A WILFUL WOMAN.
Valentine did not lose any time in writing to his cousin to broach the
subject of his grandmother.
He made absolutely no reference to the dismissal from the Dower House.
He wrote tersely, and put Grace’s wish into as few words as possible,
and he directed the letter, as usual, to Mark at Sunstead.
He was busy starting all the arrangements for their move—he had not
lost an hour in obtaining the house he had desired to have—when an
answer was brought to his letter.
It was an answer written in a bold, feminine hand, and Valentine’s
brows met fiercely as he saw this.
Christina wrote curtly, informing him that in her husband’s absence
she had opened the letter, and she begged to inform him that she must
unhesitatingly refuse, in her husband’s name, his suggestion of moving
old Lady Wentworth from her present quarters.
“Your grandmother is far too weak to undertake any exertion, and
the mere idea of removing her from a place in which she has lived
so long, savors, to me at least, of cruelty. I fail to understand
why Miss Ambleton cannot visit her grandmother at Sunstead as
formerly. Pray let it be understood that I make no protest to her
doing this; in fact, I consider it to be a neglect of a positive
duty on her part if she continues to abstain from coming in the
future.”
Valentine threw down the letter with a laugh so strange that Grace,
who happened to be passing through the hall, wearing a pale and
half-bewildered air—the uprooting of her home goods was a terrible
business to her, poor girl!—looked at him startled.
“What is it, Valentine?” she asked, quickly.
“It is only a moment of unreasoning anger, my dear,” Valentine
answered, after a little pause; “I have a desire to strangle a woman,
that is all.”
Grace drew a deep breath.
“You have heard from Mark?” she queried.
Valentine laughed again.
“Mark has ceased to exist. The woman he has married is Mark and
herself, too. Good God! and to think I was fool enough to imagine this
creature was a woman to be saved from sorrow, and perhaps from shame.
How she must have laughed at me!”
Grace read through the letter quietly.
“Despite her evident intention to wound and insult there is an element
of truth in what she says, Valentine,” was her remark, made very
gently, as she refolded the letter. “Grannie is very old and ailing,
and she has been so many years at Sunstead that it is possible the mere
fact of strange surroundings might hasten her end.”
Valentine was silent a long while, and Grace watched him as he occupied
himself in stripping the walls of innumerable weapons that he had hung
there from time to time.
The events of the last few days had completely changed Grace. She
looked tired, ill and subdued. With every desire to hold herself
bravely through the strange, unexpected circumstances of the moment,
she found herself fretting incessantly.
Valentine looked down at her after a long pause.
“This is a second grief to you, Grace, dear, I fear,” he said, his
voice its usual tone again.
Grace shook her head.
“Not altogether, for I had felt that our request would be refused.”
The girl stood a moment by the fireplace, looking wistfully about the
old hall that was beginning to wear a chaotic and disconsolate air
already.
“Valentine,” she said, in a low, grave voice, “if you don’t mind, I
shall now make a rule of going to see grannie every day for at least
half an hour. There are certain circumstances that make personal
feelings a matter of indifference, and I need never come in contact
with Lady Wentworth.”
“You shall do just what seems best to you, dear,” Val made answer,
gently.
And after that day, though he asked nothing, he knew that Grace stole
an hour out of the worry and bustle of the removal to go up and sit
with the fading old woman she loved so dearly, and who could not count
on many more days on earth.
Christmas had passed, and Sacha had come down from town. To Grace’s
delight, her younger brother announced his determination to stay and
join in the business of the moment.
Grace had an unbounded pride and love for Val, but for Sacha she had
more tenderness. The brothers were not very much alike. Sacha was a
smaller build altogether. He was a very handsome young man, with an air
of delicacy about him. This delicacy it was that made him so dear to
Grace. She fussed about him as though she had been his mother.
Sacha had big, soft, brown eyes, that always had an unconscious touch
of pleading in them. He was by nature as much Valentine’s inferior,
as far as unselfishness and sterling, straightforward goodness went,
as his strength and stature were visibly inferior to those of his big
brother.
Were he and Valentine to have been much thrown together, they must
inevitably have come to loggerheads, but the brothers seldom met.
There was a considerable amount of good in Sacha Ambleton, but there
were also several qualities in his nature which he never desired to
bring to his brother’s knowledge.
Mark Wentworth had swiftly found out those qualities, and Val would
have been bitterly surprised could he have known that Sacha, if he had
not actually assisted and associated with his cousin in his foolish,
dissipated life, had certainly never considered he had the moral right
to censure these follies.
Had the matter ever been threshed out between Valentine and himself,
Sacha’s views of the situation would have been summed up most probably
in the remark given, good-humoredly, that he was a man of the world,
and did not see that Mark was doing anything very much out of the
common, but, unfortunately, perhaps, things had never got so far
between Valentine and himself.
Sacha had heard, of course, from both his brother and sister of
the rupture between themselves and his cousin, and he had written
most sympathetically to Grace on the subject. He had not thought it
necessary to tell Grace that he had had Mark’s version of the matter
also, and he certainly had no intention whatever of letting Grace know
that his real sympathy went with Mark Wentworth, and not with Valentine.
“Hang it all!” he had said to himself, “Mark is not a child, and he has
every right to take a wife if he chooses to do so. Val has overstepped
his limits this time. He ought to remember that Mark is his own master,
and it was a decidedly unnecessary act to go and set the girl against
the marriage. I think Val deserves all the snubbing he may get. But if
all I hear is true, I fancy the new Lady Wentworth must be a woman of
spirit, and will not accept Val’s interference very meekly.”
