Greatheart Part 71

"Why, Dinah dear!" she said.

Her dark eyes smiled up at her in welcome, but it was a smile that cut her to the heart with its aloofness, its total lack of gladness.

Dinah stooped to kiss her. "Are you so tired, dearest? Perhaps I had better go away."

But Isabel put up a trembling, skeleton hand and detained her. "No, dear, no! I am not so tired as that. I can't talk much; but I can listen. Sit down and tell me about yourself!"

Dinah sat down, but she could think of nothing but the piteous, lined face upon the pillow and the hopeless suffering of the eyes that looked forth from it.

She held Isabel's hand very tightly, though its terrible emaciation shocked her anew, and so for a time they were silent while Isabel seemed to drift back again into the limitless s.p.a.ces out of which Dinah's coming had for a moment called her.

It was Biddy who broke the silence at last, laying a gnarled and quivering hand upon Dinah as she sat.

"Ye'd better come again in the morning, mavourneen," she said. "She's too far off to-night to heed ye."

Dinah started. Her eyes were full of tears as she bent and kissed the poor, wasted fingers she held, realizing with poignant certainty as she did it the truth of the old woman's statement. Isabel was too far off to heed.

Then, as she rose to go, a strange thing happened. The tender strains of a waltz, _Simple Aveu_, floated softly in broken s.n.a.t.c.hes in on the west wind, and again--as one who hears a voice that calls--Isabel came back.

She raised herself suddenly. Her face was alight, transfigured--the face of a woman on the threshold of Love's sanctuary.

"Oh, my dearest!" she said, and her voice thrilled as never Dinah had heard it thrill before. "How I have waited for this! How I have waited!"

She stretched out her arms in one second of rapture unutterable; and then almost in the same moment they fell. The youth went out of her, she crumpled like a withered flower.

"Biddy!" she said. "Oh, Biddy, tell them to stop! I can't bear it! I can't bear it!"

Dinah went to the window and closed it, shutting out the haunting strains. That waltz meant something to her also, something with which for the moment she felt she could not cope.

Turning, she saw that Isabel was clinging convulsively to the old nurse, and she was crying, crying, crying, as one who has lost all hope.

"But it's too late to do her any good," mourned Biddy over the bowed head. "It's the tears of a broken heart."

CHAPTER XIV

THE WRATH OF THE G.o.dS

The paroxysm did not last long, and in that fact most poignantly did Dinah realize the waning strength.

Dumbly she stood and watched Biddy lay the inanimate figure back upon the pillows. Isabel had sunk into a state of exhaustion that was almost torpor.

"She'll sleep now, dear lamb," said Biddy, and tenderly covered her over as though she had been a child.

She turned round to Dinah, looking at her with shrewd darting eyes. "Ye'd better be getting along to your lover, Miss Dinah," she said. "He'll be wanting ye to dance with him."

But Dinah stood her ground with a little shiver. The bare thought of dancing at that moment made her feel physically sick. "Biddy! Biddy!" she whispered, "what has happened to make her--like this?"

"And ye may well ask!" said Biddy darkly. "But it's not for me to tell ye. Ye'd best run along, Miss Dinah dear, and be happy while ye can."

"But I'm not happy!" broke from Dinah. "How can I be? Biddy, what has happened? You must tell me if you can. She wasn't like this a fortnight ago. She has never been--quite like this--before."

Biddy pursed her lips. "Sure, we none of us travel the same road twice, Miss Dinah," she said.

But Dinah would not be satisfied with so vague an axiom.

"Something has happened," she said. "Come into the next room and tell me all about it! Please, Biddy!"

Biddy glanced at the bed. "She'll not hear ye in here, Miss Dinah," she said. "And what for should I be telling ye at all? Ye'll be Sir Eustace's bride in less than forty-eight hours from now, so it's maybe better ye shouldn't know."

"I must know," Dinah said, and with the words a great wave of resolution went through her, uplifting her, inspiring her. "I've got to know," she said. "Whatever happens, I've got to know."

