She stared at him through her fantastically patterned veil.
“I have been put in the position of having to meet an elderly lady—a near relative—here for a more or less intimate conversation. I don’t think she realized, in making the appointment, how little privacy you have a right to in a hotel. It is very long since she has been in a great city. Will you pardon the—the really unpardonable—liberty of my asking if you are likely to be here much longer? I mean—ought I to arrange to take her elsewhere in the hotel when she comes? She will be here in a moment.”
It was a dreadful thing to have had to do, and, if he judged by what the veil showed of the lady’s face, it couldn’t have been worse done. She looked dismayed. Peter was angry: so angry that he managed to stop just where he had stationed himself before her; so angry that he didn’t deprecate, that he simply set his teeth and waited. There was nothing he could do now, he felt, to convince her that she hadn’t been insulted.
She lifted her veil ever so little, just freeing her lips, slightly constricted by its tight-drawn mesh. As she did so, she both rose and spoke.
“Aren’t you Peter Wayne?”
He bowed, relieved. If they had a ground of acquaintance, he could perhaps cover it all up, make it plausible, get rid of her on some dishonest, hilarious pretext. “I am.” He waited; there was no use in pretending that he remembered her.
The veil was lifted farther, then a hand was laid on his shoulder and a voice sounded in his astonished ears. “Turn to the light, my son, and let me look at you. I’ve not had a photograph, you remember, since you were a child.”
Even as he faced the light, he was saying to himself that it was rummer than ever; but it was rummest when he turned for his legitimate look at her. She was older than he had assumed the strange lady to be; but she was a long way from the little old lady in the gray shawl. This was his mother, and it was over—he felt it as those sinking for the third time may feel. In another instant he saw his mistake. He had been pulled up out of the surge into the terrible air—this was his mother, and it had just begun! He mastered his breath—his breath that under the water had been playing tricks with him. He looked her over, searching stare for searching stare. Her fair hair had lost what must once have been a golden lustre, but it was carefully, elaborately arranged, waved, curled, braided. It was as fashionable as her clothes. The white mask of powder left clear the contour of the fine, thin nose but cloaked the subtler modellings of the face. The blue eyes, idle yet intent, looked at him from behind it; below them it was rent, once, by the scarlet stab of the mouth. Peter remembered vaguely having heard that the tropical sun necessitated such protection. It was the northern dimness and drizzle that turned make-up into a moral question. Even for the grands boulevards, to be sure, Mrs. Wayne’s make-up would have been overdone. This was the chief result of his searching stare. She wasn’t like one’s mother at all, confound it!—not like any one’s mother. He would have been glad of a little more sophistication than even at wise two-and-twenty he was conscious of possessing.
“Your maid?” he asked, remembering the figure outside the door.
“Oh, yes; my old Frances. She recalls you as a baby. She’ll want to see you. You must speak to her before we go.”