Chapter V: Polly’s Culinary Difficulties

Polly had no time to devote to self-adornment on this occasion. She had given her attention to her mother instead, and it had warmed her heart with pleasure to see how the news of Hubert’s coming seemed to rouse her mother, and to bring back a little of the old light and pretty expression to the pale, tired, sad face.

“I am going to perk you up ever so smart, you love!” Polly informed her mother, after she had made her announcement. Polly had little words and sayings that were peculiarly her own. “You must wear,” she said, after a moment’s deep reflection, “you must wear your heliotrope teagown. You do look such a duck in it, and I want Hubert to admire you more than ever to-night.”

Mrs. Pennington submitted to the offices of this tender little handmaiden almost unconsciously, so great was the pressure of anxious care on her mind.

“But Polly, you are not dressed yourself,” she said once, waking from this heavy train of thought and realizing the situation at a glance. “My darling, leave me now; I can finish by myself. But, oh, Polly”—Mrs. Pennington was her whole self in this moment—“we are forgetting. What shall we give Hubert for dinner? He must be hungry, and now cook has gone——”

“And a good riddance,” interpolated Polly, with a pin between her teeth.

She was working busily with the arrangement of the teagown, one of poor Mrs. Pennington’s best pieces of finery, which, like all else she possessed, needed certain manipulation.

“Just leave all to me, mother dear,” Polly went on hurriedly, as she took the pin from between her teeth and fixed it in a knot of lace. “As a matter of fact, Hubert will have a magnificent dinner, quite as good as he gets in Ireland, I’ll bet anything. Besides, Hubert is not a guest, he is one of us, and that means he must take what he can get, and be thankful he gets it. Now, my sweetheart, you look like an angel; run along. I heard Winnie bringing Hubert upstairs in the drawing room. Martha shall sound the gong when dinner is ready.”

Polly flitted away.

A tired sigh escaped her lips as she went, for she had been on her legs all the day, and though she had dismissed the difficulties so cheerfully, the fact remained that the dinner was meager, and she hardly knew how she was going to alter this at so short a notice.

But the inventive faculty was not lacking in pretty Polly’s brain. She dived down the kitchen stairs, where a trusty maidservant, who had been some time in the household and had “understudied” for the various cooks on many an occasion, hailed her coming with joy, and set to work to plan and devise.

Somehow, since the establishment had been so reduced, and her mother had been so weak and troubled, the weight of everything had fallen on Polly’s shoulders. In particular, she had monopolized the commissariat department, and Winifred had ceded this and other things with alacrity.

“You are so clever at cooking, Polly,” she had said, with cunning prettiness. “Mother will always eat what you make for her.”

And guileless Polly swallowed the compliment, and doubled her devotion to the development of her culinary art, not fathoming the subtlety of Winifred’s appreciation all at once.

To-night she seated herself on the kitchen table—her favorite place while below—and gazed meditatively at the joint of cold roast beef. It was a very fine piece of beef, and had an appetizing air.

“Admirable as one dish, but it has a desolating effect if not supported with others,” she told herself, and then her face lit up.

She would make an omelet, and Martha should concoct a delicious salad, and a jelly from the nearest pastry cook’s should be followed by _maccaroni au gratin_. After this there was the dessert, and happily they had plenty of fruit in the house.

But the trick of cooking the omelet and appearing neat and trim at the dinner table taxed Polly too much.

She had already tried to make her head “presentable,” as she called it, but she had not had time to change her serge morning gown in which she had worked all the day.

“Well,” she observed, as she glanced herself up and down, “I am sorry if I shall offend Hubert’s fastidious taste, but he cannot be fed and charmed at one and the same time.”

She brushed herself thoroughly, however, then tied herself up in a big cooking apron, and set to work, and in a little while the boom of the gong informed the occupants of the drawing room that dinner was served.

Polly was already in the dining room when her mother, leaning on Hubert Kestridge’s arm, came down the stairs, followed by Winifred’s pretty figure, and they both looked so sweet and fresh that Polly awakened to the burning of her scorched hands and face, and the shabbiness of her gown with a pang of something like shame.

Winifred gazed at her sister complacently.

Sometimes, she told herself softly, there was some luck in the world.

Never had she seen Polly look so awful in all her life before.

Hubert Kestridge had clasped both of Polly’s hot, small hands in his with a heartiness that was almost eager.

