Chapter 41

Mrs. Paragon had at once recognised Atterbury's sketch. She went, the day after she had seen it, to verify, waiting in the hotel in quiet amazement. It seemed strange to come to this place for Miranda. She remembered her as an awkward girl, hoydenly and tempestuous, absurdly transfigured by Peter's worship. Then she had found her again sleeping in Peter's brain, to lose her for ever in a brutal disaster of the sea.

Miranda came slowly to meet her, holding in her hand the card she had sent.

She had grown to the loveliness Peter had divined in her. Her eyes had softened, their passion held in reserve. The lines of her beauty were severe, but their severity veiled the promise of her surrender. She was radiant with a vitality serenely masked—a queen ready at the true word to come down.

She looked from the card she held to Mrs. Paragon.

"You are Peter's mother," she said, in the manner of one speaking to herself.

"You remember him?" asked Mrs. Paragon.

Miranda did not answer.

"Come to my room," she said, and led the way upstairs.

Her room was cheerful with firelight and simple[Pg 313] comfort. Mrs. Paragon again wondered at finding her thus alone and able to command. Miranda drew her a chair to the fire, and, as Mrs. Paragon sat down, she put an arm about her shoulder and looked at her.

"I've often wondered what you were like," she said.

"You had forgotten?"

"I was only a girl. Memories are not to be trusted."

"You never tried to correct them?"

"I have heard of you often. You did not seem to want me."

"I have been looking for you," said Mrs. Paragon.

"Have you found what you expected?"

Mrs. Paragon put her hand upon Miranda's arm.

"Indeed I have," she quietly asserted. "I think you are the girl that Peter knew."

"Please," Miranda entreated. Mrs. Paragon had moved too quickly towards her secret. There was a short silence.

"Tell me," said Miranda at last. "When did you begin to look for me?"

"As soon as I knew that Peter needed you."

"He needs me?" said Miranda quickly. "How do you know that?"

"He was once very ill. He talked of you continually."

"I have heard of Peter," she objected a little[Pg 314] hardly. "I have heard of him as entirely happy. Lately, too, in Paris I met a friend of Vivette Claire."

"Peter is in need of you," Mrs. Paragon insisted.

She spoke as one returning to the thing which really mattered.

"I wonder." Miranda looked thoughtfully at Mrs. Paragon.

"You are like my memory of you," she continued. "I remember you as always quiet and wise—as one who said only what was true."

"I know that Peter needs you."

"Does Peter himself know?" Miranda drily asked.

"I want you to come back. He will know when he sees you."

"You believe, if I met him to-morrow, the years between would disappear?" Miranda suggested, smiling at her idea.

"I am sure," Mrs. Paragon insisted.

"It would be interesting," said Miranda.

Her touch of irony was lost on Peter's mother, who saw no call for smiling.

"Have you no feeling for Peter?" she seriously urged.

"I do not know," Miranda answered bluntly, with a small shrug of her shoulders.

"Ask yourself."

"It is for Peter to ask."

"This is not generous, Miranda."

[Pg 315]

Miranda rose and walked to the fire. She stood for a moment looking away from Mrs. Paragon.

"I will tell you the truth," she said at last. "I went out of Peter's life five years ago, and I said I would not return unless he wanted me. He was only a boy. I have put away all thought of him. If I come back to him now, I come as a stranger to be won again. I do not know Peter to-day."

"Peter is still the same."

Miranda was beginning to rebel against the immovable conviction of Peter's mother. Mrs. Paragon was so calm and sure.

"How can I know that?" she exclaimed impatiently.

"You can meet him," answered Mrs. Paragon. She had the air of one suggesting the obvious thing to a child.

Miranda began to be seriously moved. Could she recapture the dead time? She saw herself quaintly perched on the slates of a roof sobbing her heart out, and again in a dark garden with Peter suddenly on his knees to her, kissing the hem of her frock. Perhaps, if she met him, without allowing him time to prepare, the truth would flash out of him.

"Where can I meet him suddenly?" she asked.

Mrs. Paragon quietly accepted her victory.

"I have come to invite you," she said. "You shall see him with Vivette Claire."

"What have I to do?"

"You need only be ready here in a week's time.[Pg 316] I will take you to dinner. It is a farewell dinner. Peter is going to sea for six months."

"I will come."

This was not Mrs. Paragon's last visit to Claridge's. In the days between her discovery of Miranda and Peter's dinner she talked with Miranda frequently and long. Miranda learned the whole story of Peter's life; learned also to sound every deep place in his mother.

Of Miranda there was less to tell than the change in her seemed to require. Her father and mother had drowned fighting for life in the sea. She had waited on deck to the last, calmly accepting her fate. The terrible scenes about her of people huddled to a brutal end had not shaken her spirit. At the last moment she was pulled on to a raft, and made fast by the man who had found it. They passed through the night together, and he said she had saved him from despair. He was a Canadian farmer of French extraction. She passed for two years as his daughter, and at his death inherited his fortune. He had made her love the French, and she had lived mainly in France for the last three years.

Thus had Miranda been kept, aloof and free; and thus wonderfully restored. There were a hundred prosaic ways in which her rediscovery might have been arranged; but for Peter, because Peter was young, the incredible was achieved. Chance had waited for her most effective moment, and was resolute that it should not be marred.[Pg 317] Miranda's coming, like all true miracles, could only grow more wonderful the more it was explained.

Upon the evening of Peter's dinner, Mrs. Paragon found Miranda serenely ready. She admitted to no excitement.

"You need not look at me like that," she said to Mrs. Paragon when they met. "I am going to be introduced to a strange young man. It is not at all disturbing."

A few minutes later she passed into the room where Peter's friends were waiting. Atterbury claimed her at once. Then it came to a meeting. She caught Peter in the flash of his discovery. The sudden glory of his lighted face blinded her to the years between them. She felt her pulses leap eagerly at her sovereign peace, but outwardly she was still. She calmly ignored his recognition. She bowed to him as a stranger, and passed in to dinner with Atterbury.