at heart. You couldn't have a better adviser."

"He's well enough," said Peter, somewhat ungraciously.

"Shall we take a turn up and down?" said John. He lighted a fresh cigarette. "There is a chill feeling in the air, though it is such a lovely morning."

"It will be warmer when the sun has conquered the mist," said Peter, with a slight s.h.i.+ver.