“I thought you were never coming to welcome me,” he said, with a tinge of reproach in his pleasant, Irish-touched voice.

Polly whisked her hands away.

“You think very silly things. You always did!” she observed; and she went down to the lower end of the table, and took her father’s seat, with a frown on her pretty brow.

Mrs. Pennington looked troubled as she saw how hot and tired the girl was, and the shadow on her face deepened as the omelet was brought in and handed round.

A pang went through the mother’s heart as she set the devotion and love and courageous unselfishness of this child against the heartless indifference, the callous selfishness of that other, that too well-loved eldest born, who had never been thwarted in any of her wishes, and from whom the phantom care—that had been stalking nearer and nearer to the home these past two years—had ever been eagerly hidden.

In none of the carking anxieties that had eaten their way, slowly but surely, to the mother’s heart, had Christina Pennington ever shared. Had her nature been different she could not, of course, have shut her eyes to the truth of things as they were under her father’s roof, but Chrissie had chosen to be blind.

She had always treated her mother’s difficulties, those celebrated “Monday agonies,” as Polly called them, very much in the way she would have treated some eccentric characteristic, and though the tears might have stained her mother’s face, and the trouble have proclaimed itself audibly, Chrissie would never have dreamed of sacrificing one shilling of her really ample allowance from her grandmother to help this poor mother to tide over a temporary financial gulf.

In the old days—not even to herself—would Mrs. Pennington permit the character of her eldest child to come up for criticism, but now, with her heart torn and aching from the blow Christina’s selfishness and worldliness had dealt her, she dissembled no longer, and she suddenly found in Polly’s hot, disheveled looks this night a beauty far greater than she had seen in her darling first born’s undoubted loveliness.

It had been the fashion in the Pennington family, with all its dozens of cousins and uncles and aunts, to consider Polly an exceedingly plain girl. Christina and Winifred, and the schoolboy, Harold, were permitted their claims to good looks, but Polly’s personality had had no admirers among her kinsfolk up to the present time, if, indeed, Hubert Kestridge may be excepted, who had always found a charm in the youngest Pennington girl, even when she had been a gawky, sallow child.

He did not look at her very much to-night. He felt if he did he might betray more than he judged wise to confess to the world just yet, but though he did not look very often, he saw enough to make him eat far more than he required.

He exerted himself to be very bright and cheery, and the very sound of his voice did poor, chilled, anxious Mrs. Pennington as much good as a tonic.

Winifred and he carried on most of the conversation till dessert came, and then the servant having withdrawn, the ever-pressing subjects of the moment were brought forward and dealt with by the young man in a practical, straightforward manner.

He was very sensible about Chrissie’s marriage.

“Now, don’t you fret your heart away; take my word for it, Christina will be as happy as the day is long. She was never born to be a poor man’s wife.”

“But—but the wife of a drunkard, Hubert! What money can smooth that away? What happiness can that bring?” murmured Mrs. Pennington, faintly.

“Sure,” Hubert Kestridge said, firmly—since he had come to offer sympathy and comfort he saw no reason why he should not give it in full measure—“sure, and I think, Aunt Phœbe, dear, you’ll find that’s a story that maybe has but little truth in it. Christina’s a mighty particular lady now, isn’t she? And is she, do you think, going to mate herself with a man that has no right to the name?”

“I believe,” cried Polly, viciously, from the end of the table, “I firmly believe, mother darling, that that nasty Mr. Ambleton just came here and took away Sir Mark’s character out of spite. It was very impertinent of him to come at all, I consider, especially when he had nothing but disagreeable things to say.”

Hubert glanced up, and his face changed expression a little.

“Ambleton?” he said. “Are you speaking of Valentine Ambleton, I wonder?”

“We are speaking,” observed Polly, loftily, “of an enormous brute who came here one day, and forced his way in, and just made mother as ill as she could be. Don’t say you know anything nice about him, please, Hubert, because he was just as rude and horrid a man as anyone wants to meet.”

“I did not see him,” Winnie interpolated, in her even, pretty voice.

Winnie always chose the moment to speak softly after Polly had been more than usually vehement and furious. She studied the value of contrast in all things.

“Do you know him, Hubert?” Mrs. Pennington asked, tremulously.

Hubert Kestridge evaded the question a little.

