Greatheart, Ethel May Dell [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

id="id03516">Abruptly he released him and turned away. "You're a fool to tempt me," he said. "And a still greater fool to take her seriously. As I tell you, it's nothing but stage-fright. She had a touch of it yesterday. I'll come round presently and make it all right."

"You can only make it right by setting her free," Scott made answer. "There is no other course. Do you suppose I should have come to you in this way if there had been?"

Sir Eustace was moving to the door by which he had entered. He flung a backward look that was intensely evil over his shoulder at the puny figure of the man behind him.

"I can imagine you playing any damned trick under the sun to serve your own interests," he said, his lip curling in in an intolerable sneer. "But the deepest strategy fails occasionally. You haven't been quite subtle enough this time."

He was at the door as he uttered the last biting sentence, but so also was Scott. With a movement of incredible swiftness and impetuosity he flung himself forward. Their hands met upon the handle, and his remained in possession, for in sheer astonishment Eustace drew back.

They faced one another in the evening light, Scott pale to the lips, in his eyes an electric blaze that made them almost unbearably bright, Eustace, heavy-browed, lowering, the red glare of savagery gleaming like a smouldering flame, ready to leap forth in devastating fury to meet the fierce white heat that confronted him.

An awful silence hung between them—a silence of unutterable emotions, more poignant with passion than any strife or clash of weapons. And through it like a mocking under-current there ran the distant tinkle of the piano, the echoes of careless laughter beyond the closed door.

Then at last—it seemed with difficulty—Scott spoke, his voice very low, oddly jerky. "What do you mean by that? Tell me what you mean!"

Sir Eustace made an abrupt gesture,—the gesture of the swordsman on guard. He met the attack instantly and unwaveringly, but his look was wary. He did not seek to throw the lesser man from his path. As it were instinctively, though possibly for the first time in his life, he treated him as an equal.

"You know what I mean!" he made fierce rejoinder. "Even you can hardly pretend ignorance on that point."

"Even I!" Scott uttered a short, hard laugh that seemed to escape him against his will. "All the same, I will have an explanation," he said. "I prefer a straight charge, notwithstanding my damned subtlety. You will either explain or withdraw."

"As you like," Sir Eustace yielded the point, and again he acted instinctively, not realizing that he had no choice. "I mean that from the very beginning of things you have been influencing her against me, trying to win her from me. You never intended me to propose to her in the first place. You never imagined that I would do such a thing. You only thought of driving me off the ground and clearing it for yourself. I saw your game long ago. When you lost one trick, you tried for another. I knew—I knew all along. But the game is up now, and you've lost." A very bitter smile curved his mouth with the words. "There is your explanation," he said. "I hope you are satisfied."

"But I am not satisfied!" Quick as lightning came the riposte. Scott stood upright against the closed door. His eyes, unflickering, dazzlingly bright, were fixed upon his brother's face. "I am not satisfied," he repeated, and his words were as sternly direct as his look; he spoke as one compelled by some inner, driving force, "because what you have just said to me—this foul thing you believe of me—is utterly and absolutely without foundation. I have never tried—or dreamed of trying—to win her from you. I speak as before God. In this matter I have never been other than loyal either to you or to my own honour. If any other man insulted me in this fashion," his face worked a little, but he controlled it sharply, "I wouldn't have stooped to answer him. But you—I suppose I must allow you the—privilege of brotherhood. And so I ask you to believe—at least to make an effort to believe—that you have made a mistake."

His voice was absolutely quiet as he ended. The dignity of his utterance had in it even a touch of the sublime, and the elder man was aware of it, felt the force of it, was humbled by it. He stood a moment or two as one irresolute, halting at a difficult choice. Then, with an abrupt lift of the head as though his pride made fierce resistance, he gave ground.

"If I have wronged you, I apologize," he said with brevity.

Scott smiled faintly, wryly. "If—" he said.

"Very well, I withdraw the 'if.'" Sir Eustace spoke impatiently, not as one desiring reconciliation. "You laid yourself open to it by accepting the position of ambassador. I don't know how you could seriously imagine that I would treat with you in that capacity. If Dinah has anything to say to me, she must say it herself."

"She will do so," Scott spoke with steady assurance. "But before you see her, I think I ought to tell you that her reason for wishing to be set free is not stage-fright or any childish nonsense of that kind; but simply the plain fact that her heart is not in the compact. She has found out that she doesn't love you enough."

"She told you so?" demanded Sir Eustace.

Scott bent his head, for the first time averting his eyes from his brother's face. "Yes."

"And she wished you to tell me?" There was a metallic ring in Sir Eustace's voice; the red glare was gone from his eyes, they were cold and hard as a winter sky.

"Yes," Scott said again, still not looking at him.

"And why?" The words fell brief and imperious, compelling in their incisiveness.

Scott's eyes returned to his, almost in protest. "I told her you ought to know," he said.

"Then she would not have told me otherwise?"

"Possibly not."

