CHAPTER XII.A TERRIBLE DESTINY.
Valentine had taken counsel with himself, and had resolved to say nothing to his brother on the question of Sacha’s intimacy with Lady Wentworth.
“After all, if Sacha does not see the matter with our eyes all the speaking in the world will not alter things,” he said to himself. “It is, of course, his own business to go where he likes and do what he wants to do, and if he chooses to be a friend of Lady Wentworth’s, I have no right to object. I should not give the business a second thought but for Grace.”
Grace, however, quickly grasped the situation.
On her daily visits up to Sunstead, she had soon learned of Sacha’s intimacy with Christina, and though at first she had felt a sharp sensation of hurt that her younger brother should permit this, remembering how she had fared at Christina’s hands, she very swiftly found an excuse.
“Sacha is painting Lady Wentworth’s portrait,” she told Valentine. “I am not surprised, she is a beautiful creature, and should make a beautiful picture.”
Val assented to this quietly.
“I suppose Mark approves of this?” he said, half casually.
Grace colored.
It was not easy for her even yet to have to realize that her cousin was on openly declared ill terms with them.
“Mark could find no reason surely to object. Sacha, after all, has not offended him, if we have done so.”
A day or two later Grace spoke on this subject again.
“Mark and Sacha are quite friendly,” she told Valentine. “I saw them walking together in the grounds this morning.” Grace paused. It was evident she had something passing on her mind. “Val, have you seen Mark lately?” was her query.
Valentine looked at her an instant.
“No,” he answered; “not for some weeks. Why do you ask, Grace? Is something wrong with him?”
“He looks—terrible,” Grace said, in a low voice, pausing before the last word. “Even at some distance, I could see that he is ill—he was leaning on Sacha, walking slowly, as though he were in pain.”
Valentine knitted his brows, his pleasant face was overcast.
He answered his sister evasively.
“I expect Mark has been overdoing it. He is never strong. He treats his constitution as if it were made of cast iron instead of being a really poor affair at the best of times.”
Grace loitered in her brother’s rooms.
“I wish,” she began, half wistfully, and then she got no further. Instead she spoke of Harold Pennington, who had been her guest for several days, and whom she liked very much. “Will you be able to do anything for him, Val?” she asked.
“He is young yet; but I think I can mold him to something. The boy is certainly clever, but he strikes me as being dreadfully delicate.”
“Indeed, yes,” Grace said, thoughtfully. “I heard him coughing, oh! so badly, last night, and I felt so tempted to go in and look after him, Val. Does he not remind you a little of his sister, Lady Wentworth? To me his eyes are just like hers, only softer. Is Miss Pennington at all like Mark’s wife?”
“Not in the very least,” Valentine said, emphatically. “She has far more beauty.”
Grace opened her eyes.
“Harold tells me she is the plain one of the family. I wonder if I shall share your opinion?”
“Wait and see,” Val said dryly.
That same evening he spoke to his brother about Mark Wentworth.
“How is he going on?” he asked. “Is he keeping straight? I hear he is looking very ill.”
Sacha shrugged his shoulders.
He affected a semi-picturesque attire in the evenings, a dark blue velvet coat as a setting to his white shirt and tie, and diamond studs, and though Valentine abominated this style of dressing, he was forced to admit that his brother became it very well.
“Mark has gone his own gait too long to change easily now,” Sacha said. He leaned back in his chair, and smoked his cigarette through a long gold-mounted holder. “I think he is much about the same. I lunched there the other day, and Mark drank his bottle of champagne like a man.”
Valentine frowned sharply.
“Why do you encourage him in this?” he asked, in his curtest way.
Sacha opened his handsome eyes.
“My dear Val, what have I to do with it? I am not Mark’s keeper.”
Valentine pulled away hardly at his pet meerschaum, and there was silence between the two brothers till Sacha spoke again.
“Mark must drink himself to death,” he said, quite composedly. “It is his destiny, and a man cannot go against his fate.”
“Don’t talk that kind of tomfoolery to me, Sacha,” theother man said roughly. “Every man’s fate is to make the best of his life, and Mark Wentworth started as clear as any of us. He is unfortunately placed, and that is where his bad fate comes in.”
Sacha smiled faintly.
“You dislike Lady Wentworth very definitely, I see,” he said, and there was a query in the words.
“I would rather not discuss her,” Valentine answered, and to end the conversation he took up the evening paper that had just been brought up from the station.
But Sacha, apparently, was in a talkative mood.
“Does it ever strike you, Val, that you are a prejudiced person? Take this case of Lady Wentworth, for instance. What had this girl done that should have set you so desperately against her? Of course, there is open enmity between you now. I don’t see how you could expect anything else under the circumstances; but what I don’t understand is, why you should have worked to bring this enmity into existence.”
“I hardly think you would be nearer comprehension if I were to enlarge upon the reasons that have actuated my attitude where Lady Wentworth is concerned,” Valentine said, dryly.
Sacha shrugged his shoulders again.
“As I said just now, I repeat you are a very prejudiced person, Val.”
Valentine felt his temper rising.
