Greatheart by Ethel May Dell (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📕

when they descended. He came forward to meet his fiancée, and her heart throbbed fast and hard at the sight of him. But his manner was so strictly casual and impersonal that her agitation speedily passed, and by the time they were seated side by side at dinner—for the last time in their lives, as the Colonel jocosely remarked—she could not feel that she had ever been anything nearer to him than a passing acquaintance.

She was shy and very quiet. The hubbub of voices, the brilliance of it all, overwhelmed her. If Scott had been on her other side, she would have been much happier, but he was far away making courteous conversation for the benefit of a deaf old lady whom no one else made the smallest effort to entertain.

Suddenly Sir Eustace disengaged himself from the general talk and turned to her. "Dinah!" he said.

Her heart leapt again. She glanced at him and caught the gleam of the hunter in those rapier-bright eyes of his.

He leaned slightly towards her, his smile like a shining cloak, hiding his soul. "Daphne," he said, and his voice came to her subtle, caressing, commanding, through the gay tumult all about them, "there is going to be dancing presently. Did you hear?"

"Yes," she whispered with lowered eyes.

"You will dance with only one to-night," he said. "That is understood, is it?"

"Yes," she whispered again.

"Good!" he said. And then imperiously, "Why don't you drink some wine?"

She made a slight, startled movement. "I never do, I don't like it."

"You need it," he said, and made a curt sign to one of the servants.

Wine was poured into her glass, and she drank submissively. The discipline of the past two weeks had made her wholly docile. And the wine warmed and cheered her in a fashion that made her think that perhaps he was right and she had needed it.

When the dinner came to an end she was feeling far less scared and strange. Guests were beginning to assemble for the dance, and as they passed out people whom she knew by sight but to whom she had never spoken came up and talked with her as though they were old friends. Several men asked her to dance, but she steadily refused them all. Her turn would come later.

"I am going up to see Mrs. Everard," was her excuse. "She is expecting me."

And then Scott came, and she turned to him with eager welcome. "Oh, please, will you take me to see Isabel?"

He gave her a straight, intent look, and led her out of the throng.

His hand rested upon her arm as they mounted the stairs and she thought he moved with deliberate slowness. At the top he spoke.

"Dinah, before you see her I ought to prepare you for a change. She has been losing ground lately. She is not—what she was."

Dinah stopped short. "Oh, Scott!" She said in breathless dismay.

His hand pressed upon her, but it seemed to be imparting strength rather than seeking it. "I think I told you that day at the Dower House that she was nearing the end of her journey. I don't want to sadden you. You mustn't be sad. But you couldn't see her without knowing. It won't be quite yet; but it will be—soon."

He spoke with the utmost quietness; his face never varied. His eyes with their steady comradeship looked straight into hers, stilling her distress.

"She is so tired," he said gently. "I don't think it ought to grieve us that her rest is drawing near at last. She has so longed for it, poor girl."

"Oh, Scott!" Dinah said again, but she said it this time without consternation. His steadfast strength had given her confidence.

"Shall we go to her?" he said. "At least, I think it would be better if you went alone. She is quite determined that nothing shall interfere with your coming happiness, so you mustn't let her think you shocked or grieved. I thought it best to prepare you, that's all."

He led her gravely along the passage, and presently stopped outside a closed door. He knocked three times as of old, and Dinah stood waiting as one on the threshold of a holy place.

The door, was opened by Biddy, and he pressed her forward. "Don't stay long!" he said. "She is very tired to-night, and Eustace will be wanting you."

She squeezed his hand in answer and passed within.

Biddy's wrinkled brown face smiled a brief welcome under its snowy cap. She motioned her to approach. "Ye'll not stay long, Miss Dinah dear," she whispered. "The poor lamb's very tired to-night."

Dinah went forward.

The window was wide open, and the rush of the west wind filled the room. Isabel was lying in bed with her face to the night, wide-eyed, intent, still as death.

Noiselessly Dinah drew near. There was something in the atmosphere—a ghostly, hovering presence—that awed her. In the sound of that racing wind she seemed to hear the beat of mighty wings.

She uttered no word, she was almost afraid to speak. But when she reached the bed, when she bent and looked into Isabel's face, she caught her breath in a gasping cry. For she was shocked—shocked unutterably—by what she saw. Shrivelled as the face of one who had come through fiery tortures, ashen-grey, with eyes in which the anguish of the burnt-out flame still lingered, eyes that were dead to hope, eyes that were open only to the darkness, such was the face upon which she looked.

Biddy was by her side in a moment, speaking in a rapid whisper. "Arrah thin, Miss Dinah darlint, don't ye be scared at all! She'll speak to ye in a minute, sure. It's only that she's tired to-night. She'll be more herself like in the morning."

Dinah hung over the still figure. Biddy's whispering was as the buzzing of a fly. She heard it with the outer sense alone.

"Isabel!" she said; and again with a passionate earnestness,
"Isabel—darling—my darling—what has happened to you?"

At the sound of that pleading voice Isabel moved, seeming as it were to return slowly from afar.

"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 spaces 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 snatches 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 GODS

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 damn' 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