Peter's Mother

by Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

It did not occur to her, in her sorrowful humility, that possibly her qualities stood on a higher level than Peter's powers of appreciation. Yet it is certain that people can only admire intelligently what is good within their comprehension; and their highest flights of imagination may sometimes scarcely touch mediocrity.

The noblest ideals, the fairest dreams, the subtlest reasoning, the finest ethics, contained in the writings of the mighty dead, meant nothing at all to Sir Timothy. His widow knew that she had never heard him utter one high or noble or selfless thought. But with, perhaps, pardonable egotism, she had taken it for granted that Peter must be different. Whatever his outward humours, he was her son; rather a part of herself, in her loving fancy, than a separate individual.

The moment of awakening had been long in coming to Lady Mary; the moment when a mother has to find out that her personality is not necessarily reproduced in her child; that the being who was once the unconscious consoler of her griefs and troubles may develop a nature perfectly antagonistic to her own.

She had kept her eyes shut with all her might for a long time, but necessity was forcing them open.

Perhaps her association with John Crewys made it easier to see Peter as he was, and not as she had wished him to be.

And yet, she thought miserably to herself, he had certainly tried hard to be affectionate and kind to her—and probably it did not occur to him, as it did to his mother, how pathetic it was that he should have to try.

Peter did not think much about it.

Sometimes, during his short stay at Barracombe, he had walked through a game of croquet with his mother—it was good practice for his left hand—or he listened disapprovingly to something she inadvertently (forgetting he was not John) read aloud for his sympathy or admiration; or he took a short stroll with her; or bestowed his company upon her in some other dutiful fashion. But these filial attentions over, if he yawned with relief—why, he never did so in her presence, and would have been unable to understand that Lady Mary saw him yawning, in her mind's eye, as plainly as though he had indulged this bad habit under her very nose. He bestowed a portion of his time on his aunts in much the same spirit, taking less trouble to be affectionate, because they were less exacting, as he would have put it to himself, than she was.

The scheme of renting a house in London had duly been laid before him, and rejected most decisively by the young gentleman. His father had never taken a house in town, and he could see no necessity for it. His aunts were lost in admiration for their nephew's firmness. Peter had inherited somewhat of his father's dictatorial manner, and their flattery did not tend to soften it. When his aged relatives mispronounced the magic word kopje, or betrayed their belief that a donga was an inaccessible mountain—he brought the big guns of his heavy satire to bear on the little target of their ignorance without remorse. He mistook a loud voice, and a habit of laying down the law, for manly decision, and the gift of leadership; and imagined that in talking down his mother's gentle protests he had convinced her of his superior wisdom.

When he had made it sufficiently clear, however, that he did not wish Lady Mary to accompany him to town, young Sir Peter made haste to depart thither himself, on the very reasonable plea that he required a new outfit of clothes.