“I know a man called Ambleton, true enough; but it will not be the same, I’m thinking,” and then he turned the conversation on the absent head of the house, and Mrs. Pennington poured out all her fears and hopes to him.

“Robert is in Glasgow now. I heard from him this morning. It seemed to me he wrote more cheerfully. Perhaps the Northern business may help the difficulties here. Robert speaks of remaining up there a while longer, to work up the connection all he can.”

“I heard from him, too,” Kestridge said, “and I think he’s doing the wisest thing, Aunt Phœbe. I’ll be glad to see him rid himself of the London business altogether, and stick to the Glasgow branch.”

“But that would mean living up North,” Winnie said, hurriedly. She shivered even at the bare idea.

“What does it matter where we live?” demanded Polly, sharply, as she cracked a nut. “London or Glasgow, it will be all the same a hundred years hence.”

Winifred’s face took a pathetic look.

“Oh! mother dear, don’t let us leave London. Can’t we stay on just as we are?”

Winnie could be very pretty and babyish when she liked. She was so now, and Hubert Kestridge looked at her with much compassion.

“You are all going to be just as happy as queens,” he cried, heartily; “little girls like Winnie and Polly have no need to trouble their heads about anything but happiness.”

Polly’s flushed face had gradually faded into a pallor of fatigue, now it flushed up again.

This speech made her suddenly very angry.

“Come along, Winnie! Little girls have no right to be out of their little beds at such a late hour as nine o’clock.”

She blew a kiss to her mother.

“Good-night, precious love,” she said; “good-night,” she added curtly to Hubert, giving him a darkened glance out of her wonderful eyes, as she marched out of the room.

“I used to think I liked Hubert Kestridge! How could I have been such an idiot, I wonder?” she said to herself, savagely, as she went upstairs. “And I do wish Winnie would not put on that dolly manner now! We aren’t very old, I suppose; but we’ve got to be old enough to help our mother to fight all the troubles in front of her.”

She was a long time going to bed, although the room was very cold, for fires had been stopped by her own commands, when economy, in its most rigid form, walked into the house.

Tired as she had been and was, there was a restlessness and a funny sort of pain in Polly’s heart to-night that she was not able to subdue or understand.

It had hurt her vaguely to leave the man below in so ungracious a fashion; but yet she had to do it. She hated the thought of pity even from him, and Polly knew to-night that she would have taken more from Hubert Kestridge than she would have taken from any other living creature.

She saw him with old and new eyes to-night. She was very glad to see him, and yet she shrank from him, too.

Her hitherto untried womanly instinct seemed to tell her that in the man’s heart there was a sentiment as deep as her own; but while she guessed this she tried to shut the knowledge from her.

Had life glided on in its old fashion, Polly might never have had occasion to rout out her private feelings in this way, and summon up all her courage to dispose of them; but with the advent of poverty and the knowledge of real trouble, a different sort of character seemed born in Polly, and things that would have come to her naturally enough in the past were looked at very questionably now.

The friendship and affectionate sympathy of Hubert Kestridge was one of these things. Not that she doubted the honesty of the man, far from it; but that she had studied his nature too well for her own comfort now. She had always considered Hubert one of the kindest of human creatures. He had an open heart and purse for all the suffering that came in his way, and that could be alleviated.

From her aunt, alone, Polly would have gathered the depths and drifts of this man’s nature, even if she had not known him so well herself, and all things being put together, Polly had a delicate, nervous apprehension of part of the scheme that was formulating in Kestridge’s mind just now, and that was so unutterably dear to him.

“Hubert can never pass a beggar in the street. He would give the last farthing he had if it were asked of him,” the girl said to herself, with a thrill of honest pride in the man’s goodness that could not be denied, but back came the stinging side of this knowledge. “How much more will he not determine to do all in his power to help us now? Of course, I would rather be helped by Hubert than by anyone else, but I don’t see the necessity of being pitied by anybody. I am strong, and if we must be poor I will slave and slave, and give mother everything she needs by my own exertions. If we all go weeping and whining we shall be a nice, dull lot! I intend to show Hubert, and all the world,” said rebellious, angry, sore-hearted little Polly, “that I am as happy now, and as independent, as I ever was, and he and all the rest can just keep their pity for themselves!”