There fell another silence. Sir Eustace looked hard and straight into the pale eyes, as though he would pierce to the soul behind. But though Scott met the look unwavering, his soul was beyond all scrutiny. There was something about him that baffled all search, something colossal that barred the way. For the second time Sir Eustace realized himself to be at a disadvantage; haughtily he passed the matter by.

"In that case there is nothing further to be said. You have fulfilled your somewhat rash undertaking, and that you have come out of the business with a whole skin is a bigger piece of luck than you deserved. If Dinah wishes this matter to go any further, she must come to me herself."

"Otherwise you will take no action?" Scott's voice had its old somewhat weary intonation. The animation seemed to have died out of him.

"Exactly." Sir Eustace answered him with equal deliberation. "So far as you are concerned the incident is now closed."

Scott took his hand from the door and moved slowly away. "I have put the whole case before you," he said. "I think you clearly understand that if you are going to try and use force, I am bound—as a friend—to take her part against you. She relies upon me for that, and—I shall not disappoint her. You see," a hint of compassion sounded in his voice, "she has always been afraid of you; and she knows that I am not."

Sir Eustace smiled cynically. "Oh, you have always been ready to rush in!" he said. "Doubtless your weakness is your strength."

Scott met the gibe with tightened lips. He made no attempt to reply to it. "The only thing left," he said quietly, "is for you to see her and hear what she has to say. She is waiting in the conservatory."

"She is waiting?" Eustace wheeled swiftly.

Scott was already half-way across the room. He strode forward, and intercepted him.

"You can go," he said curtly. "You have done your part. This business is mine, not yours."

Scott stood still. "I have promised to see her through," he said. "I must keep my promise."

Sir Eustace looked for a single instant as if he would strike him down; and then abruptly, inexplicably he gave way.

"Very well," he said. "Fetch her in!"

CHAPTER XVIII THE TRUTH

At Scott's quiet summons Dinah entered. What she had passed through during those minutes of waiting was written in her face. She looked deathly.

Sir Eustace did not move to meet her. He stood by the table, very upright, very stern, uncompromisingly silent.

Dinah gave him one quivering glance, and turned appealingly to Scott.

"Don't be nervous!" he said gently. "There is no need. I have told him your wish."

She was terrified, but the ordeal had to be faced. She summoned all her strength, and went forward.

"Oh, Eustace," she said piteously, "I am so dreadfully sorry."

He looked down at her, his face like a marble mask. "So," he said, "you want to throw me over!"

She clasped her hands very tightly before her. "Oh, I know it's hateful of me," she said.

He made a slight, disdainful gesture. "Did you make up your mind or did
Scott make it up for you?"

"No, no!" she cried in distress. "It was not his doing. I—I just told him, that was all."

"And you now desire him for a witness," suggested Sir Eustace cynically.

Dinah looked again towards Scott. He stood against the mantelpiece, as grimly upright as his brother and again oddly she was struck by the similarity between them. She could not have said wherein it lay, but she had never seen it more marked.

He spoke very quietly in answer to her look. "I have promised to stay for as long as you want me, but if you wish to be alone with Eustace for a few minutes, I will wait in the conservatory."

"Yes, let him do that!" Imperiously Eustace accepted the suggestion. "We shall not keep him long."

Dinah stood hesitating. Scott was looking at her very steadily and reassuringly. His eyes seemed to be telling her that she had nothing to fear. But he would not move without her word, and in the end reluctantly she gave in.

"Very well," she said, in a low voice. "If—if you will wait!"

"I will," Scott said.

He limped across the room to the open door, passed through, closed it softly behind him. And Dinah was left to face her monster alone.

She did not look at Sir Eustace in the first dreadful moments that followed Scott's exit. She was horribly afraid. There was to her something inexpressibly ruthless in his very silence. She longed yet dreaded to hear him speak.

He did not do so for many seconds, and she thought by his utter stillness that he must be listening to the wild throbbing of her heart.

Then at last, just as the tension of waiting was becoming unbearable and she was on the verge of piteous entreaty, he seated himself on the edge of the table and spoke.

"Well," he said, "we have got to get at the root of this trouble somehow.
You don't propose to throw me over without telling me why, I suppose?"

His voice was perfectly calm. She even fancied that he was faintly smiling as he uttered the words, but she could not look at him to see. She found it difficult enough to speak in answer.

"I know I am treating you very badly," she said, wringing her clasped hands in her agitation. "You—of course you can make me marry you. I've promised myself to you. You have the right. But if you will only—only let me go, I am sure it will be much better for you too. Because—because—I've found out—I've found out—that I don't love you."

It was the greatest effort she had ever made in her life. She wondered afterwards how she had ever brought herself to accomplish it. It was so hard—so hideously hard—to face him, this man who loved her so overwhelmingly, and tell him that he had failed to win her love in return. And at the eleventh hour—to treat him thus! If he had taken her by the throat and wrung her neck, she would have considered him justified and herself but righteously punished.

But he did nothing of a violent nature. He only sat there looking at her, and