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 have gone 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 walked with 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 could never 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 could possibly 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!