CHAPTER VI.THE YOUNG LADY WENTWORTH.
Christmas with the Ambletons was usually made the time for a small but cheery family gathering, and for this particular Christmas following her sojourn abroad Grace had planned out many little extra pleasures for her brothers and herself.
Sacha would come down from London, and the various spare bedrooms in the Dower House would have their complement of relations and old friends.
The time between her return and the advent of Christmas had passed very quickly with Grace. She had any amount of old threads to retie, old habits and duties to resume, and the days had gone happily enough.
The news of Sir Mark’s marriage had been the only cloud on the horizon of her busy life, and the knowledge that the angry feeling between Mark Wentworth and Valentine had deepened into a definite quarrel, was a real trouble to Grace.
The two men, who had been appointed by the late Sir Ambrose to act as trustees to his son’s estates, had neither of them received any intimation of Mark’s marriage. They, like all the world, read the information in the newspapers, and Val’s annoyance and regret was shared to the full by the elder trustee.
“I shall never set foot in Sunstead again,” Mr. Baker declared, wrathfully, to Val, and Val smiled grimly.
“I expect I shall never be given the chance,” was what he said to himself.
He accepted the position calmly enough, but Grace knew he was very much upset by Mark’s attitude.
Both she and Val had cared most warmly for their cousin, and the estrangement was a sorrow to them. However, it was no use crying over spilled milk, and Grace determined to go on her way as cheerfully as possible.
The young Lady Wentworth had established herself at Sunstead very soon after her marriage, and this fact cut Grace adrift from her customary visit to her grandmother, for it was not possible to go to the big house when neither its master nor mistress desired her presence.
Grace had been amazed by Christina’s beauty the first time she had seen her driving in the quaint old Dynechester streets.
“I begin to understand Mark’s infatuation now, Val,” she told her brother, when she had returned home. “Lady Wentworth is not merely pretty, she is positively lovely! I never saw a more delicate type of beauty.”
Val had only smiled.
“Let us hope she will make the boy happy,” he had answered, and Grace had said no more.
She had grown accustomed to seeing Christina in the weeks that followed, and sometimes her eyes met, and were held for an instant by Lady Wentworth’s eyes. In such a moment Grace told herself quietly that the dislike Mark’s wife undoubtedly lavished upon Val was extended to herself also.
She had no desire to be friendly with Christina, save only so far as she might have been given ingress to the old, ailing woman up at Sunstead, who missed, she knew well, the constant visits she had been wont to pay.
Grace would also have felt happier had she not remembered the quarrel with Mark.
“Perhaps it will all come right some day,” was what she said to herself, cheerily.
Had she ever come across her cousin, she would havegone straight up to him and have chided him in her old, affectionate way, for Mark had always had a great liking for her, but she never saw her cousin—only her cousin’s wife.
Christina’s presence so constantly in the streets of Dynechester seemed to emphasize the separation between Sir Mark and the Ambletons, for she would flash past in her carriage, in which she sat swathed about in her furs like an empress, and Grace had to watch and see her go as a stranger.
With the coming of Christmas, Grace gave herself up, heart and soul, to her preparations.
“Mark will send us no game this year,” she had remarked once to Val, who had answered, quietly:
“Expect nothing from Sunstead now, Gracie dear; but the unexpected!” and Grace had looked at him half wistfully, not quite understanding him.
Valentine did not think it necessary to put trouble into his sister’s mind before such trouble was inevitable, but he was a man who saw far into the future, and he felt assured that young Lady Wentworth was not merely an enemy, but one who would carry her enmity very far.
Happily for Val he was kept hard at work these autumn and early winter days. There were many times when he was compelled to be absent from Dynechester for days together, but Grace, though she missed him sorely, encouraged him in all that concerned his work. She would at least have him at home for Christmas, and she would be so happy with both her “children” with her; in fact, it was going to be a happy Christmas altogether.
“I am afraid they will be rather desolate up at Sunstead, Val,” she said one morning, just the week preceding the holiday time.
Val was going to London on business, and she walkedwith him to the station to see him off. He was to bring Sacha back with him.
“Will they? Why?” asked Val, not thinking very much about the matter.
“Firstly, because poor grannie seems so weak and ailing. You know I sent Ellen up to the big house yesterday. She has been twice every week since I could not go myself, and she has made me very sad about grannie. Val, I must go and see her at Christmas time. Poor, dear, old grannie, I am sure she misses me very much!”
