Greatheart Part 69

"Oh, but I want a big wedding," protested Dinah. "It's going to be such fun."

He laughed, holding her pointed chin between his finger and thumb. "I believe that's all you care about, you little heartless witch. I don't count at all. You'd have enjoyed this week every bit as well if I hadn't been here."

She winced a little at his words, for somehow they went home. "There hasn't been much time for anything, has there?" she said. "But--but I've enjoyed the motor rides, and--and I ought to thank you for being so very good to me."

He kissed the quivering lips, and she slipped a shy arm round his neck with the feeling that she owed it to him. But she did not return his kisses, for she was afraid to feed the flame that already leapt so high.

"You've nothing to thank me for," he said presently, when she turned her face at last abashed into his shoulder. "I may be giving more than you at this stage, but it won't be so later. You shall have the opportunity of paying me back in full. How does that appeal to you, Daphne the demure?

Are you going to be a good little wife to me?"

"I'll try," she whispered.

"And give me all I ask--always?"

"I'll try," she whispered again more faintly, conscious of that terrifying sense of being so merged into his overwhelming personality that the very breath she drew seemed not her own.

He lifted her into his arms, holding her hard pressed against the throbbing of his heart. "You wisp of thistledown!" he said. "You feather!

How have you managed to set me on fire like this? I think of nothing but you--the fairy wonder of you--day and night. If you were to slip out of my reach now, I believe I should follow and kill you."

Dinah lay across his breast in palpitating submission to his will. She could hear his heart beating like a rising tempest, and the force of his pa.s.sion overcame her like a tornado. His kisses were like the flames of a fiery furnace. She felt stifled, shattered by his violence. But in the room beyond she still heard that steady voice reading aloud, and it kept her from panic. She knew that she had only to raise her own voice, and he would be with her,--Greatheart of the golden armour, strong and fearless in her defence.

Sir Eustace heard that quiet voice also, as one hears the warning of conscience. He slackened his hold upon her, with a quivering, half-shamed laugh.

"Only another fortnight," he said, "and I shall have you to myself--all day and all night too." He looked at her with sudden critical attention.

"You had better go to bed, child. You look like a little tired ghost."

She did not feel like a ghost, for she was burning from head to foot. But as she slipped from his arms the ground seemed to be rocking all around her. She stretched out her hands blindly, gasping, feeling for support.

He was up in a moment, holding her. "What is it? Aren't you well?"

She sank against him for she could not stand. He held her with a tenderness that was new to her.

"My darling, have I tired you out? What a thoughtless brute I am!"

It was the first time she had ever heard a word of self-reproach upon his lips; the first time, though she knew it not, that actual love inspired him, entering as it were through that breach in the wall of overbearing pride that girt him round.

She leaned against him with more confidence than she had ever before known, dizzy still, and conscious of a rush of tears behind her closed lids. For that sudden compunction of his hurt her oddly. She did not know how to meet it.

He bent over her. "Getting better, little sweetheart? Oh, don't cry! What happened? Did I hurt you--frighten you?"

He was stroking her hair soothingly, persuasively, his dark face so close to hers that when she opened her eyes they looked up straight into his.

But she saw nought to frighten her there, and after a moment she reached up and kissed him apologetically.

"I'm only silly--only silly," she murmured confusedly. "Good night--good night--Apollo!"

And with the words she stood up, summoning her strength, smiled upon him, and slipped free from his encircling arm.

He did not seek to detain her. She flitted from his presence like a fluttering white moth, and he was left alone. He stood quite motionless in the semi-darkness, breathing deeply, his clenched hands pressed against his sides.

That moment had been a revelation to him also. He was abruptly conscious of the spirit so dominating the body that the fierce, ungoverned heart of him drew back ashamed as a beast will shrink from the flare of a torch, and he felt strangely conquered, almost cowed, as though an angel with a flaming sword had suddenly intervened between him and his desire.

