DRAWING TOGETHER.
Polly received Hubert Kestridge’s wife very quietly.
The girl was so pale and worn-looking, she had a much older air.
“She looks as yellow as a guinea,” was Winnie’s observation to herself.
“In another year or so Polly will be absolutely plain. And what a nasty
temper she has! Of course, she is as jealous as she can be because I
have told her that Hubert and I are going to Sunstead.”
Mrs. Kestridge had not ventured to face Polly’s blunt-spoken tongue
unprepared for attack. She was conscious of making her sister wince
more than once, but when she condescended to personal remarks then
Polly only laughed.
“My dear Winnie, I think you had better go. You evidently have come
here because you imagined it was your duty. Now, please, understand you
owe us no duty at all. Mother and I can live our lives without you,
thank God! and we mean to do it. You are very pretty, and prosperous
and happy, so you may go away and enjoy yourself; we are neither pretty
nor prosperous, nor happy, and yet we would not change places with you
for anything in the wide world! That sounds funny, doesn’t it?” she
queried, after this was said, and her big eyes flashed, and she laughed
again—a laugh that brought the color into Winnie’s face.
Mrs. Kestridge tried to carry matters off quietly. She rose to take her
departure with a great assumption of dignity.
“It sounds as rude as I suppose you intend it to be; you always had
odious manners, Polly. No wonder you are so disliked! You are the real
type of an old maid.”
Polly stood at the window and watched Winifred drive away.
“An old maid? Yes; I suppose that is my fate! Well, it does not alarm
me. As long as I have my dear mother with me, I can snap my fingers at
fate, and afterwards——” Polly paused, and she shivered faintly. “Oh!
I won’t think of afterwards! Enough for me that mother is here, that we
are together, and that we want nothing of any man or any woman, either.”
A satisfactory state of affairs that Mrs. Pennington completely upset
that same night.
“Polly,” she said, in her slow, feeble way—“Polly, I wonder why Mr.
Ambleton never comes to see us? He promised to come, and I want him. I
have his goodness on my heart, and I want to tell him of my gratitude.
Write and ask him to come, surely he won’t refuse to. I must see him.
I have such a longing to see him to thank him for all he did in that
terrible time. We are so lonely and sad here, and I want him—he will
do me good.”
Polly stood and looked wistfully at her mother. She was a changed
mother, she had grown so thin, and so old-looking.
There were tears very near to Polly’s eyes as she answered her mother.
“The death of old Lady Wentworth must have given him much to see after,
darling,” she said; “but now, I dare say, he is free again. Anyhow, I
will write to him.”
She did write as coldly as she could with courtesy, and there was a
hard feeling against him in each word. It was so natural, that hard
feeling. Had she not lavished the whole of her heart’s love on her
mother? And yet—she did not suffice. She was jealous of this man, even
while she found herself echoing that wish of her mother’s to see him.
Yes; she was ready to confess that his presence would bring a sensation
as of warmth into their chilled, isolated life.
Nevertheless, she worded the letter in such a manner that she felt
almost convinced Valentine would not come.
Winnie’s visit had upset Mrs. Pennington very much. Matrimony had
enforced all Winnie’s little peculiarities.
Mrs. Pennington had had no intention of reproaching her daughter, and,
indeed, on the contrary, she had shown a pleasure and eagerness to see
Winnie again. Mothers have a trick of forgetting and forgiving where
others would be less amenable.
But Winnie did nothing to minister to the sorrow that reigned in her
mother’s heart. She was cold, unsympathetic and self-centered.
Polly caught her mother shedding bitter tears after Winnie had gone,
and the girl’s heart had ached with a new ache.
She had knelt and wrapped her slender young arms about that mother.
“My darling, precious love!” she whispered. “You are not going to
grieve any more, are you? You are going to give me all your worries in
the future. Remember, you promised me this.”
Mrs. Pennington had responded to the girl’s tenderness, but the tears
would flow.
“Are you so much stronger than I? Are you not weak and sorrowful as I
am, Polly, darling?” Then it was that she had spoken out her desire to
see Valentine Ambleton again. Her eager repetition of the wish showed
Polly only too clearly that her mother had truly need of stronger help
and sympathy than she could furnish.
But with her sweet readiness to think of others, Polly quickly began to
see how natural and necessary it was for her mother to long for this
man’s friendship.
“All her life she has had some one ready to come to her,” the girl said
to herself; “and this was the office that Hubert could have filled so
well had Winnie not spoiled everything. Mr. Ambleton has been so good
to us it would be strange if mother did not care to see him again, and
frequently. I wish, in a sense, they lived nearer. Grace would be a
great help to me, unless she, too, like all the rest, is different from
what she seems to be.”
Contrary to Polly’s expectations, Valentine answered Mrs. Pennington’s
letter in person the very day he received it. In fact, he traveled up
from Dynechester on purpose to pay this visit.
Polly was out when he called, and although she returned before his
visit had come to an end, she did not let him know this, but stole
upstairs softly, and did not emerge from the seclusion of her own room
until she had heard the big door shut, and she knew he was gone.
She found her mother looking quite bright when she went down,
eventually.
“Mr. Ambleton has been a long time, and, oh! Polly, is it not nice,
they—he and Miss Ambleton—have decided to come to town for some
months. Val says he is glad that his sister should leave Dynechester
for a little while. She has been much tried by her grandmother’s death,
and, apart from this, it seems she is not happy in her house, and frets
at having lost her old home. I can understand this so well. Anyhow, I
am glad they are coming—very glad.”
“It will be very nice,” Polly said, unsteadily.
This news upset her, and yet against herself she caught the infection
of her mother’s pleasure.
The reason Valentine gave for coming to London for a time was so
reasonable, that Polly did not for an instant question whether there
was not some other motive urging him on to a move that must be
fraught, for him, with a certain amount of difficulty.
Neither was Polly to know that this idea had come to Valentine quite
suddenly, as he had sat listening to Mrs. Pennington’s plaintive voice.
Winnie would have immediately colored the situation according to her
vanity, but Polly, though she had been forced to see, as we know, that
she possessed a certain power of attraction where Val was concerned,
did not encourage herself to imagine things without very good
foundation. She did not, in fact, dwell too much on the fulfillment of
this scheme, and only believed in it fully when she received a letter
from Grace confirming what Valentine had said.
“We are leaving Dynechester for a few months,” Grace wrote. “My
dear Val has got it into his head that a change of scene will do
me good, and I am not sure he is not right. Grannie’s death has
been a great grief to me; it came at the last so suddenly, and in
a sense so unexpectedly, that it gave us all a shock. For this,
then, and for one or two other reasons, I shall be glad to be
in London for a time, though it always costs me a pang to leave
dear old Dynechester. I am anxious to have Sacha with us a little
more, and to enter into his artistic life as much as is possible
to me, and this will be feasible now, since we shall all three
be together. And, then, there will be the pleasure of seeing
your mother and yourself, I hope, very often; and this, I assure
you, will be a very real pleasure. Valentine will not be able to
desert Dynechester altogether, but he will make his headquarters
with us in London. We shall be up now in a few days, and I shall
call on you immediately.”
There could be nothing but pleasure to Polly in the thought that Val’s
sister was coming nearer to them.
Those few, sad days in Grace’s home had served to draw the two girls
together far more closely than ordinary circumstances could have
done. Polly found her heart going out to Grace in a boundless rush of
gratitude. The thought and anxiety and tenderness Grace had bestowed
on both her mother and herself seemed to have been made greater and
sweeter, because of Christina’s and Winnie’s curious lack of right
feeling.
“Do they really belong to us?” Polly found herself doubting at times,
when she thought of her sisters.
She was still young enough in her sentiments to cling to certain
illusions, and she still could grieve over the loss of that beautiful
faith and admiration she had lavished on Christina. For Winifred, Polly
had never held such deep feelings.
She and Winnie had lived too closely together to admit of much
illusion; nevertheless, love of kin was strong in Polly’s nature, and
though Winnie had irritated her almost at every turn, she had never
forgotten that they were sisters, and as such, bound to care for one
another.
When Winnie had married Hubert Kestridge, however, not even the
knowledge of this bond could prevent the younger girl from feeling
bitter and contemptuous toward her sister.
The rôle Winnie had played was to Polly a despicable one. Had she
ever shown the smallest trace of cherishing an affection for Hubert
Kestridge things might have been different. But Polly, better than most
people, knew just how much good opinion Winnie had entertained for the
young man up to the time that circumstances had caused her to change
her mind.
Long, long ago, when Winnie had been hardly more than a little girl,
she had expressed strong views as to her ambition in the future.
“I mean to marry a title,” she had confided more than once to Polly,
and Polly had laughed.
“A duke, I suppose? Well, you must make haste, Winnie, there are not
many dukes left nowadays.”
And though fate had unkindly withheld a coronet from Winnie, she had
secured the best means to save herself from poverty and obscurity in
her marriage with a man, whom, up to that time, she had always sneered
at.
Polly could recall countless times when she had suffered many little
pangs on account of those same sneers.
Hubert’s brogue, his boyish manners, his open-hearted sincerity, all
had been the target for Winnie’s contempt.
“A rawboned Irishman,” she had once called him, when, by some kind of
instinct, she had gathered the delicate secret that was forming in
Polly’s heart. “I hate being seen anywhere with Hubert, he is so loud,
and attracts so much attention. I call him vulgar.”
And now she was the wife of the “vulgar, rawboned Irishman,” and her
mission appeared to be to let Polly, out of all the world, understand
what a fine and enviable position this wifedom was.
Polly could have laughed had her heart been less sore, and her spirits
less weary.
When Grace came to see her, she was shocked to find the girl looking so
thin and worn.
She herself was scarcely in better trim.
There had been much to try Grace in connection with her grandmother’s
death.
She had been forced to come in contact with Christina, and the further
insight into the nature of her cousin’s wife had been singularly
painful to her.
Christina’s manner to her had been one of scarcely veiled insolence,
and Grace did not pretend not to see that Lady Wentworth was jealous
of her; neither could she fail to realize the real and miserable truth
about this regrettable marriage.
It was, therefore, with a sigh of relief that Grace left Dynechester
once more.
“How little I thought I should be glad to go so soon again. I made up
my mind to stay for years in Dynechester after our long tour last year,
Val. One should never make plans.”
“It is a very harmless amusement,” Valentine had said to this.
Then he had echoed her sigh.
“And yet it is strange how very wrong our plans will go,” he had added.
He had poor Harold Pennington in his thoughts at the moment, and it was
natural enough that thought of Harold should bring thought of Polly.
He was making plans enough where she was concerned; plans that he felt
quite certain were destined to be ruthlessly undone by fate or the
girl’s pride.
He let Grace do most of the visiting to the Penningtons on their first
arrival.
“Val is so busy,” Grace said, on these several occasions. “I am half
afraid, poor fellow, he has upset all his arrangements to bring me to
town. He will have to stay in Dynechester the greater part of this
week, but he will be here over Sunday, Mrs. Pennington, and then we
are all coming to have tea with you, if we may? I want to introduce my
youngest brother, Sacha.”
It was impossible for Polly to disguise from herself the vast amount of
pleasure her mother derived from the knowledge that Valentine was going
to be so near to them.
“Tell your brother I am quite jealous of him,” she said, half
laughingly, to Grace. “Mother even looks better when she knows she is
going to see him.”
“I wish you shared her enthusiasm,” Grace said, dryly enough. “I
should like to see an improvement in your looks, Polly.”
Polly opened her big eyes very wide.
“What is the matter with me, pray?”
“That is what I should like to know,” Grace replied. “Do you know you
haven’t even the ghost of a color in your cheeks? And look at your
hands, why, they are gone to nothing.”
“I am one of the lean kind, I fancy,” Polly said, indifferently; then
earnestly, “but please, Grace, do not let mother know you don’t think
I am looking very well. The truth is—I may as well confess to you,
though I wouldn’t do so to your brother—this house bothers me a lot. I
believe I have made a mistake, after all! Mother would have been better
had I moved her to different surroundings; she is reminded every hour
here of what she has lost. And apart from this, I find out I am not
nearly so clever as I imagined I was.”
“I suppose you are like me in some things; you try to encompass
difficulties, and will not see that they are difficulties till they get
beyond you.”