A theory that was amply proved to Sacha when the news came of
Christina’s attitude toward his brother and sister, more especially
when he heard of the eviction from the Dower House.
“Val has met his master for once,” he said to himself, with a faint
smile. Since he would suffer no discomfort himself by this change of
houses, he was rather amused than otherwise at the first working of
Christina’s power, though the moment he met Grace and saw how really
troubled the girl was, Sacha was truly moved to pity.
He was honestly fond of Grace, and he never remembered to have seen her
so ill and sorrowful as she was now.
It was certainly hard, too, that Grace should suffer for Val’s doings.
He made himself very sweet to his sister, and though he had a way of
disappearing when extra help was needed, his pretty words were almost
as acceptable to Grace as Valentine’s hours of packing, lifting and
settling.
Val worked like several horses rolled into one. He turned himself for
the nonce into a carpenter, a plumber, a picture hanger and, indeed,
every other sort of convenient and necessary person.
With his strong arms always ready, the furniture was moved about like
magic, and Grace’s new home swiftly began to look cozy and pretty.
The girl always found something fresh done when she returned from her
daily journey to her grandmother’s sick room, and Val was amply paid by
seeing the color begin to steal into his sister’s cheeks and the old
brightness come back to her eyes.
Sacha had fallen into the habit of walking with Grace up to Sunstead.
Old Lady Wentworth always had been fond of him, and though she was
very feeble and her mind wandered a little at times, she took distinct
pleasure in seeing Sacha’s handsome face.
Sometimes he would wait and accompany Grace homeward, but more than
once she missed him and went on her way alone.
She always imagined on such occasions that Sacha had wandered into the
cathedral and was probably making some rough sketch or other. It never
entered her head to suppose anything so extraordinary as that Sacha
should be sitting in Christina’s boudoir, chatting and drinking tea
with as much ease as though he had known his cousin’s wife all his life!
Sacha had caught sight of Christina the first time he had gone to
Sunstead with Grace, and he had boldly taken the bull by the horns, and
had asked for an audience, introducing himself with his own particular
charm, and claiming cousinship.
“Mark told me I was to come and see you,” he said, and Christina
received him graciously.
She saw at a glance the wide difference between him and his brother
and sister, and she guessed just as quickly that by encouraging him
she would give another sting to the man she told herself she hated so
thoroughly.
The acquaintance between Sacha and Mark’s wife was not long in
blossoming into an intimacy.
Mark was boisterously glad to welcome Sacha, and Christina’s vanity
was flattered and soothed. A portrait was instantly started, and Sacha
began to go to Sunstead at all hours. It was quite by chance that this
information came to Valentine’s ears.
He was not altogether deceived by his brother’s sweetness. He knew
Sacha could be very selfish. Neither was Val altogether in sympathy
with the life the younger man had chosen; but still he was far from
imagining how little real depths there was in Sacha’s professed
affection, and it gave him a shock when Grace’s maid, Ellen, in casual
mention of Sunstead and its inmates, spoke of Sacha’s constant presence
there, and of the wonderful picture he was painting.
Ellen was in the habit of going up constantly to old Lady Wentworth, so
there could be no doubt there must be an element of some truth in what
she said.
Val was in his new “den” when this new annoyance came to him.
Ellen had brought him a cup of coffee and a batch of letters by the
afternoon post. She was in the habit of chatting familiarly with both
her master and mistress.
Valentine sat frowning after she had gone. He saw in this more of
Christina’s clever and spiteful work, and at this, the beginning, did
not blame his brother so much.
“Sacha cannot resist a beautiful woman. As far as I am concerned,
he can go as often as he likes; but I am not thinking of myself in
this business now. The woman’s treatment of Grace puts a different
complexion on everything, and I must resent it. Sacha’s friendship will
complicate matters. I wondered why he did not go back to town.”
Valentine opened his letters mechanically, and ran through them
indifferently.
They were all business except one, which bore an Italian stamp.
Glancing at the signature, Valentine’s face took a gleam of pleasure.
He liked Hubert Kestridge sincerely.
Hubert wrote to ask him a favor.
“I want to interest you in a boy, a semi-connection of mine. I
suppose, in a sense, he is a relation now, since he happens to
be my wife’s brother. He has been in school in Germany; but he
had to come home suddenly the other day on account of illness.
He is now with his mother, Mrs. Pennington, and I am sure this
poor woman must be worrying herself to know what to do with him.
Pennington left no money, and the boy must earn his living. I
want you to tell me if you think you could do anything for me in
this matter. My wife is, unfortunately, very delicate, and this
keeps me away from England for some weeks longer. Meanwhile,
time is precious, and, believe me, I shall take it as a proof of
personal favor and friendship to me if you can at any time put
this boy in the way of doing something for himself. Perhaps you
may find time to see him one of these days.”
Valentine folded up the letter, and then he went on with his task
of making his new room as comfortable as he could, bestowing his
multitudinous papers in cupboards and boxes and putting his books on
the shelves, and all the time he was working he was conscious of a
warm, pleasant sensation at his heart, and it was only by degrees that
he realized this sensation came at the remembrance that on the morrow
he would go to London, and that he should see Polly Pennington.