Greatheart Part 66

"I don't know," Scott said. He seated himself by Isabel's side and leaned back against the cushions, closing his eyes.

"You are tired," she said gently.

"Oh, only a little, Isabel!" He spoke without moving, making no effort to veil his weariness from her.

"What is it, dear?" she said.

"I am very anxious about Dinah." He spoke the words deliberately; his face remained absolutely still and expressionless.

"Anxious, Stumpy!" Isabel echoed the word quickly, almost as though it gave her relief to speak. "Oh, so am I--terribly anxious. She is so young, so utterly unprepared for marriage. I believe she is frightened to death when she lets herself stop to think."

"I blame myself," Scott said heavily.

"My dear, why?" Isabel's hand sought and held his. "How could you be to blame?"

"I forced it on," he said. "I--in a way--compelled Eustace to propose. He wasn't serious till then. I made him serious."

"Oh, Stumpy, you!" Incredulity and reproach mingled in Isabel's tone.

She would have withdrawn her hand, but his fingers closed upon it. "I made a mistake," he said, with dreary conviction, "a great mistake, though G.o.d knows I meant well; and now it is out of my power to set it right. I thought her heart was involved. I know now it was not. It's hard on him too in a way, because he is very much in earnest now, whatever he was before. I was a fool--I was a fool--not to let things take their course. She would have suffered, but it would have been soon over.

Whereas now--" He stopped himself abruptly. "It's no good talking.

There's nothing to be done. He may--after marriage--break her in to loving him, but if he does--if he does--" his hand clenched with sudden force upon Isabel's--"it won't be Dinah any more," he said. "It'll be--another woman; one who is satisfied with--a very little."

His hand relaxed as suddenly as it had closed. He lay still with a face like marble.

Isabel sat motionless by his side for several seconds. She was gazing straight before her with eyes that seemed to read the future.

"How did you compel him to propose?" she asked presently.

He shrugged his narrow shoulders slightly. "I can do these things, Isabel, if I try. But I wish I'd killed myself now before I interfered.

As I tell you, I was a fool--a fool."

He ceased to speak and sat in the silence of a great despair.

Isabel said nought to comfort him. Her tragic eyes still seemed to be gazing into the future.

After many minutes Scott turned his head and looked at her. "Isabel, I wish you would try to keep her with you as much as possible. Tell Eustace what you have just told me! There is certainly no time to lose if she is really to be married in three weeks from now!"

"I suppose he would never consent to put it off," Isabel said slowly.

"He certainly would not." Scott rose with a restless movement that said more than words. "He is on fire for her. Can't you see it? There is nothing to be done unless she herself wishes to be released. And I don't think that is very likely to happen."

"He would never give her up," Isabel said with conviction.

"If she desired it, he would," Scott's reply held an even more absolute finality.

Isabel looked at him for a moment; then: "Yes, but the poor little thing would never dare," she said. "Besides--besides--there is the glamour of it all."

"Yes, there is the glamour." Scott spoke with a kind of grim compa.s.sion.

"The glamour may carry her through. If so, then--possibly--it may soften life for her afterwards. It may even turn into romance. Who knows?

But--in any case--there will probably be--compensations."

"Ah!" Isabel said. A wonderful light shone for a moment in her eyes and died; she turned her face aside. "Compensations don't come to everyone, Stumpy," she said. "What if the glamour fades and they don't come to take its place?"

Scott was standing before the fire, his eyes fixed upon its red depths.

His shoulders were still bent, as though they bore a burden well-nigh overwhelming. An odd little spasm went over his face at her words.

"Then--G.o.d help my Dinah!" he said almost under his breath.

In the silence that followed the words, Isabel rose impulsively, came to him, and slipped her hand through his arm.

She neither looked at him nor spoke, and in silence the matter pa.s.sed.

