"Where is she?" demanded Peter.

He seemed about to cross the hall to the staircase but the canon detained him.

"Oughtn't some one to prepare her?"

"Oh, joy never kills," said Peter. "She's quite well, isn't she?"

"Quite well."

"Very well _indeed_" said Miss Crewys, with emphasis that seemed to imply Lady Mary was better than she had any need to be.

"I have never," said the canon, with a nervous side-glance at Peter, "seen her look so well, nor so--so lovely, nor so--so brilliant. Only your return was needed to complete--her happiness."

Peter looked at the canon through his newly acquired eyegla.s.s with some slight surprise.

"Well," he said, "I wouldn't telegraph. I wanted to slip home quietly, that's the fact; or I knew the place would be turned upside down to receive me."

"The people are preparing a royal welcome for you," said the canon, warmly. "Banners, music, processions, addresses, and I don't know what."

"That's awful rot!" said Peter. "Tell them I hate banners and music and addresses, and everything of the kind."

"No, no, my dear boy," said the canon, in rather distressed tones.

"Don't say that, Peter, pray. You must think of _their_ feelings, you know. There's hardly one of them who hasn't sent somebody to the war; son or brother or sweetheart. And all that's left for--for those who stay behind--not always the least hard thing to do for a patriot, Peter--is to honour, as far as they can, each one who returns. They work off some of their acc.u.mulated feelings that way, you know; and in their rejoicings they do not forget those who, alas! will never return any more."

There was a pause; and Peter remained silent, embarra.s.sed by the canon's emotion, and not knowing very well how to reply.

"There, there," said the canon, saving him the trouble; "we can discuss it later. You are thinking of your mother now."

As he spoke, they all heard Lady Mary's voice in the corridor above.

She was humming a song, and as she neared the open staircase the words of her song came very distinctly to their ears--

_Entends tu ma pensee qui le respond tout bas_?

_Ton doux chant me rappelle les plus beaux de mes jours_.

"My mother's voice," said Peter, in bewildered accents; and he dropped his eyegla.s.s.

The canon showed a presence of mind that seldom distinguished him.

He hurried away the old ladies, protesting, into the drawing-room, and closed the door behind him.

Peter scarcely noticed their absence.

_Ah! le rire fidele prouve un coeur sans detours, Ah! riez, riez--ma belle--riez, riez toujours_,

sang Lady Mary.

"I never heard my mother sing before," said Peter.

CHAPTER XI

Lady Mary came down the oak staircase singing. The white draperies of her summer gown trailed softly on the wide steps, and in her hands she carried a quant.i.ty of roses. A black ribbon was bound about her waist, and seemed only to emphasize the slenderness of her form. Her brown hair was waved loosely above her brow; it was not much less abundant, though much less bright, than in her girlhood. The freshness of youth had gone for ever; but her loveliness had depended less upon that radiant colouring which had once been hers than upon her clear-cut features, and exquisitely shaped head and throat. Her blue eyes looked forth from a face white and delicate as a sh.e.l.l cameo, beneath finely pencilled brows; but they shone now with a new hopefulness--a timid expectancy of happiness; they were no longer pensive and downcast as Peter had known them best.

The future had been shrouded by a heavy mist of hopelessness always--for Lady Mary. But the fog had lifted, and a fair landscape lay before her. Not bright, alas! with the brightness and the promise of the morning-time; but yet--there are sunny afternoons; and the landscape was bright still, though long shadows from the past fell across it.

Peter saw only that his mother, for some extraordinary reason, looked many years younger than when he had left her, and that she had exchanged her customary dull, old-fashioned garb for a beautiful and becoming dress. He gave an involuntary start, and immediately she perceived him.

She stretched out her arms to him with a cry that rang through the rafters of the hall. The roses were scattered.

"My boy! O G.o.d, my darling boy!"

In the s.p.a.ce of a flash--a second--Lady Mary had seen and understood.

Her arms were round him, and her face hidden upon his empty sleeve.

She was as still as death. Peter stooped his head and laid his cheek against her hair; he felt for one fleeting moment that he had never known before how much he loved his mother.

"Forgive me for keeping it dark, mother," he whispered presently; "but I knew you'd think I was dying, or something, if I told you. It had to be done, and I don't care--much--now; one gets used to anything. My aunts nearly had a fit when I came in; but I knew _you'd_ be too thankful to get me home safe and sound, to make a fuss over what can't be helped. It's--it's just the fortune of war."

"Oh, if I could meet the man who did it!" she cried, with fire in her blue eyes.

"It wasn't a man; it was a gun," said Peter. "Let's forget it. I say--doesn't it feel rummy to be at home again?"

"But you have come back a man, Peter. Not a boy at all," said Lady Mary, laughing through her tears. "Do let me look at you. You must be six feet three, surely."

"Barely six feet one in my boots," said Peter, reprovingly.

"And you have a moustache--more or less."

"Of course I have a moustache," said Peter, gravely stroking it. He mechanically replaced his eyegla.s.s.

Lady Mary laughed till she cried.

"Do forgive me, darling. But oh, Peter, it seems so strange. My boy grown into a tall gentleman with an eyegla.s.s. Nothing has happened to your eye?" she cried, in sudden anxiety.

"No, no; I am just a little short-sighted, that is all," he mumbled, rather awkwardly.

He found it difficult to explain that he had travelled home with a distinguished man who had captivated his youthful fancy, and caused him to fall into a fit of hero-worship, and to imitate his idol as closely as possible. Hence the eyegla.s.s, and a few harmless mannerisms which temporarily distinguished Peter, and astonished his previous acquaintance.

But there was something else in Peter's manner, too, for the moment.

A new tenderness, which peeped through his old armour of sulky indifference; the chill armour of his boyhood, which had grown something too strait and narrow for him even now, and from which he would doubtless presently emerge altogether--but not yet.

Though Lady Mary laughed, she was trembling and shaken with emotion.

Peter came to the sofa and knelt beside her there, and she took his hand in both hers, and laid her face upon it, and they were very still for a few moments.

"Mother dear," said Peter presently, without looking at her, "coming home like this, and not finding my father here, makes me _realize_ for the first time--though it's all so long ago--what's happened."

"My poor boy!"