Greatheart Part 24

She gazed straight ahead when she was not looking at anything to which Dinah called her attention. Her eyes had the intense look of one who watches perpetually for something just out of sight.

Quiet but alert, he marked her att.i.tude, marked also the emaciation which was so painfully apparent in the strong sunshine and formed so piteous a contrast to the vivid youth of the girl beside her. Presently Dinah came out of her rhapsodies and observed his vigilance. She watched him covertly for a time while she still chatted on. And she noted that there were very weary lines about his eyes, lines of anxiety, lines of sleeplessness, that filled her warm heart with quick sympathy and a longing to help.

The road was one of wild beauty. It wound up a desolate mountain pa.s.s along which great black boulders were scattered haphazard like the mighty toys of a giant. The glittering snow lay all around them, making their nakedness the more apparent. And far, far above, the white crags shone with a dazzling purity in the sunlit air.

Below them the snow lay untrodden, exquisitely pure, piled here in great drifts, falling away there in wonderful curves and hollows, but always showing a surface perfect and undesecrated by any human touch. And ever the sleigh ran smoothly on over the white road till it seemed to Dinah as if they moved in a dream. She fell silent, charmed by the swift motion, and by the splendour around her.

"You are quite warm, I hope?" Scott said, after an interval.

She was wrapped in a fur cloak belonging to Isabel. She smiled an affirmative, but she saw him as through a veil. The mystery and the wonder of creation filled her soul.

"I feel," she said, "I feel as if we were being taken up into heaven."

"Oh, that we were!" said Isabel, speaking suddenly with a force that had in it something terrible. "Do you see those golden peaks, sweetheart?

That is where I would be. That is where the gates of Heaven open--where the lost are found."

Dinah's hand was clasped in hers under the fur rug, and she felt the thin fingers close with a convulsive hold.

Scott leaned forward. "Heaven is nearer to us than that, Isabel," he said gently.

She looked at him for a moment, but her eyes at once pa.s.sed beyond. "No, no, Stumpy! You never understand," she said restlessly. "I must reach the mountain-tops or die. I am tired--I am tired of my prison. And I stifle in the valley--I who have watched the sun rise and set from the very edge of the world. Why did they take me away? If I had only waited a little longer--a little longer--as he told me to wait!" Her voice suddenly vibrated with a craving that was pa.s.sionate. "He would have come with the next sunrise. I always knew that the dawn would bring him back to me.

But"--dull despair took the place of longing--"they took me away, and the sun has never shone since."

"Isabel!" Scott's voice was very grave and quiet. "Miss Bathurst will wonder what you mean. Don't forget her!"

Dinah pressed close to her friend's side. "Oh, but I do understand!" she said softly. "And, dear Mrs. Everard, I wish I could help you. But I think Mr. Studley must be right. It is easier to get to heaven than to climb those mountain-peaks. They are so very steep and far away."

"So is Heaven, child," said Isabel, with a sigh of great weariness.

As it were with reluctance, she again met the steady gaze of Scott's eyes, and gradually her mood seemed to change. Her brief animation dropped away from her; she became again pa.s.sive, inert, save that she still seemed to be watching.

Scott broke the silence, kindly and practically. "We ought to reach the _chalet_ at the head of the pa.s.s soon," he said. "You will be glad of some tea."

"Oh, are we going to stop for tea?" said Dinah.

"That's the idea," said Scott. "And then back by another way. We ought to get a good view of the sunset. I hope it won't be misty, but they say a change is coming."

"I hope it won't come yet," said Dinah fervently. "The last few days have been so perfect. And there is so little time left."

Scott smiled. "That is the worst of perfection," he said. "It never lasts."

Dinah's eyes were wistful. "It will go on being perfect here long after we have left," she said. "Isn't it dreadful to think of all the good things--all the beauty--one misses just because one isn't there?"

"It would be if there were nothing else to think of," said Scott. "But there is beauty everywhere--if we know how to look for it."

She looked at him uncertainly. "I never knew what it meant before I came here," she told him shyly. "There is no time for beautiful things in my life. It's very, very drab and ugly. And I am very discontented. I have never been anything else."

Her voice quivered a little as she made the confession. Scott's eyes were so kind, so full of friendly understanding. Isabel had dropped out of their intercourse as completely as though her presence had been withdrawn. She lay back against her cushions, but her eyes were still watching, watching incessantly.

"I think the very dullest life can be made beautiful," Scott said, after a moment. "Even the desert sand is gold when the sun shines on it. The trouble is,--" he laughed a little--"to get the sun to shine."

Dinah leaned forward eagerly, confidentially. "Yes?" she questioned.

He looked her suddenly straight in the eyes. "There is a great store of sunshine in you," he said. "One can't come near you without feeling it.

Isabel will tell you the same. Do you keep it only for the Alps? If so,--" he paused.

Dinah's face flushed suddenly under his look. "If so?" she asked, under her breath.

He smiled. "Well, it seems a pity, that's all," he said. "Rather a waste too when you come to think of it."

Dinah's eyes caught the reflection of his smile. "I shall remember that, Mr. Greatheart," she said.

"Forgive me for preaching!" said Scott.

She put out a hand to him quickly, spontaneously. "You don't preach--and it does me good," she said somewhat incoherently. "Please--always--say what you like to me!"

"At risk of hurting you?" said Scott. He held the small, impulsive hand a moment and let it go.

"You could never hurt me," Dinah answered. "You are far too kind."

"I think the kindness is on your side," he answered gravely. "Most people of my acquaintance would think me a bore--if nothing worse."

"Most people have never really met you, Stumpy," said Isabel unexpectedly. "Dinah is one of the privileged few, and I am glad she appreciates it."

"Good heavens!" said Scott, flushing a deep red. "Spare me, Isabel!"

Dinah broke into her gay, infectious laugh. "Please--please don't be upset about it! I'm glad I'm one of the few. I've felt you were a prince in disguise all along."

"Very much in disguise!" protested Scott. "Remove that, and there would be nothing left."

"Except a man," said Isabel, "You can't get away, Stumpy. You're caught."

A fleeting smile crossed her face like a gleam of light and was gone. She turned her look upon Dinah, and became silent again.

Scott, much disconcerted, hunted in every pocket for his cigarette-case.

"You don't mind my smoking, I hope?" he murmured.

"I like it," said Dinah. "Let me help you light up!"

She made a screen with her hands, and guarded the flame from the draught.

He thanked her courteously, recovering his composure with a smile that was not without self-ridicule, and in a moment they were talking again upon impersonal matters. But the episode, slight though it was, dwelt in Dinah's mind thereafter with an odd persistence. She felt as if Isabel had given her a flashlight glimpse of something which otherwise she would scarcely have realized. In that single fleeting moment of revelation she had seen that which no vision of knight in shining armour could have surpa.s.sed.

They reached the _chalet_ at the top of the pa.s.s, and descended for tea.

The windows looked right down the snow-clad valley up which they had come. The sun had begun to sink, and the greater part of it lay in shadow.

Far away, rising out of the shadows, all golden amid floating mists, was a mighty mountain crest, higher than all around. The sun-rays lighted up its wondrous peaks. The glory of it was unearthly, almost more than the eye could bear.