Peter's Mother

by Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

"A man in your position generally marries early," said John. "I think you're quite right."

"As my mother likes—the girl I want to marry," said Peter, "I hoped it would make everything straight. But she seems quite miserable at the thought of settling down quietly in the Dower House."

"Ah! in the Dower House," said John. "Then you will not be wanting her to live here with you, after all?"

"It's the same thing, though," said Peter, "as I've tried to explain to her. She'd be only a few yards off; and she could still be looking after the place and my interests, and all that, as she does now. And whenever I was down here, I should see her constantly; you know how devoted I am to my mother. Of course I can't deny I did lead her to hope I should be always with her. But a man can't help it if he happens to fall in love. Of course, if—if all happens as I hope, as I have reason to hope, I shall have to be away from her a good deal. But that's all in the course of nature as a fellow grows up. I sha'n't be any the less glad to see her when I do come home. And yet here she is talking quite wildly of leaving Barracombe altogether, and going to London, and travelling all over the world, and doing all sorts of things she's never done in her life. It's not like my mother, and I can't bear to think of her like that. I tell you she's changed altogether," said Peter, and there were tears in his grey eyes.

John felt an odd sympathy for the boy; he recognized that though
Peter's limitations were obvious, his anxiety was sincere.

Peter, too, had his ideals; if they were ideals conventional and out of date, that was hardly his fault. John figured to himself very distinctly that imaginary mother whom Peter held sacred; the mother who stayed always at home, and parted her hair plainly, and said many prayers, and did much needlework; but who, nevertheless, was not, and never could be, the real Lady Mary, whom Peter did not know. But it was a tender ideal in its way, though it belonged to that past into which so many tender and beautiful visions have faded.

The maiden of to-day still dreams of the knightly armour-clad heroes of the twelfth century; it is not her fault that she is presently glad to fall in love with a gentleman on the Stock Exchange, in a top hat and a frock coat.

"I have seen something of women of the world," said Peter, who had scarcely yet skimmed the bubbles from the surface of that society, whose depths he believed himself to have explored. "I suppose that is what my mother wants to turn into, when she talks of London and Paris. My mother! who has lived in the country all her life."

"I suppose some women are worldly," said John, as gravely as possible, "and no doubt the shallow-hearted, the stupid, the selfish are to be found everywhere, and belonging to either sex; but, nevertheless, solid virtue and true kindness are to be met with among the dames of Mayfair as among the matrons of the country-side. Their shibboleth is different, that's all. Perhaps—it is possible—that the speech of the town ladies is the more charitable, that they seek more persistently to do good to their fellow-creatures. I don't know. Comparisons are odious, but so," he added, with a slight laugh, "are general conclusions, founded on popular prejudice rather than individual experience—odious."

Here John perceived that his words of wisdom were conveying hardly any meaning to Peter, who was only waiting impatiently till he had come to an end of them; so he pursued this topic no further, and contented himself by inquiring: