Chapter XI: The Boy’s Return

Harold’s unexpected return home was at once a pleasure and a trouble to Polly.

She was deeply attached to her brother; in truth, despite her girlish infatuation for Christina’s beauty, Polly had always had more sympathy with the bright, mischievous boy, who had been so dear to her dead father, than she had had for either of her sisters.

It was not merely that both her mother and herself were made anxious by Harold’s illness, there was the material difficulty of his future staring them straight in the face.

Something must be done for him; but what that something was to be neither of them could tell. One point, however, was clear—further schooling was out of the question.

Had it not been that the severity of the winter abroad tried him too hardly, Harold would have had another six months, or perhaps a year, in Germany; but now that he was back in London it was a question of setting him to some profession, not of seeking out further education for him.

Polly’s trouble about this matter increased considerably after Harold had been home a few days, for it came to her then only too surely that the boy’s condition of health was more seriously delicate than she had imagined. The attack of influenza and pleurisy that had been the cause for sending him away from the rigorous winter in Dresden had left something more than ordinary delicacy behind.

There was a look in the lad’s face that made Polly’s heart contract with a pang.

She kept this new worry to herself, hoping, indeed, that she might be mistaken, and, above all, that her mother should not have the same idea as herself about Harold; but it was a trouble that she found very hard to bear, and that haunted her closely.

She was alone in the big desolate-looking house when the servant announced the arrival of Valentine Ambleton.

Her mother and Harold had gone out on a shopping expedition, devised by Polly to give them both some amusement, and she was occupied in walking about the large, half-empty drawing room, wondering for the hundredth time in what way she could utilize it so that it might bring some small addition to their limited exchequer, when the door opened and Valentine’s big form appeared.

Black was not the most becoming setting to Polly’s dark prettiness, and her humbly made black serge gown was fitted to a figure that had grown very, very thin of late. The girl had a fragile as well as a sad look, and Valentine had difficulty in recognizing the former little spitfire in this subdued young creature.

Sight of him, however, brought a kind of excitement to Polly, and as they sat and talked the old vivacity and color flashed into her eyes once again.

She had greeted him most naturally, but, of course, she was very outspoken.

“You have been a long time coming,” she informed him after a while; “but, truth to tell, I never expected you would come at all.”

“I should like to know why you thought that,” Val said.

“Oh! because so many people one meets stop and pretend they are glad to see one, and are dying to come and see one again, and they never come near the house. Not that I want any of them,” cried Polly, in her most independent manner; “but I hate and detest all who forget my mother.”

“I am not a forgetful person, Miss Pennington,” Val said, quietly.

Polly looked at him sideways out of her sparkling eyes.

“I think you have a good opinion of yourself. Big people are every bit as conceited as little ones, I find.”

Valentine laughed.

“Well, if I am conceited you must try and take it out of me, for I hope to see a great deal of you now if you will let me come. I should have been here long ago, but I have had to help my sister. We have been moving into another house.”

“Oh! you poor things,” Polly said, sympathetically. “A move is a real calamity. I should hate it. We are told by all our relations that we have no business here, and that we ought to move; but I won’t let my mother budge. I know everybody considers we ought to bury ourselves in a tiny house in the suburbs, but mother has lived in this big house ever since I can remember anything, and I mean to keep her here as long as I can. But why have you moved?” she queried, in her frank, direct way. “Hubert Kestridge made us all envious by his description of your dear old home in Dynechester. Were you obliged to leave it?”

“The Dower House belongs to Sir Mark Wentworth, and he requires it,” Valentine explained. Had he needed confirmation of his theory that Christina’s excuse had been invented, Polly’s words would have given it to him, but he had, as we know, at once discredited her declared intention of offering the old house as a home to her mother and sister, so Polly’s surprise at his news did not astonish him.

Polly said “Oh!” to his explanation, then she took him downstairs out of the large drawing room to a more cozy corner.

“Mother will be in directly, and then we will have tea. I don’t have a fire in the drawing room very often, it makes too much work for one servant, especially as my brother is at home just now. They had to send him away from his school in Dresden. He has been ill.”

Valentine stood on the hearthrug in front of the dining-room fire. It was the room where that unpleasant scene had been enacted on that bygone day.

He remembered it now with a strong rush of anger for his folly in attempting to do what he had tried to do, and yet, as he glanced at the girl who was flitting about preparing the tea table, and making everything ready for her mother’s return, he felt a touch of real pleasure mingle in with the jarred feelings. For if that bygone day had brought him in contact with Christina and her worthless nature, as Valentine uncompromisingly considered it, it had also been the means of introducing him to this other girl, who, for some occult reason, had found an abiding place in his thoughts.

As Polly chatted on gayly enough, the man watching her arrived at two or three conclusions about her.

He was not a woman with a woman’s keen instinct to help him, yet it came to Val most surely that there was a sore point in connection with Hubert Kestridge and his wife even as there was about Christina, Lady Wentworth.

Each time the name of Kestridge was spoken, Polly seemed to wince, and Valentine all at once determined to say nothing of that letter from Italy which had reached him the previous day.

He was not a particularly diplomatic person, as has been seen, yet his tenderness and large sympathies gave him a certain tact that stood him in good stead now.

He determined, therefore, to work what help he could give the lad Harold in a roundabout sort of way.

He enticed Polly to tell him all about her brother, and the girl was nothing loath to speak of Harold’s talent and many other endearing qualities.

“It makes me a little sad,” she owned, wistfully, “to realize that Harold is not to have the education our poor father intended him to have. Of course, I am his sister, and so I suppose I am prejudiced, but I call him ever so clever,” and then Polly sighed; “only he is not strong.”

“Growing boys seldom are,” Valentine said in the most matter-of-fact way.

He had caught sight of Polly’s eyes, and he saw they were full of tears, but just at this moment Mrs. Pennington and her boy arrived, and the little private conversation came to an end.

It needed no very great skill to read that Polly’s anxiety about her brother was well founded. The boy had a very weak, wan look, and Valentine felt a little pang in his big, strong heart as he looked at him. He was an interesting lad, and above the average in intelligence.

Polly poured out tea, and fussed about her mother, and the while she did this she was listening to the conversation carried on between Harold and Mr. Ambleton.

Valentine discovered to his pleasure that he could be of definite use to the boy. From the sketches produced he discovered that Harold had more than a fair talent for designing, and with cultivation might turn his talent in an architectural direction.

“You must come and stay with me a while,” Val said. “Will you spare him, Mrs. Pennington?” he queried. “My sister will take great care of him, and, I believe, I can find him some work.”

“Oh, mother!” Harold exclaimed in boyish delight, and Mrs. Pennington murmured her pleasure in this arrangement.

As for Polly, she thanked Mr. Ambleton with her eyes, a matter that afforded him considerable satisfaction, and in a little while Valentine brought this visit to a close, and drove away, feeling that he had left something very dear behind him.

Harold talked enthusiastically about his new friend all that evening, and the thought of a visit to Dynechester, and the prospect of turning himself from a schoolboy into the dignity of one who might soon be a wage-earner, brought a glow of color to his pale face.

“I call him a brick!” he cried, as Valentine was discussed.

“He is much too big to be one brick,” said Polly, meditatively.

She was wondering if she could let Harold go on a visit without supplementing his rather shabby wardrobe. Finally she determined that they could not afford to indulge in any extravagance, and so on the morrow she packed the boy’s school box, and wrapped him in sundry flannels, and confided him to Valentine’s care.

“Don’t let him sit in a draught, and please send him to bed at ten, and don’t keep him longer than you want. It is awfully kind of you to ask him at all. You have made him quite happy.”

“I shall remember all your orders,” Ambleton said, meekly.

He thought he had never seen anything sweeter or more desirable than Polly looked on this morning as she stood in the big doorway and waved her hand in farewell to her brother.

“Now, Polly will go upstairs and have a good cry,” Harold informed him. “Polly always cries when anybody goes away. She says she can’t help herself.”

Polly did exactly as her brother foretold.

As soon as the door was closed she ran up to her little room and indulged in a fit of weeping. She could not have explained why exactly, but the feeling pressed on her that this visit Harold was about to make would bring her some new sorrow, even while it promised so much that was bright and pleasant. Valentine had enlarged his invitation.

