Greatheart Part 77

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 rea.s.suringly. 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, pa.s.sed 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 though she could not bring herself to meet his look she knew that it held no anger.

He did not speak, and she went on with a species of desperate pleading, because silence was so intolerable. "It wouldn't be right of me to--to marry you and not tell you, would it? It wouldn't be fair. It would be like marrying you under false pretences. I only wish--oh, I do wish--that I had known sooner, when you first asked me. I might have known. I ought to have known! But--but--somehow--" she began to falter badly and finally concluded in a piteous whisper--"I didn't."

"How did you find out?" he said. His tone was still perfectly quiet; but he spoke judicially, as one who meant to have an answer.

But Dinah had no answer for him. It was the very question to which there could be no reply. Her fingers interlaced and strained against each other. She stood mute.

"I think you can tell me that," Eustace said.

She made a small but vehement gesture of negation. "I can't!" she said.

"It's--it's--private."

"You mean you won't?" he questioned.

She nodded silently, too distressed for speech.

He got to his feet with finality. "That ends the case then," he said.

"The appeal is dismissed. You can give me no adequate reason for releasing you. Therefore, I keep you to your engagement."

Dinah uttered a gasp. She had not expected this. For the first time she met his look fully, met the blue, dominant eyes, the faint, supercilious smile. And dismay struck through and through her as she realized that he had made her captive again with scarcely a struggle.

"Oh, but you can't--you can't!" she said.

He raised his brows. "We shall see," he said. "Mean-time--" He paused, looking at her, and suddenly the old hot glitter flashed forth, dazzling her, hypnotizing her; he uttered a low laugh and took her in his arms.

"Daphne, you will-o'-the-wisp, you witch, how dare you?"

She made no outcry or resistance, realizing in a single stunning second the mastery that would not be denied; only ere his lips reached her, she sank down in his hold, hiding her face and praying him brokenly, imploringly, to let her go.

"Oh, please--oh, please--if you love me--do be kind--do be generous! I can't go on--indeed--indeed! Oh, Eustace,--Eustace--do forgive me--and let me go!"

"I will not!" he said. "I will not!"

She heard the rising pa.s.sion in his voice, and her heart died within her; she sank lower, till but for his upholding arms she would have been kneeling at his feet. And then quite suddenly her strength went from her; she hung powerless, almost fainting in his grasp.

She scarcely knew what happened next, save that the fierceness went out of his hold like the pa.s.sing of an evil dream. He lifted and held her while the darkness surged around.... And then presently she heard his voice, very low, amazingly tender, speaking into her ear. "Dinah! Dinah!

What has come to you? Don't you know that I love you? Didn't I tell you so only last night?"

She leaned against him palpitating, unstrung, piteously distressed.

"That's what makes it--so dreadful," she whispered. "I wish I were dead!

Oh, I do wish I were dead!"

"Nonsense!" he said. "Nonsense!" He put his hand upon her head, pressing it against his breast. "Little sweetheart, what has happened to you? Tell me what is the matter!"

That was the hardest to face of all, that he should subdue himself, restrain his pa.s.sion to pour out to her that which was infinitely greater than pa.s.sion; she made a little sound that seemed to come straight from her heart.

"Oh, I can't tell you!" she sobbed into his shoulder. "I can't think how I ever made such a terrible mistake. But if only--oh, if only--you could marry Rose instead! It would be so very much better for everybody."

"Marry Rose!" he said. "What on earth made you think of that at this stage?"

"I always thought you would--in Switzerland," she explained rather incoherently. "I--never really thought--I could cut her out."

"Is that what you did it for?" An odd note sounded in Sir Eustace's voice, as though some irony of circ.u.mstance had forced his sense of humour.

"Just at first," whispered Dinah. "Oh, don't be angry! Please don't be angry! You--you weren't in earnest either just at first."

He considered the matter in silence for a few moments. Then half-quizzically, "I don't see that that is any reason for throwing me over now," he said. "If you don't love me to-day, you will to-morrow."

She shook her head.

"Quite sure?" he said.

"Quite," she answered faintly.

His hand was still upon her head, and it remained there. He held her closely pressed to him.

For a s.p.a.ce again he was silent, his dark face bent over her, his lips actually touching her hair. Of what was pa.s.sing in his mind she had no notion, and she dared not lift her head to look. She dreaded each moment a return of that tornado-like pa.s.sion that had so often appalled her.