Greatheart, Ethel May Dell [good books to read for young adults .txt] 📗

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 passion 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 attitude 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 pass 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.
She could not feel that she would ever shine there. There were so many bright lights, and though her father was instantly and completely at home she felt dazzled and strange, till all-unexpectedly someone came to her through the great lamp-lit hall, haltingly yet with purpose, and held her hand and asked her how she was.
The quiet grasp steadied her, and in a moment she was radiantly happy, all her troubles and anxieties swept from her path. "Oh, Scott!" she said, and her eyes beamed upon him the greeting her lips somehow refused to utter.
He was laughing a little; his look was quizzical. "I have been on the look-out for you," he told her. "It's the best man's privilege, isn't it? Won't you introduce me to your father?"
She did so, and then Rose glided forward, exquisite in maize satin and pearls, and smilingly detached her from the two men and led her upstairs.
"We are to have a little informal dance presently," she said. "Did I tell you in my note? No? Oh, well, no doubt it will be a pleasant little surprise for you. How very charming you are looking, my dear! I didn't know you had it in you. Did you choose that pretty frock yourself?"
Dinah, with something of her mother's bluntness of speech, explained that the creation in question had been Isabel's choice, and Rose smiled as one who fully understood the situation.
"She has been very good to you, poor soul, has she not?" she said. "She is not coming down to-night. The journey has fatigued her terribly. That funny, old-fashioned nurse of hers has asked very particularly that she may not be disturbed, except to see you for a few minutes later."
"Is she worse?" asked Dinah, startled.
Whereat Rose shook her dainty head. "Has she ever been better? No, poor thing, I am afraid her days are numbered, nor could one in kindness wish it otherwise. Still, I mustn't sadden you, dear. You have got to look your very best to-night, or Sir Eustace will be disappointed. There are quite a lot of pretty girls coming, and you know what he is." Rose uttered a little self-conscious laugh. "Put on a tinge of colour, dear!" she said, as Dinah stood before the mirror in her room. "You look such a little brown thing; just a faint glow on your cheeks would be such an improvement."
"No, thank you," said Dinah, and flushed suddenly and hotly at the thought of what she had once endured at her mother's hands for daring to pencil the shadows under her eyes. It had been no more than a girlish trick--an experiment to pass an idle moment. But it had been treated as an offence of immeasurable enormity, and she winced still at the memory of all that that moment's vanity had entailed.
Rose looked at her appraisingly. "No, perhaps you don't need it after all, not anyhow when you blush like that. You have quite a pretty blush, Dinah, and you are wise to make the most of it. Are you ready, dear? Then we will go down."
She rustled forth with Dinah beside her, shedding a soft fragrance of some Indian scent as she moved that somehow filled Dinah with indignation, like a resentful butterfly in search of more wholesome delights.
Eustace was in the hall when they descended. He came forward to meet his _fiancee_, 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