Val looked troubled, as he always did at all mention of the separation from Sunstead.
“And then Ellen tells me Lady Wentworth is in mourning for her father, who died last week, I believe. This must make her sad. Altogether, I feel sorry for them!”
Val parted from his sister with that regret that they always felt even at the shortest separation.
“Now, don’t overwork yourself, making plum puddings and roasting turkeys,” he ordered.
“Oh!” Grace said, with a laugh. “My plum puddings were all made weeks ago. Take care of yourself, Val, and, remember, don’t come back without Sacha.”
Valentine was whirled up to London, deep in thought. He was thinking more on his sister’s account than his own. He must try some means of settling this stupid business with Mark, if only for their old grandmother’s sake.
The old Lady Wentworth was, perhaps, of not much count now in the world, but Grace had always been devoted to her mother’s mother, and Val resolved he must open some way by which his sister could resume her ministrations to the crippled old lady. But for this Val felt he would rather that his sister never came into contact with Christina Wentworth.
“They are so wide apart in every sense, they couldnever assimilate,” he said to himself. “Now, if it had been the mother, or even that bad-tempered, dark-haired little sister, Grace could have got on very differently.”
His thoughts wandered slightly in the direction of Mrs. Pennington and the “bad-tempered, dark-haired little sister,” and he found himself sending them sincere sympathy.
“So the father is dead—poor man! Things were very bad with him, I fear. I wonder if they are left with any provisions. Now is the time for Lady Wentworth to exercise some filial and sisterly affection.”
Ambleton smiled to himself a grim smile at this thought. He had not much opinion of Lady Wentworth, either as a daughter or sister; and then he got out of the train and walked a little way before he hailed an omnibus, and got inside, for it was raining, a nasty, fine rain, and when he was comfortably seated he raised his eyes, and lo! there, immediately in front of him, was no less a person than “the bad-tempered, dark-haired little sister” herself.
To raise his hat and extend his hand was a natural impulse, and as Polly rather grudgingly put her small fingers into his for one second, Val had a distinct pang at his heart, for in truth the girl had a wan, sorrowful look, and was unlike the little flashing-eyed spitfire who had received him that bygone day, as it was possible for anyone to be.
Polly was grown thinner, and she looked slightly older. Her mourning garb was not becoming to her, but the man opposite suddenly saw something that was irresistibly sweet and even beautiful about her.
The omnibus was half empty, and in a little while they had it to themselves, yet neither spoke till Polly rose, and signified her intention of getting out, then Val got out, too.
He asked the girl if he could be of any assistance.
Polly treated him coldly till he spoke most gently of her father’s death, then the tears welled up in her eyes.
“It is all so strange,” she said, in her pretty, wistful way; “and, oh! I am so sorry for my poor little mother. We are alone, she and I. Yes; we are still in the same old house. Winnie, my other sister, was married just a week before father died, and Harold, my brother, is at school. I am all my mother has to take care of her now.”
Val held her small hand.
She had reached her destination, a lawyer’s office.
“Will you let me come and see your mother?” he asked.
Polly looked at him doubtfully. How pretty she was with that questioning look on her face! She colored faintly as she met his eyes.
“Yes; you may come if you like,” she said. “I may as well tell you,” she added, with all her old frankness, “that I have hated you very badly for upsetting us all as you did that day; but I suppose you thought you were doing your duty. Anyhow, I will let you come and see my mother, if you promise to be very kind to her.”
And with that she took her hand from his and disappeared, leaving him with a mass of new and strange feelings that he did not seem equal to deal with in that moment.
Late that afternoon he found himself still thinking of Polly, as he reached the quiet hotel where he usually stayed, and he was only recalled from that thought by the arrival of a telegram from Grace, which was not easily comprehended at once.
“If you can come home to-morrow, please do,” Grace had written in her message. “Something important has happened, and I should like you to be here.”
This was sufficiently vague to trouble Val, and to drive his mind away from all other matters, and yet while he smoked and pondered as to what Grace’s message couldpossibly mean, the vision of Polly, as he had just seen her, hovered persistently in and among his thoughts.
It was almost provoking the way this girl and her eyes haunted him, and yet, such is the peculiarity of human minds, that Valentine searched and brought back that memory each time it tried to fade away!