“My sister will write to you in her own name; but I, on her behalf, now beg that both Miss Pennington and yourself will come down and stay with us also,” he had said to Polly’s mother. “We shall only wait till we are quite settled before expecting you. It is not very gay at Dynechester, but the place is so quaint I am sure it will interest you.”

Polly had answered for her mother.

“We shall be very glad to come,” she had said, briskly; “and we will go,” she further informed her mother when Harold had departed, and they were alone. “It will do us both good. I don’t know how you feel, mother, but I need a little change of air.”

Mrs. Pennington did not answer immediately. When she did speak she had a strained note in her voice.

“Dynechester is Christina’s home, Polly,” she said:

But Polly wore a defiant air.

“What has that to do with us? Christina may live in Dynechester, but we need not trouble ourselves about her in the very least. I mean henceforward,” Polly added, with a great deal more firmness than was sincere. “I mean, my lovee, dear, to treat people just as they treat me, and as Christina forgets us, so we must forget her.”

It was only on rare occasions that the names of either Christina or Winnie were mentioned between them.

It seemed strange enough to Polly sometimes to look back and realize in how short a time her two sisters had drifted out of her life.

She had a thrill of pity for herself in these moments—pity for all those years of wasted love and admiration she had lavished on Christina. That Winnie would be true to her own peculiar selfishness Polly had always vaguely felt; but the way in which Winnie had demonstrated this finally had exceeded all she had imagined on the subject.

It was in truth a hard task for Polly’s virile loyalty to survey her sister’s callousness with any great degree of philosophy.

She made a brave show to her mother of indifference, but the wounds that both Christina and Winnie had made were too deep to be healed quickly.

Nevertheless, though there would be pain both to her mother and herself in this suggested visit to Dynechester, Polly determined they would go when they were invited.

“I shall believe in the invitation when it comes,” she said, with emphasis, as two days passed, and no letter reached them from Grace. “I suppose Mr. Ambleton thought he was in duty bound to say that his sister would like to see us. It was quite necessary for him to invent something just to please us, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t think Mr. Ambleton looks as if he invented very much,” Mrs. Pennington said, gently. She paused a moment, and then she added: “I like this new friend of ours, Polly; I like him very much.”

Polly grunted.

“I don’t like anybody nowadays,” she said, turbulently. “I don’t believe in anybody. I think the whole world is odious.”

At this Mrs. Pennington had to smile.

“Things are bad with you to-day, Polly,” was her remark.

Polly kissed her.

“I am in a downright bad temper, my darling mother. Just leave me to myself, and I shall come round. Now, I am off marketing. Take care of yourself till I come back.”

When Polly arrived home from her modest shopping, her mother handed her two letters, with rather a triumphant expression.

“Harold is enjoying himself immensely, and Miss Ambleton writes so charmingly. She wants us to fix our own time about a week or ten days hence.”

Polly read through the letters.

Harold’s schoolboy effusion made her smile, but there was something in Grace’s pretty letter that touched her.

“I am sure I shall like this girl,” she said, and then she began to discuss ways and means. “You must take your smartest tea gown, and make yourself ever so pretty, mother, dear one.”

“And you, Polly?”

“Oh!” with a shrug of her shoulders, “I am all right. I never look magnificent, and I certainly shall not pretend to dress up smartly for these people.”

“You see,” Mrs. Pennington ventured to remark, “you see, Polly, I was quite right, Mr. Ambleton did not invent. I am sure he will be very pleased if we go.”

“Oh! as to that!” said haughty Polly, “I shall wait a little longer before I pass any opinion. He will have to pretend he is pleased, whether he is or not. After all, we shall be his guests, remember.”

Mrs. Pennington took up the cudgels on Valentine’s behalf in real earnest.

“Unless Mr. Ambleton were a very kind man, I am sure he would not have asked Harold to stay with him. Come, Polly, you must confess that?”

“I won’t confess anything,” Polly cried. “I am a pig-headed person, and when I think things—well, I think them, and there is an end of the matter.”

“Under these circumstances, then, it will be better for us to refuse Mr. Ambleton’s invitation,” said gentle Mrs. Pennington, with a smile just flickering at the corners of her mouth, and, of course, Polly at once combated this suggestion, and Mrs. Pennington’s answer to Grace’s letter was a cordial acceptance of the invitation for herself and daughter to spend a few days in Dynechester.