Peter's Mother Part 44

"Dear me!" said Miss Sarah. She looked around. Near the bubbling brook, dark peaty hollows held little pools, which offered Nature's mirror for her toilet.

She went to the side of the stream and knelt down. Her plump white hands dexterously twisted and secured the long burnished coil. Then she glanced slyly round at Peter.

He lay face downwards on the gra.s.s. His shoulders heaved. The pretty picture Miss Sarah's coquetry presented had been lost upon the foolish youth.

She returned in a leisurely manner to her place, and leaning her chin on her hand, and her elbow on her knee, regarded him thoughtfully.

"Where was I? Yes, I remember. It is a lesson for a girl, Peter, never to marry a boy or a savage."

"Sarah!" said Peter. He raised his face and looked at her. His eyes were red, but he was too miserable to care; he was, as she had said, only a boy. "Sarah, you're not in earnest! You can't be! I--I know I ought to be angry." Miss Sarah laughed derisively. "Yes, you laugh, for you know too well I can't be angry with you. I love you!" said Peter, pa.s.sionately, "though you are--as cruel as though I've not had pretty well as much to bear to-day, as I know how to stand. First, John Crewys, and now you--saying--"

"Just the truth," said Sarah, calmly.

"I don't deny," said Peter, in a quivering voice, "that--that some of the beastly things he said came--came home to me. I've been a selfish brute to _her_, I always have been. You've said so pretty plainly, and I--I dare say it's true. I think it's true. But to _you_--and I was so happy." He hid his face in his hand.

"I'm glad you have the grace to see the error of your ways at last,"

said Sarah, encouragingly. "It makes me quite hopeful about you. But I'm sorry to see you're still only thinking of _our_ happiness--I mean _yours_," she corrected herself in haste, for a sudden eager hope flashed across Peter's miserable young face. "Yours, yours, _yours_.

It's your happiness and not hers you think of still, though you've all your life before you, and she has only half hers. But no one has ever thought of her--except me, and one other."

"John Crewys?" said Peter, angrily.

"Not John Crewys at all," snapped Sarah. "He is just thinking of his own happiness like you are. All men are alike, except the one I'm thinking of. But though I make no doubt that John Crewys is just as selfish as you are, which is saying a good deal, yet, as it happens, John Crewys is the only man who could make her happy."

"What man are you thinking of?" said Peter.

Jealousy was a potent factor in his love for Sarah. He forgot his mother instantly, as he had forgotten her on the day of his return, when Sarah had walked on to the terrace--and into his heart.

"I name no names," said Sarah, "but I hope I know a hero when I see him; and that man is a hero, though he is--nothing much to look at."

It amused her to observe the varying expressions on her lover's face, which her artless words called forth, one after another.

"If you are really not going to eat any luncheon, Peter," she said, "I must trouble you to help me to wash up and pack the basket. The fire is out and the water is cold, but it can't be helped. The picnic has been a failure."

"We have the whole afternoon before us. I cannot see that there is any hurry," said Peter, not stirring.

"I didn't mean to break bad news to you," said Sarah, "until we'd had a pleasant meal together in comfort, and rested ourselves. But since you insist on spoiling everything with your horrid premature disclosures, I don't see why I shouldn't do the same. I must be at home by four o'clock, because Aunt Elizabeth is coming to Hewelscourt this very afternoon."

"Lady Tintern!" cried Peter, in dismay. "Then you won't be able to come to Barracombe this evening?"

"I am not in the habit of throwing over a dinner engagement," said Sarah, with dignity. "But in case they won't let me come," she added, with great inconsistency, "I'll put a lighted candle in the top window of the tower, as usual. But you can guess how many more of these enjoyable expeditions we shall be allowed to make. Not that we need regret them if they are all to be as lively as this one. Still--"

She helped herself to a jam-puff, and offered the dish to Peter, with an engaging smile. He helped himself absently.

"I don't deny I am fond of taking meals in the open air, and more especially on the top of the moor," said Sarah, with a sigh of content.

"What has she come for?" said Peter.

"I shall be better able to tell you when I have seen her."

"Don't you know?"

"I can pretty well guess. She's going to forgive me, for one thing.

Then she'll tell me that I don't deserve my good luck, but that Lord Avonwick is so patient and so long-suffering, that he's accepted her a.s.surance that I don't know my own mind (and I'm not sure I do), and he's going to give me one more chance to become Lady Avonwick, though I was so foolish as to say 'No' to his last offer."

"You didn't say 'No' to _my_ last offer!" cried Peter.

"I don't believe an offer of marriage is even legal before you're one-and-twenty," said Miss Sarah, derisively. "What did it matter what I said? Haven't I told you I was only playing?"

"You may tell me so a thousand times," said Peter, doggedly, "but I shall never believe you until I see you actually married to somebody else."