Biddy left the bedside and came close to her. "If ye insist, Miss Dinah--" she said.

"I do--I do insist." Never in her life before had Dinah spoken with such authority, but a force within was urging her--a force irresistible; she spoke as one compelled.

Biddy came closer still. "Ye'll not tell Master Scott--nor any of 'em--if I tell ye?" she whispered.

"No, no; of course--no!" Dinah's voice came breathlessly; she had not the power to draw back.

"Ye promise, Miss Dinah?" Biddy could be insistent too; her eyes burned like live coals.

"I promise, yes." Dinah held out an impulsive hand. "You can trust me,"

she said.

Biddy's fingers closed claw-like upon it. "Whist now, Miss Dinah!" she said. "If Sir Eustace was to hear me, sure, he'd wring the neck on me like as if I was an old fowl. But ye've asked me what's happened, mavourneen, and sure, I'll tell ye. For it's the pretty young lady that ye are and a cruel shame that ye should ever belong to the likes of him.

It's his doing, Miss Dinah, every bit of it, and it's the truth I'm speaking, as the Almighty Himself could tell ye if He'd a mind to. The poor lamb was fading away aisy like, but he came along and broke her heart. It was them letters, Miss Dinah. He took 'em. And he burned 'em, my dear, he burned 'em, and when ye were gone she missed 'em, and then he told her what he'd done, told her brutal-like that it was time she'd done with such litter. He said it was all d.a.m.n' nonsense that she was wasting her life over 'em and over the dead. Oh, it was wicked, it was cruel. And she--poor innocent--she locked herself up when he'd gone and cried and cried and cried till the poor heart of her was broke entirely. She said she'd lost touch with her darling husband and he'd never come back to her again."

"Biddy!" Horror undisguised sounded in Dinah's low voice. "He never did such a thing as that!"

"He did that!" A queer species of triumph was apparent in Biddy's rejoinder; malice twinkled for a second in her eyes. "I've told ye! I've told ye!" she said. And then, with sharp anxiety. "But ye'll not tell anyone as ye know, Miss Dinah. Ye promised, now didn't ye? Miss Isabel wouldn't that any should know--not even Master Scott. He was away when it happened, dining down at the Vicarage he was. And Miss Isabel she says to me, 'For the life of ye, don't tell Master Scott! He'd be that angry,'

she says, 'and Sir Eustace would murder him entirely if it came to a quarrel.' She was that insistent, Miss Dinah, and I knew there was truth in what she said. Master Scott has the heart of a lion. He never knew the meaning of fear from his babyhood. And Sir Eustace is a monster of destruction when once his blood's up. And he minds what Master Scott says more than anyone. So I promised, Miss Dinah dear, the same as you have.

And so he doesn't know to this day. Sir Eustace, ye see, has been in a touchy mood all along, ever since ye left. Like gunpowder he's been, and Master Scott has had a difficult enough time with him; and Miss Isabel has kept it from him so that he thinks it was just your going again that made her fret so. There, now ye know all, Miss Dinah dear, and don't ye for the love of heaven tell a soul what I've told ye! Miss Isabel would never forgive me if she came to know. Ah, the saints preserve us, what's that?"

A brisk tap at the door had made her jump with violence. She went to parley with a guilty air.

In a moment or two she shut the door and came back. "It's that flighty young French hussy, Miss Dinah; her they call Yvonne. She says Sir Eustace is waiting for ye downstairs."

A great revulsion of feeling went through Dinah. It shook her like an overwhelming tempest and pa.s.sed, leaving her deadly cold. She turned white to the lips.

"I can't go to him, Biddy," she said. "I can't dance to-night. Yvonne must tell him."

Biddy gave her a searching look. "Ye won't let him find out, Miss Dinah?"

she urged. "Won't he guess now if ye stay up here?"

The earnest entreaty of the old bright eyes moved her. She turned to the door. "Oh, very well. I'll go myself and tell him."