“Look here, Sacha, let us drop this discussion. My opinion about Lady Wentworth is a matter that concerns myself. If it had concerned you, I take it, you would not have acted as you are acting. But that again is a matter that is your own affair entirely. I prefer, myself, not to speak any further about the establishment at Sunstead, and I regret that I introduced Mark’s name at all.”
“Lady Wentworth,” said Sacha, slowly, “has goneover the whole subject with me. She had charged me to explain to Grace that she had no kind of animosity against our sister, that her cause of complaint is with you entirely.”
But this was too much for Valentine. He rose and carried himself and his newspapers to the drawing room, where Grace and Harold Pennington were engaged in playing bésique.
“Is Sacha coming in to give us some music?” Grace asked, looking up with her old, bright smile.
Her young guest had worked a beneficial effect upon her spirit.
“Polly will sing to you when she is here,” Harold hastened to say. “She knows any amount of songs—old things, you know—‘Sally in Our Alley,’ and things like that.”
Valentine sat down and watched the game.
His angry feelings were gradually soothed as the moments went by, and when ten o’clock struck and Harold rose obediently at Grace’s word and left them to go to bed, Valentine was quite himself again.
“The boy looks better, Grace,” he said, as the door closed on Harold.
Grace paused before answering. She was putting away the cards and counters.
“I don’t know what to think about him, Val. To-day we were in the post office when Dr. Smythson came in, and while he was talking to me about poor grannie, he was looking at Harold, and listening to his cough. He asked me privately if the boy’s lungs had been sounded, and I said ‘No,’ because Harold remembers nothing of the kind. It was pouring with rain when we left the post office, and Dr. Smythson insisted on driving us home in his brougham. I could see,” Grace finished, slowly, as she shut away the bésique box in a cabinet drawer, “I couldsee he thought very badly of Harold. I do feel so sorry, Val. Would it be possible for Mrs. Pennington to send the boy away for the benefit of his health—I mean abroad, somewhere?”
Valentine deliberated a moment before he spoke. “It would not be easy, but it could be arranged if it were deemed imperative. I hope, however, you are mistaken, Grace. To me the boy seems better.”
Grace, standing in front of the fire, shook her head quietly.
“I shall be glad when his mother and sister come next week. I like him so much; but, I confess, he is a little bit of an anxiety to me. The house will be all cozy, I hope, by the end of next week, when my new visitors arrive.”
“It looks delightful now—a real home,” Valentine said, but he spoke abstractedly.
A little later on he inquired of Grace if she knew what Sacha’s plans were.
“Is he going to stay down here much longer? Usually he does not honor us so much,” he said.
Grace hurried to reply.
“Oh! I don’t want Sacha to go before Mrs. Pennington and her daughter have come and gone. He can help to amuse them so well, and besides it is right and proper that he should be here, Val. I am delighted he is staying so long.”
“It certainly will not be right or proper that Sacha should be so constantly at Sunstead while the Penningtons are here,” Valentine said, grimly. “The situation will be a very unpleasant one, seeing that Lady Wentworth ignores her mother and sister completely.”
Grace looked troubled, then her face cleared.
“I will speak to Sacha. He is so clever he is sure to arrange matters well. I don’t want to send him back to London—we see him so seldom nowadays.”
Grace kissed her big brother “good-night” after this.
“I don’t know why, but I feel so tired to-night, I am going to sleep like a top.”
Grace was busy fulfilling this prophecy some two or three hours later when a sharp knock on her door brought her out of her dreams, and made her heart beat quickly.
“What is it?” she asked, and at sight of Val, standing in the doorway, she felt her alarm deepen.
“Is some one ill?” she asked again.
“Put on some clothes, and come into the next room. The boy is very ill, Grace. He came to me half an hour ago, frightened to death. He has broken a blood vessel, and I am going for Smythson without any further delay. I have done all I can to stop the hemorrhage, but I am afraid it is beyond me. He is flat on his back, and, happily, I found some ice downstairs, and I have put some on his chest. Just sit beside him and keep him still. A little ice in the mouth occasionally.”
Grace hustled into her clothes, and went into the next room.
How long she sat listening to the labored breathing, and holding the thin, weak hands in hers she never knew. It seemed years before Valentine reappeared with the doctor behind him.
“We must send for his mother the first thing in the morning,” Grace said, with pallid lips, as the night wore into dawn, and the three sat anxiously round the bed.
Valentine went out when the morning came, and dispatched a telegram to Polly.
He had worded it as carefully as he could, but he was only too well assured that his message would carry desolation to her heart, and his own yearned over her. He longed yet dreaded to see her, and when the train came rushing into the station about noon, and he stood on the platform to receive the slender, black-robed figure, withits eyes strained with anguish, and all life and joy banished from the face, it was with difficulty he restrained himself from catching her in his arms.
“I have come alone,” Polly said, in a hard, hoarse voice. “Mother is ill in bed. I did not tell her all. She thinks I have come to see you about arranging his business, poor boy! I had to invent something. It would have killed her to come as she is.” She lifted her eyes to Valentine’s face after this. “Harold is very, very ill. I know it—I feel it,” she said.
Valentine bowed his head.
“He is very ill,” he answered; “but there is hope.”
Polly buried her face in her hands, and the brougham jolted over the road.
“There is no hope,” she said, brokenly. “Oh! mother, darling, if only I could have stood between you and this last sorrow!”