CHAPTER X

THE HOURS OF DARKNESS

Dinah could not sleep that night. For the first time in all her healthy young life she lay awake with grim care for a bed-fellow. When in trouble she had always wept herself to sleep before, but to-night she did not weep. She lay wide-eyed, feeling hot and cold by turns as the memory of her lover's devouring pa.s.sion and Biddy's sinister words alternated in her brain. What was the warning that Biddy had meant to convey? And how--oh, how--would she ever face the morrow and its fierce, prolonged courtship, from the bare thought of which every fibre of her being shrank in shamed dismay?

"There won't be any of me left by night," she told herself, as she sought to cool her burning face against the pillow. "Oh, I wish he didn't love me quite so terribly."

It was no good attempting to bridle wish or fears. They were far too insistent. She was immured in the very dungeons of Doubting Castle, and no star shone in her darkness.

Towards morning her restlessness became unendurable. She arose and tremblingly paced the room, sick with a nameless apprehension that seemed to deprive her alike of the strength to walk or to be still.

Her whole body was in a fever as though it had been scourged with thongs; in fact, she still seemed to feel the scourge, goading her on.

To and fro, to and fro, she wandered, scarcely knowing what she wanted, only urged by that unbearable restlessness that gave her no respite. Of the future ahead of her she did not definitely think. Her marriage still seemed too intangible a matter for serious contemplation. She still in her child's heart believed that marriage would make a difference. He would not make such ardent love to her when they were married. They would both have so many other things to think about. It was the present that so weighed upon her, her lover's almost appalling intensity of worship and her own utter inadequacy and futility.

Again, as often before, the question arose within her, How would Rose have met the situation? Would she have been dismayed? Would she have shrunk from those fiery kisses? Or could she--could she possibly--have remained calm and complacent and dignified in the midst of those surging tempests of love? But yet again she failed completely to picture Rose so mastered, so possessed, by any man; Rose the queen whom all men worshipped with reverence from afar. She wondered again how Sir Eustace had managed to elude the subtle charm she cast upon all about her. He had actually declared that her perfection bored him. It was evident that she left him cold. Dinah marvelled at the fact, so certain was she that had he humbled himself to ask for Rose's favour it would have been instantly and graciously accorded to him.

It would have saved a lot of trouble if he had fallen in love with Rose, she reflected; and then the old thrill of triumph went through her, temporarily buoying her up. She had been preferred to Rose. She had beaten Rose on her own ground, she the little, insignificant adjunct of the de Vigne party! She was glad--oh, she was very glad!--that Rose was to have so close a view of her final conquest.

She began to take comfort in the thought of her approaching wedding and all its attendant glories, picturing every detail with girlish zest. To be the queen of such a brilliant ceremony as that! To be received into the County as one entering a new world! To belong to that Society from which her mother had been excluded! To be in short--her ladyship.

A new excitement began to urge Dinah. She picked up a towel and draped it about her head and shoulders like a bridal veil. Her mother would have rated her for such vanity, but for the moment vanity was her only comfort, and the thought of her mother did not trouble her. This was how she would look on her wedding-day. There would be a wreath of orange-blossoms of course; Isabel would see to that. And--yes, Isabel had said that her bouquet should be composed of lilies-of-the-valley. She even began to wish it were her wedding morning.

The glamour spread like a rosy dawning; she forgot the clouds that loomed immediately ahead. Standing there in her night attire, poised like a brown wood-nymph on the edge of a pool, she asked herself for the first time if it were possible that she could have any pretensions to beauty.

It was not in the least likely, of course. Her mother had always railed at her for the plainness of her looks. Did Eustace--did Scott--think her plain? She wondered. She wondered.

A slight sound, the opening of a window, in the room next to hers, made her start. That was Isabel's room. What was happening? It was three o'clock in the morning. Could Isabel be ill?

Very softly she opened her own window and leaned forth. It was one of those warm spring nights that come in the midst of March gales. There was a scent of violets on the air. She thought again for a fleeting second of Scott and their walk through fairyland that morning. And then she heard a voice, pitched very low but throbbing with an eagerness unutterable, and at once her thoughts were centred upon Isabel.