Greatheart Part 93

"Don't let that insane humility of his be his ruin!" he urged. "He's a fool. I've always said so. But his foolishness is the sort that attacks only the great. Once let him know you care, and he'll be falling over himself to propose."

"Oh, don't!" Dinah begged, and her voice sounded chill and yet somehow piteous. "I couldn't--ever--marry him. I told him so--only the other day."

"What? He proposed, did he?" Sheer amazement sounded in Eustace's voice.

Dinah was not looking at him any longer. She sat rather huddled in her chair, as if a cold wind had caught her.

"Yes," she said in the same small, uneven voice. "He proposed. He didn't make love to me. In fact he--promised that he never would. But he thought--yes, that was it--he thought that presently I should be lonely, and he wanted me to know that he was willing to protect me."

"What a fool!" Eustace said. "And so you refused him! I don't wonder. I should have pitched something at him if I'd been you."

"Oh no! That wasn't why I refused. I had another reason." Dinah's head was bent low; he saw the hot colour she sought to hide. "I didn't know he cared," she whispered. "But even if--if I had known, I couldn't have said Yes. I never can say Yes now."

"Good heavens above!" he said. "Why not?"

"It's a reason I can't tell anyone," faltered Dinah.

"Nonsense!" he said, with a quick touch of his old imperiousness. "You can tell me."

She shook her head. "No. Not you. Not anyone."

"That is absurd," he said, with brief decision. "What is the reason? Out with it--quick, like a good child! If you could marry me, you can marry him."

"But I couldn't have married you," she protested, "if I'd known."

"It's something that's cropped up lately, is it?" He bent towards her, watching her keenly. "It can't be so very terrible."

"It is," she told him in distress.

He was silent a moment; then very suddenly he moved, put his arm around her, drew her close. "What is it, my elf? Tell me!" he whispered.

She hid her face against him with a little sob. It was odd, but at that moment she felt no fear of the man. He, whose fiery caresses had once appalled her, had by some means unknown possessed himself of her confidence so that she could not keep him at a distance. She did not even wish to do so.

After a few seconds, quiveringly she began to speak. "I don't know how to tell you. It's an awful thing to tell. You know, I--I've never been happy at home. My mother never liked me,--was often cruel to me." She shuddered suddenly and violently. "I never knew why--till that awful night--the last time I saw her. And then--and then she told me." She drew a little closer to him like a frightened child.

He held her against his breast. She was trembling all over. "Well?" he said gently.

Desperately she forced herself to continue. "I don't belong to--to my father--at all; only--only--to her."

"What?" he said.

She buried her shamed face a little deeper. "That was why--she married,"

she whispered.

"Your mother herself told you that?" Sir Eustace's voice was very low, but there was in it a danger-note that made her quail.

Someone was coming along the garden-path, but neither of them heard.

Dinah was crying with piteous, long-drawn sobs. The telling of that tragic secret had wrung her very soul.

"Oh, don't be angry! You won't be angry?" she pleaded brokenly.

His hand was on her head. "My child, I am not angry with you," he said.

"You were not to blame. There, dear! There! Don't cry! Isabel will be distressed if she finds out. We mustn't let her know of this."

"Or Scott either!" She lifted her face appealingly. "Eustace, please--please--you won't tell Scott? I--I couldn't bear him to know."

He looked into her beseeching eyes, and his own softened. "It may be he will have to know some day," he said. "But--not yet."

The halting steps drew nearer, uneven, yet somehow purposeful.

Abruptly Eustace became aware of them. He looked up sharply. "You had better go, dear," he whispered to the girl in his arms. "Isabel may be wanting you at any time. We must think of her first now. Run in quickly and dry your eyes before anyone sees! Come along!"

He rose, supporting her, turned her towards the window, and gently but urgently pushed her within.

She went swiftly, enough as he released her, went with her hands over her face and not a backward glance. And Eustace wheeled back with a movement that was almost fierce and met his brother as he set foot upon the verandah.

Scott's face was pale as death, and there was that in his eyes that could not be ignored. Eustace answered it on the instant, briefly, with a restraint that obviously cost him an effort. "It's all right, Dinah is a bit upset this evening. But she will be all right directly if we leave her alone."

Scott did not so much as pause. "Let me pa.s.s!" he said.

His voice was perfectly quiet, but the command of it was such that Eustace, taken unawares, gave ground as it were instinctively. But the next moment impulsively he caught Scott's arm.

"I say,--Stumpy!" An odd embarra.s.sment possessed him; he shook it off half-angrily. "You needn't go making mistakes--jumping to idiotic conclusions. I'm not cutting you out this time."

Scott looked at him. His light eyes held contempt. "Oh, I know that," he said, and there was in his slow voice a note of bitter humour that cut like a whip. "You are never in earnest. You were always the sort to make sport for yourself out of suffering, and then to toss the dregs of your amus.e.m.e.nt to those who are not--sportsmen."

Eustace was as white as he was himself. He held him in a grip of iron.

"What the--devil do you mean?" he said, his voice husky with the strong effort he made to control it.

The younger brother was absolutely controlled, but his eyes shone like a dazzling white flame. "Ask yourself that question!" he said, and his words, though low, had a burning quality, almost as if some force apart from the man himself inspired them. "You know the answer as well as I do.

You have studied the d.a.m.nable game so long, offered so many victims upon the altar of your accursed sport. There is nothing to prevent your going on with it. You will go on no doubt till you tire of the chase. And then your turn will come. You will find yourself alone among the ruins, and you will pay the price. You may repent then--but repentance sometimes comes too late."

He was gone with the words, gone as if an inner force compelled, shaking off the hand that had detained him, and pa.s.sing scatheless within.

He went up the stairs as calmly as if he had entered the house without interruption. Someone was sobbing piteously behind a closed door, but he did not turn in that direction. He moved straight to the door of Isabel's room, as if a voice had called him.

And on the threshold Biddy met him, her black eyes darkly mysterious, her wrinkled face drawn with awe rather than grief.

"Ah, Master Scott, and is it yourself?" she whispered. "I was coming to fetch ye--coming to tell ye. It's the call; she's had her last summons.

Faith, and I almost heard it meself. She'll be gone by morning, the blessed lamb. There'll be no holding her after this."

Scott pa.s.sed her by without a word. He went straight to his sister's bedside.

She was lying with her face turned up to the evening sky, but on the instant her eyes met his, and in them was that look of a great expectation which many term the Shadow of Death.

"Oh, Stumpy, is it you?" she said. Her breathing was quick and irregular, but it did not seem to hurt her. "I've had--such a wonderful--dream. Or could it have been--a vision?"

He bent and took her hand in his. His eyes were infinitely tender. All the pa.s.sion had been wiped out of his face.