CHAPTER XIV.THE PORTRAIT PAINTER.
Sacha found his quarters up at Sunstead exceedingly pleasant. For some reason or other Christina deigned to be most gracious to the young man.
Sacha, of course, had his own theory in connection with this graciousness. Few women had aught but smiles for him, and Christina, though beautiful, was, after all, only an ordinary woman. It was the most natural thing in the world, he opined, that Lady Wentworth should find pleasure in his society. Mark could scarcely be called an amusing companion, whereas he, in his turn, apart from being attractive, had more than a fair share of brains.
The portrait of Lady Wentworth progressed but slowly. Sacha knew his own business very well.
“You are so difficult to paint,” he told Christina frequently, in those days when he first took up his abode at Sunstead, while grief reigned in his sister’s home.
“I always think that a doubtful compliment,” Christina said, languidly.
Sacha would have been sharply annoyed and surprised could he have known all that was passing in his hostess’ mind, and how little real satisfaction his presence gave her.
He felt it necessary to explain his implied compliment.
“One can paint ordinary people easily enough,” he told her.
Christina accepted this compliment in the spirit in which it was offered, and so matters passed well between them.
Nevertheless, these days that Sacha spent so comfortably were none too pleasant to Christina. She had heardof her brother’s visit to the Ambletons with a faint degree of irritation, and naturally enough imagined this to be a step on Grace’s part to annoy her, or to pay her back in her own coin. For, however indifferent Christina was in reality to her family, she did not intend or desire to let the whole world know how matters stood. More particularly she did not wish the world of Dynechester to know how poor was the estate of her mother and Polly and Harold.
Harold’s visit, however vexatious as it was to herself, could be explained, since Sacha told her that the boy was about to be trained to his brother’s profession; thus, had questions been asked, there was a satisfactory answer to them. Nevertheless, it had angered Christina to know that there was this friendship between those she called her enemies and her family.
Once or twice she had driven past Valentine and Harold, and she had bit her lip sharply as her eyes had met the man’s steady, contemptuous gaze.
Sacha would have been vastly amazed could he have known that Lady Wentworth bestowed so much thought on his brother, and more still had anyone told him that she had far greater admiration for that brother’s tall, splendid physique than for himself. It never entered into his head to imagine that he was made so welcome at Sunstead because Christina hoped to annoy Valentine by this friendship.
Popular as he was usually with all women, Sacha might freely be forgiven for supposing he was welcomed by his cousin’s wifepour ses beaux yeux, and not for so strangely ulterior a reason.
The truth was that Christina was furious with Valentine, not merely for the part he had attempted to play in her life, but because he held himself so coldly aloof from her.
It had not taken her long to learn in Dynechester what position it was this man held, and how infinitely superior he was to the man she had married.
She longed to subjugate Valentine, to fascinate him and rule him, even as she ruled most other men with whom she came in contact.
Valentine was the first person who had punished Christina’s vanity, and the woman, while she could never forgive this, never ceased to desire a conquest of one who showed her so openly his complete indifference mingled with his contempt.
That Valentine was so invulnerable to her spite was by no means a satisfaction to Christina. She had been foolish enough to expect that he would have declared some protest to her decree about the Dower House—not, of course, for his own sake, but for his sister’s—and as the time slipped by and he made no sign beyond installing Grace and himself in their new house, her annoyance deepened.
Her will in connection with this uprooting of Grace from her old home had been worked in open defiance of her husband. Mark Wentworth had treated his wife to a pleasant half hour when he heard what she had done.
He had a very special vocabulary that came into office when drink and rage together claimed him for their own, and Christina had to submit to hear herself abused in a manner that was a revelation to her.
The result of this scene was to increase her hatred of Grace, for though she would have died rather than have confessed the same, Christina was hotly jealous of Grace Ambleton.
It was not enough for Christina that Grace belonged to Valentine, and sided with Valentine, of course, against herself. She was jealous of Grace’s fine presence, and of her sovereignty in Dynechester, and finally, to cap itall, she was jealous of Grace in connection with her own family.
“Polly will, of course, fall down and worship her,” Christina had said to herself with a sneer, when she had first heard of Harold’s arrival at the Ambletons’ new house, and though she had done her best to destroy all illusion in her younger sister’s heart, she hankered after Polly’s lost enthusiasm simply because it was lost.
Thus it was that she worked to make things even for herself by having Sacha about her as much as possible.