The madness of his pa.s.sion was yet beating in his veins, but this--this was another and a stronger element before which all else became contemptible. The soul of the man had sprung from sleep like an awaking giant. Half in wonder and half in awe, he watched the kindling of the Divine Spark that outshineth every earthly fire.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BROKEN HEART

The return home was to Dinah like a sudden plunge into icy depths after a brief sojourn in the tropics. The change of atmosphere was such that she seemed actually to feel it in her bones, and her whole being, physical and mental contracted in consequence. Her mother treated her with all her customary harshness, and Dinah, grown sensitive by reason of much petting, shrank almost with horror whenever she came in contact with the iron will that had subjugated her from babyhood.

Before the first week was over, she was counting the days to her deliverance; but of this fact she hinted nothing in her letters to her lover. These were carefully worded, demure little epistles that gave him not the smallest inkling of her state of mind. She was far too much afraid of him to betray that.

Had she been writing to Scott she could scarcely have repressed it. In one letter to Isabel indeed something of her yearning for the vanished sunshine leaked out; but very strangely Isabel did not respond to the pathetic little confidence, and Dinah did not venture to repeat it.

Perhaps Isabel was shocked.

The last week came, and with it the arrival of wedding-presents from her father and friends that lifted Dinah out of her depression and even softened her mother into occasional good-humour. Preparations for the wedding began in earnest. Billy, released somewhat before the holidays for the occasion, returned home, and everything took a more cheerful aspect.

Dinah could not feel that her mother's att.i.tude towards herself had materially altered. It was sullen and threatening at times, almost as if she resented her daughter's good fortune, and she lived in continual dread of an outbreak of the cruel temper that had so embittered her home life. But Billy's presence made a difference even to that. His influence was entirely wholesome, and he feared no one.

"Why don't you stand up to her?" he said to his sister on one occasion when he found her weeping after an overwhelming brow-beating over some failure in the kitchen. "She'd think something of you then."

Dinah had no answer. She could not convince him that her spirit had been broken for such encounters long ago. Billy had never been tied up to a bed-post and whipped till limp with exhaustion, but such treatment had been her portion more times than she could number.

But every hour brought her deliverance nearer, and so far she had managed to avoid physical violence though the dread of it always menaced her.

"Why does she hate me so?" Over and over again she asked herself the question, but she never found any answer thereto; and she was fain to believe her father's easy-going verdict: "There's no accounting for your mother's tantrums; they've got to be visited on somebody."

She wondered what would happen when she was no longer at hand to act as scapegoat, and yet it seemed to her that her mother longed to be rid of her.

"I'll get things into good order when you're out of the way," she said to her on the last evening but one before the wedding-day, the evening on which the Studleys were to arrive at the Court. "You're just a born muddler, and you'll never be anything else, Lady Studley or no Lady Studley. Get along upstairs and dress yourself for your precious dinner-party, or your father will be ready first! Oh, it'll be a good thing when it's all over and done with, but if you think you'll ever get treated as a grand lady here, you're very much mistaken. Home broth is all you'll ever get from me, so you needn't expect anything different.

If you don't like it, you can stop away."

Dinah escaped from the rating tongue as swiftly as she dared. She knew that her mother had been asked to dine at the Court also--for the first time in her life--and had tersely refused. She wasn't going to be condescended to by anybody, she had told her husband in Dinah's hearing, and he had merely shrugged his shoulders and advised her to please herself.

Billy had not been asked, somewhat to his disgust; but he looked forward to seeing Scott again in the morning and ordered Dinah to ask him to lunch with them.

So finally Dinah and her father set forth alone in one of the motors from the Court to attend the gathering of County magnates that the de Vignes had summoned in honour of Sir Eustace Studley and his chosen bride.

She wore one of her trousseau gowns for the occasion, a pale green gossamer-like garment that made her look more nymph-like than ever. Her mother had surveyed it with narrowed eyes and a bitter sneer.

"Ok yes, you'll pa.s.s for one of the quality," she had said. "No one would take you for a child of mine any way."

"That's no fault of the child's, Lydia," her father had rejoined good-humouredly, and in the car he had taken her little cold hand into his and asked her kindly enough if she were happy.

She answered him tremulously in the affirmative, the dread of her mother still so strong upon her that she could think of nothing but the relief of escape. And then before she had time to prepare herself in any way for the sudden transition she found herself back in that tropical, brilliant atmosphere in which thenceforth she was to move and have her being.