Peter's Mother Part 38

Peter moved impatiently. "Oh, mother, it is always so difficult to make you understand."

"Is it, indeed?" she said, with a faint, pained smile. "I do my best, my darling."

"Never mind; I suppose women are always rather slow of comprehension,"

said the young lord of creation--"that is, except Sarah. _She_ always understands. G.o.d bless her!"

"G.o.d bless her, indeed!" said Lady Mary, gently, and the tears started to her blue eyes, "if she is going to marry my boy."

Peter repented his crossness. "Forgive me, mother. I know you mean to be kind," he said. "You will help me, won't you?"

"With all my heart," she said, anxiously; "only tell me how."

"You see, I can't help feeling," said Peter, bashfully, "that she wouldn't have told me why she _couldn't_ marry me, if she hadn't thought she might bring herself to do it in the end, if I got over the difficulties she mentioned. I've been--hopeful, ever since she refused that a.s.s of an Avonwick, in spite of Lady Tintern. It wants some courage to defy Lady Tintern, I can tell you, though she's such a little object to look at. By George! I'd almost rather walk up to a loaded gun than face that woman's tongue. Of course, even if _my_ share of the difficulties were removed, there'd still be Lady Tintern against us. But if Sarah can defy Lady Tintern in one thing, she might in another. She's afraid of n.o.body."

"Sarah certainly does not lack courage," said Lady Mary, smiling.

"I never saw anybody like her," said Peter, whose love possessed him, mind, body, and soul. "Why, I've heard her keep a whole roomful of people laughing, and every one of them as dull as ditch-water till she came in. And to see her hold her own against men at games--she's more strength in one of her pretty, white wrists," said Peter, looking with an air of disparagement at his mother's slender, delicate hand, "than you have in your whole body, I do believe."

"She is splendidly strong," said Lady Mary; "the very personification of youth and health." She sighed softly.

"And beauty," said Peter, excitedly. "Don't leave that out. And a good sort, through and through, as even _you_ must allow, mother."

He spoke as though he suspected her of begrudging his praise of Sarah, and she made haste to reply:

"Indeed, she is a good sort, dear little Sarah."

"She is very fond of you," Peter said, in a choking voice. It seemed to him, in his infatuation, so touching that Sarah should be fond of any one. "She was dreadfully afraid of hurting your feelings; but yet, as she said, she was bound to be frank with me."

"Oh, Peter, do tell me what you mean. You are keeping me on thorns,"

said Lady Mary.

She grew red and white by turns. Was John's happiness in sight already, as well as Peter's?

"It's--it's most awfully hard to tell you," said Peter.

He rose, and leant his elbow against the stone mullion nearest her, looking down anxiously upon her as he spoke.

"After all I said to you when we first came home, it's awfully hard.

But if you would only understand, you could make it all easy enough."

"I will--I do understand."

But Peter could not make up his mind even now to be explicit.

"You see," he said, "Sarah is--not like other girls."

"Of course not," said his mother.

She controlled her impatience, reminding herself that Peter was very young, and that he had never been in love before.

"She's a kind of--of queen," said Peter, dreamily. "I only wish you could have seen what it was in London."

"I can imagine it," said Lady Mary.

"No, you couldn't. I hadn't an idea what she would be there, until I went to London and saw for myself," said Peter, who measured everybody's imagination by his own.

"You see," he explained "my position here, which seems so important to you and the other people round here, and _used_ to seem so important to me--is--just nothing at all compared to what has been cast at her feet, as it were, over and over again, for her to pick up if she chose. And this house," said Peter, glancing round and shaking his head--"this house, which seems so beautiful to you now it's all done up, if you'd only _seen_ the houses _she's_ accustomed to staying at.

Tintern Castle, for instance--"

"I was born in a greater house than Tintern Castle, Peter," said Lady Mary, gently.

"Oh, of course. I'm saying nothing against Ferries," said Peter, impatiently. "But you only lived there as a child. A child doesn't notice."

"Some children don't," said Lady Mary, with that faint, wondering smile which hid her pain from Peter, and would have revealed it so clearly to John.

"It isn't that Sarah _minds_ this old house," said Peter; "she was saying what a pretty room she could make of the drawing-room only the other day."

Lady Mary felt an odd pang at her heart. She thought of the trouble John had taken to choose the best of the water-colours for the rose-tinted room--the room he had declared so bright and so charming--of the pretty curtains and chintzes; and the valuable old china she had collected from every part of the house for the cabinets.

"You see, she's got that sort of thing at her fingers' ends, Lady Tintern being such a connoisseur," said the unconscious Peter. "But she's so afraid of hurting your feelings--"

"Why should she be?" said Lady Mary, coldly, in spite of herself. "If she does not like the drawing-room, she can easily alter it."

"That's what I say," said Peter, with a touch of his father's pomposity. "Surely a bride has a right to look forward to arranging her home as she chooses. And Sarah is mad about old French furniture--Louis Seize, I think it is--but I know nothing about such things. I think a man should leave the choice of furniture, and all that, to his wife--especially when her taste happens to be as good as Sarah's."

"I--I think so too, Peter," said Lady Mary.

Her thoughts wandered momentarily into the past; but his eager tones recalled her attention.

"Then you won't mind, so far?" said Peter, anxiously.

"I--why should I mind?" said Lady Mary, starting. "I believe--I have read--that old French furniture is all the rage now." Then she bethought herself, and uttered a faint laugh. "But I'm afraid your aunts might make it a little uncomfortable for her, if she--tried to alter anything. I--go my own way now, and don't mind--but a young bride--does not always like to be found fault with. She might find that relations-in-law are sometimes--a little trying." Lady Mary felt, as she spoke these words, that she was somehow opening a way for herself as well as for Peter. She wondered, with a beating heart, whether the moment had come in which she ought to tell him--

"That's just it," said Peter's voice, breaking in on her thoughts.

"That's just what Sarah means, and what I was trying to lead up to; only I'm no diplomatist. But that's one of the greatest objections she has to marrying me, quite apart from disappointing her aunt. I can't blame Lady Tintern," said Peter, with a new and strange humility, "for not thinking me good enough for Sarah; and _that's_ not a difficulty _I_ can ever hope to remove. Sarah is the one to decide that point.

But about relations-in-law--it's what I've been trying to tell you all this time." He cleared his throat, which had grown dry and husky.

"She says that when she marries she--she intends to have her house to herself."

There was a pause.

"I see," said Lady Mary.

She was silent; not, as Peter thought, with mortification; but because she could not make up her mind what words to choose, in which to tell him that it was freedom and happiness he was thus offering her with both hands; and not, as he thought, loneliness and disappointment.

Twice she essayed to speak, and failed through sheer embarra.s.sment.

The second time Peter lifted her hand to his lips. She felt through all her consciousness the shy remorse which prompted that rare caress.

"The--the Dower House," faltered Peter, "is only a few yards away."