But, after all, it was a poor consolation to fight a one-sided battle, and when Christina found that Grace accepted all she did in utter silence, she began to be annoyed in another way.
“Harold must come and stay here,” she said to herself. “After all, Mark is more powerful than Valentine Ambleton. He can do more for the boy’s future. I shall write and tell him I expect him. It will disappoint Miss Grace a little when she sees how quickly Harold obeys me.”
Unfortunately for Christina’s little plan, she had delayed writing to her brother too long, and the day she would have sent to him, Sacha brought the news of the boy’s sudden and dangerous illness. She would, therefore, have to find some other path in which to parade her power over Grace.
“If there is illness in your house, you had better come and stay here,” she told Sacha, carelessly.
It was exceedingly dull up at Sunstead at these times. Mark, with an outburst of characteristic obstinacy, had refused to invite anyone to his house.
“The people I know well are not the sort of people you ought to know, and all the rest of the world would go to the North Pole rather than stay with me,” he had informed his wife with complete candor; “besides, I don’t intend to have strangers here when poor grannie is so ill.Ask your sisters, if you want anyone, and there is Sacha Ambleton to amuse you. Grace is one of the few people I should like to see here, but, of course, she won’t come now.”
In his heart Mark Wentworth was heartily ashamed of the warfare that Christina waged against Valentine and his sister. The business of the Dower House, in particular, was a sore remembrance with him, and Christina was careful not to introduce the subject too frequently; not because she was afraid of Mark’s temper, but because she had begun to realize that, though she had posed as a power that must be obeyed, Grace’s dignified acceptance of the situation robbed her of all she desired to hold.
The news of Harold’s death placed Christina in a most awkward position, and she hardly knew how to adapt herself to it.
For a long time she sat in thought, and the end of her musing was to go to her husband and tell him what she wished to do.
“You must go to the house, I must be represented. I know perfectly well Polly will want to treat me rudely, but I don’t intend to be treated rudely. I consider the whole affair most objectionable. If my family had wanted to come to Dynechester, I am the proper person to have received them. As it is, I cannot go to your cousin’s house, so you must go in my place.”
Sir Mark was in an obstinate mood.
“You don’t catch me going near Val—no, thank you!” he said, with decision. “I don’t want any more rows. I am sick of quarreling. Very sorry, Chris, but if you want anyone to go you must go yourself. I can’t see, myself, why you need mix yourself up in these things now. The boy is dead, and you can’t do him any good, and you haven’t been too kind to your mother and sister, remember, since you have been my wife.”
Christina tightened her thin lips.
“Mark, I wish you to go,” she said. She was more angry than she could have described.
This was not the first time by many that her husband had let her see he was growing tired of her tyranny, just as he was growing tired of her beauty. Christina had never prized her husband’s infatuated adoration of her, never wanted his love, but neither did she want to be so soon dethroned.
“I wish you to go,” she repeated, but Sir Mark merely shrugged his shoulders, rang the bell for another brandy and soda, and picking up a sporting newspaper, threw himself into a chair, and dismissed the subject.
Christina swallowed her anger as well as she could. She felt that she was gradually being hemmed about by all sorts of unforeseen disagreeables. For some indefinite purpose of her own she determined to be associated with the somber proceedings at the house where Valentine lived. To write to Polly was impossible, therefore she resolved to write to some other person, and that other person should be Valentine himself.
Her shallow, vain heart saw in this moment her chance of playing a rôle with this man, whom she told herself she hated, but who, as a matter of fact, was the one creature in the world whom she held in a place higher than herself.
“I shall have nothing to do with Polly,” she determined. “I shall write to him direct.”
And she kept her word.
An hour later one of the Wentworth grooms rode out of the grounds bearing a letter to Mr. Ambleton. Christina had written curtly enough.
“The present lamentable circumstances render it necessary that I should speak with you. Pray let me beg youto waive all objections you may have and send me word what hour you can most conveniently call upon me.”
“The present lamentable circumstances render it necessary that I should speak with you. Pray let me beg youto waive all objections you may have and send me word what hour you can most conveniently call upon me.”
“He will come, he can’t refuse,” she said to herself as she sealed the letter.
Then she donned a black gown and went into the room set aside for Sacha’s use as a studio.
She was strangely nervous and irritable, and Sacha found her far from a pleasant companion.
He would have been amazed indeed could he have seen into Christina’s heart, and read there the first tracings of a story destined to be written in unusual and totally unforeseen lines.