CHAPTER XX

Lady Tintern was pleased to leave Paddington by a much earlier train than could have been expected. She hired a fly, and a pair of broken-kneed horses, at Brawnton, and once more took her relations at Hewelscourt by surprise. On this occasion, however, she was not fortunate enough to find her invalid niece at play in the stable-yard, though she detected her at luncheon, and warmly congratulated her upon her robust appearance and her excellent appet.i.te.

Her journey had, no doubt, been undertaken with the very intentions Sarah had described; but another motive also prompted her, which Sarah had not divined.

Much as she desired to marry her grand-niece to Lord Avonwick, she was not blind to the young man's personal disadvantages, which were undeniable; and which Peter had rudely summed up in a word by alluding to his rival as an a.s.s. He was distinguished among the admirers of Miss Sarah's red and white beauty by his brainlessness no less than by his eligibility.

Nevertheless, Lady Tintern had favoured his suit. She knew him to be a good fellow, although he was a simpleton, and she was very sure that he loved Sarah sincerely.

"Whoever the girl marries, she will rule him with a rod of iron. She had better marry a fool and be done with it. So why not an eligible and t.i.tled and good-natured fool?" the old lady had written to Mrs.

Hewel, who was very far from understanding such reasoning, and wept resentfully over the letter.

Why should Lady Tintern s.n.a.t.c.h her only daughter away from her in order to marry her to a fool? Mrs. Hewel was of opinion that a sensible young man like Peter would be a better match. She supposed n.o.body would call Sir Peter Crewys of Barracombe a fool; and as for his being young, he was only a few months younger than Lord Avonwick, and Sarah would have just as pretty a t.i.tle, even if her husband were only a baronet instead of a baron. Thus she argued to herself, and wrote the gist of her argument to her aunt. Why was Sarah to go hunting the highways and byways for t.i.tled fools, when there was Peter at her very door,--a young man she had known all her life, and one of the oldest families in Devon, and seven thousand acres of land only next week, when he would come of age, and could marry whomever he liked? Though, of course, Sarah must not go against her aunt, who had promised to do so much for her, and given her so many beautiful things, whether young girls ought to wear jewellery or not.

This was the distracted letter which was bringing Lady Tintern to Hewelscourt. She had been annoyed with Sarah for refusing Lord Avonwick, and thought it would do the rebellious young lady no harm to return for a time to the bosom of her family, and thus miss Newmarket, which Sarah particularly desired to attend, since no society function interested her half so much as racing.

The old lady had not in the least objected to Sarah's friends.h.i.+p for young Sir Peter Crewys. Sarah, as John had truly said, was a star with many satellites; and among those satellites Peter did not s.h.i.+ne with any remarkable brilliancy, being so obviously an awkward country-bred lad, not at home in the surroundings to which her friends.h.i.+p had introduced him, and rather inclined to be surly and quarrelsome than pleasant or agreeable.

Lady Tintern had not taken such a boy's attentions to her grand-niece seriously; but if Sarah were taking them seriously, she thought she had better inquire into the matter at once. Therefore the energetic old woman not only arrived unexpectedly at Hewelscourt in the middle of luncheon, but routed her niece off her sofa early in the afternoon, and proposed that she should immediately cross the river and call upon Peter's mother.

"I have never seen the place except from these windows; perhaps I am underrating it," said Lady Tintern. "I've never met Lady Mary Crewys, though I know all the Setouns that ever were born. Never mind who ought to call on me first! What do I care for such nonsense? The boy is a cub and a bear--_that_ I know--since he stayed in my house for a fortnight, and never spoke to me if he could possibly help it. He is a n.o.body! Sir Peter Fiddlesticks! Who ever heard of him or his family, I should like to know, outside this ridiculous place? His name is spelt wrong! Of course I have heard of Crewys, K.C. Everybody has heard of him. That has nothing to do with it. Yes, I know the young man did well in South Africa. All our young men did well in South Africa.

Pray, is Sarah to marry them all? If _that_ is what she is after, the sooner I take it in hand the better. Lunching by herself on the moors indeed! No; I am not at all afraid of the ferry, Emily. If you are, I will go alone, or take your good man."

"The colonel is out shooting, as you know, and won't be back till tea-time," said Mrs. Hewel, becoming more and more flurried under this torrent of lively scolding.

"The colonel! Why don't you say Tom? Colonel indeed!" said Lady Tintern. "Very well, I shall go alone."

But this Mrs. Hewel would by no means allow. She reluctantly abandoned the effort to dissuade her aunt, put on her visiting things with as much speed as was possible to her, and finally accompanied her across the river to pay the proposed visit to Barracombe House.

Lady Mary received her visitors in the banqueting hall, an apartment which excited Lady Tintern's warmest approval. The old lady dated the oak carving in the hall, and in the yet more ancient library; named the artists of the various pictures; criticized the ceilings, and praised the windows.

Mrs. Hewel feared her outspokenness would offend Lady Mary, but she could perceive only pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt in the face of her hostess, between whom and the worldly old woman there sprang up a friendliness that was almost instantaneous.