Polly nodded her head.
“And this house has got beyond me, Grace; it is so much too big. I
am sure we have a ton of dust to sweep up every week. It is getting
shabbier and more dingy each day, and the atmosphere of it is so
depressing, so—so blighting. You can’t think of all the wonderful
ideas I had of utilizing the drawing room, and how they have all ended
in nothing.”
“Let me see this drawing room,” said Grace.
They mounted the stairs, and Polly unlocked the door.
“Oh, what happy days I have had in this grim, sad room! It seems hard
to believe that I am the same me. If that is not good grammar, you must
pass it over, Grace.”
Grace was not thinking of grammar.
Her face had lighted up as she walked about the dismantled room.
“Polly,” she said, suddenly, “I fancy I have an idea this time! Why not
let this room, this floor, indeed, to an artist? This enormous window
looks north; it is the very best light possible. Sacha, I am convinced,
will confirm what I say. Perhaps he might be able to help you.”
Polly’s eyes flashed with something of their old fire.
“It is a splendid idea! Why shouldn’t I have thought of it? I should
like it, too. I adore studios, and love the smell of oils, and paints,
and mediums, and models.”
At which Grace laughed.
“If you could come in close contact with some of Sacha’s old models, I
fancy you might modify that last statement.”
“Anyhow, it is a splendid idea!” Polly cried, and she went downstairs
almost buoyantly.
Valentine heard all about this same idea when he arrived.
It annoyed him to find Grace eager to help Polly to help herself. It
was perhaps wrong of Valentine, but the truth was, he by no means
shared Polly’s regret over her failure to make her own way. Her failure
was to be his chance.
He therefore snubbed Grace’s idea from the outset.
“I am sorry you have suggested this to Miss Pennington, for it will
only mean another disappointment. The idea is not in the least degree
feasible.”
“Oh! Val, why? The room would want some alterations, I grant, but with
very little cost it could be transformed into a beautiful studio.”
“The shape of the room has nothing to do with it,” Valentine said,
irritably. “It is the suggestion of admitting a stranger, and in
particular, an artist, into the house.”
Sacha looked up at this, much amused.
He saw his brother was out of temper, and he sought about for a clew as
to the cause of this.
“I say, Val, not so violent. What have we poor artists done to call
down your wrath on our heads?”
Valentine colored. He had spoken hastily, and had quite forgotten
Sacha’s presence.
He answered his brother dryly.
“I generalize, of course. I do not mean that every artist must
necessarily be objectionable, but I do consider their calling
objectionable when connected with a private house. Take your own
studio, for instance; you are compelled to have it thronged from time
to time with people who are certainly not desirable.”
“They are very harmless,” Sacha observed.
He pulled his mustache, and leaning back in his chair, looked at his
brother thoughtfully.
“I still maintain there is no possibility of Mrs. Pennington
entertaining this idea,” Valentine said shortly.
“It is not Mrs. Pennington who does anything, it is Polly,” Grace said,
a little crossly. She did not like having her suggestions set at naught
in this way.
Sacha, with a little laugh, changed the conversation, but his curiosity
was sharply aroused, and he scented a mystery.
It was, of course, just like Valentine to mingle himself up in this
intimate way with other people’s affairs; still, there was something
unlike his usual manner about him to-day, and Sacha resolved to
investigate this matter further.
Accordingly, the next day he arrayed himself in his usual smart
fashion, and drove direct to the Penningtons’ house.
He sent in his card, and asked for Polly, and the maid ushered him into
the well-worn library.
“If she is only a little like her sister she should be at least
attractive,” Sacha said to himself; and he waited Polly’s coming with
much interest.
Her first appearance was not effective, but as she lifted her eyes and
looked at him, half inquiringly, Sacha, in an instant, understood the
situation.
“Why, she is beautiful, quite beautiful!” Sacha said to himself.
He invented, as an excuse, a desire to see the drawing room, and he
lingered a long while with Polly, talking over the plan of turning it
into a studio quite gravely.
It amused him immensely to see in this an opportunity of disputing with
Valentine for the friendship of this girl. He promised himself the
pleasure of wiping off several old scores through Polly.