She was in bed when Winnie came upstairs an hour later. Polly in bed was a delightful sight. She had a trick of gathering her hair into a quaint knot on the top of her head, and when the weather was very cold she swathed herself in a little extra garment of bright red flannel, which lit up the southern coloring of her skin, and was exceedingly picturesque. In bed, too—Winnie had quietly remarked this and resented it—Polly’s very beautiful eyes had a new phase of expression; they were soft and dewy, and had an irresistible fascination in their depths. She was reading, but she put her book away with a yawn as her sister came in.

“Wasn’t Hubert odious to-night?” she queried, as she lay and watched Winnie proceed methodically to make herself ready for bed also.

Polly always enjoyed watching Winnie unplait and let loose her many braids of hair. Winnie seemed to touch this hair with a tenderness and a pride that was not wholly unreasonable.

Now, Winnie was a very clever little person, and she had not sat and watched Hubert Kestridge’s face very closely after Polly had flounced away so angrily without understanding to a great extent the full difficulties and possibilities of her position. To work a complete division between Polly and the young man was her first task, and she had quickly made up her mind how that was to be done.

“I think Hubert meant to be kind, Polly,” she said, softly. “He is so sorry for us.”

Polly’s eyes flashed fire, and she pummeled her pillows viciously.

“What on earth has he got to be sorry about?” she inquired, wrathfully. “We are all well and hearty, and we are not turned out into the street yet, whatever may come!”

Winnie sighed and brushed out her veil of soft hair.

“Well, of course, things are changed, and it’s no use denying that, and we must expect people to pity us.”

“I don’t expect anything of the sort. I consider pity a most impertinent thing.”

“Naturally, to a man like Hubert,” Winnie went on, as she drew her hair well over her face, “there must be something awfully painful about us now. I saw him looking at you to-night, Polly, when we came down to dinner. It was a pity he had to see so plainly that you had just come up from the kitchen.”

“I couldn’t help that,” said Polly, sharply. “I had to cook the omelet, and I couldn’t cook it in my best frock.”

“Of course Hubert is not like most people,” Winnie said, softly; “otherwise he might have thought it was all for effect, you know.”

Polly flushed as red as her little jacket, but she remained silent, for she did not know exactly what to say, and Winnie, brushing back her hair, glanced at her furtively and rejoiced.

“All the same, I hope you are not going to quarrel with Hubert?” she said.

“Why not?”

“You were really rude to him to-night, and we can’t afford to lose friends nowadays.”

“Can’t we? I can, if I choose,” said Polly, doggedly.

Winnie said her prayers and put herself into her pretty, prim night garments, in which, as in everything else, she was such a contrast to Polly.

“I have always thought, do you know, Polly,” she observed, quietly, when her head was resting on the pillow, “that you could, if you chose to play your cards properly, get Hubert to propose to you some day. Men like all sorts of little attentions, and particularly now, if you only make yourself amiable and try to let him see that——”

Polly’s red-coated arm went up to the gas bracket just by her bed, and the room was suddenly made dark.

“Good-night,” she said, in a choked sort of way, and she turned over and lay with her face to the wall, staring with hot, angry eyes into the blackness, and wondering if all her future life was going to be as nasty and bitter and hard to bear as this particular moment.

Winnie’s last speech positively made her wince, as if some hard, sharp weapon had struck her tender flesh.

She hated the thought of the coming morrow, when she would have to meet Hubert. She told herself she never wanted to see him again. Who could say whether the same ignoble suggestion that Winnie had just made might not lie at the bottom of all his sympathetic kindness.

“Well!” she said passionately to herself—“well, if he is waiting for me to be nice to him he will have to wait a long time. I wish Winnie had not said this. I—I cannot understand what can have put such an idea into her head. Perhaps she was right about to-night, and I ought not to have let Hubert see me so hot and untidy. It was a mistake; but everything was so hurried, and I wanted the dinner to be nice for mother’s sake. Yes; I am sorry Winnie has said this, because now I shall be obliged to be as nasty as I can with Hubert—and—and——”

And poor little Polly could not find an easy ending to the train of thought.

Away across the room, in her little white-hung bed, Winifred gave a tiny sigh of content.

“Only a little while longer,” she said to herself, as she drifted into sleep, “and I shall have a home of my own, and be taken out of the horrid things here. Polly is certainly a little fool; but if she will cut off her nose to spite her face she has nobody to blame but herself!”