Greatheart - Ethel May Dell (the lemonade war series TXT) 📗

life turn in her veins and steadily flow again. Like a child, she clung to him, and after a while, with an impulse sublimely natural, she lifted her lips to his.
He pressed his lips upon them closely, lingeringly. "Better now, sweetheart?" he whispered.
And she, clinging to him, found voice to answer, "Nothing matters now you have come."
The consciousness of his protecting care filled her with a rapture almost too great to be borne. She throbbed in his arms, pressing closer, ever closer. And the grim Shadow of Death receded from the threshold. She knew that she was safe.
It was soon after this that the thought of Isabel came to her, and tremulously she begged him to go to her. But he would not suffer her out of his arms.
"The others can see to her," he said. "You are my care."
She thrilled at the words, but she would not be satisfied. "She has been so good to me," she told him pleadingly "See, I am wearing her coat."
"But for her you would never have come to this," he made brief reply, and she thought his words were stern.
Then, as she would not be pacified, he lifted her like a child and held her so that she could look down upon Isabel, lying inert and senseless against the doctor's knee.
"Oh, is she dead?" whispered Dinah, awe-struck.
"I don't know," he made answer, and by the tightening of his arms she knew that her safety meant more to him at the moment than that of Isabel or anyone else in the world.
But in a second or two she heard Isabel moan, and was reassured.
"She is coming round," the doctor said. "She is not so far gone as the other lassie."
Dinah wondered hazily what he could mean, wondered if by any chance he suspected that long and dreary wandering of her spirit up and down the mountain-side. She nestled her head down against Eustace's shoulder with a feeling of unutterable thankfulness that she had returned in time.
Her impressions after that were of a very dim and shadowy description. She supposed the brandy had made her sleepy. Very soon she drifted off into a state of semi-consciousness in which she realized nothing but the strong holding of his arms. She even vaguely wondered after a time whether this also were not a dream, for other fantasies began to crowd about her. She rocked on a sea of strange happenings on which she found it impossible to focus her mind. It seemed to have broken adrift as it were--a rudderless boat in a gale. But still that sense of security never wholly left her. Dreaming or waking, the force of his personality remained with her.
It must have been hours later, she reflected afterwards, that she heard the Colonel's voice exclaim hoarsely over her head, "In heaven's name, say she isn't dead!"
And, "Of course she isn't," came Eustace's curt response. "Should I be carrying her if she were?"
She tried to open her eyes, but could not. They seemed to be weighted down. But she did very feebly close her numbed hands about Eustace's coat. Emphatically she did not want to be handed over like a bale of goods to the Colonel.
He clasped her to him reassuringly, and presently she knew that he bore her upstairs, holding her comfortably close all the way.
"Don't go away from me!" she begged him weakly.
"Not so long as you want me, little sweetheart," he made answer. But her woman's heart told her that a parting was imminent notwithstanding.
In all her life she had never had so much attention before. She seemed to have entered upon a new and amazing phase of existence. Colonel de Vigne faded completely into the background, and she found herself in the care of Biddy and the doctor. Eustace left her with a low promise to return, and she had to be satisfied with that thought, though she would fain have clung to him still.
They undressed her and put her into a hot bath that did much to lessen the numb constriction of her limbs, though it brought also the most agonizing pain she had ever known. When it was over, the limit of her endurance was long past; and she lay in hot blankets weeping helplessly while Biddy tried in vain to persuade her to drink some scalding mixture that she swore would make her feel as gay as a lark.
In the midst of this, someone entered quietly and stood beside her; and all in a moment there came to Dinah the consciousness of an unknown force very strangely uplifting her. She looked up with a quivering smile in the midst of her tears.
"Oh, Mr. Greatheart," she whispered brokenly, "is it you?"
He smiled down upon her, and took the cup from Biddy's shaky old hand.
"May I give you this?" he said.
Dinah was filled with gratified confusion. "Oh, please, you mustn't trouble! But--how very kind of you!"
He took Biddy's place by her side. His eyes were shining with an odd brilliance, almost, she thought to herself wonderingly, as if they held tears. A sharp misgiving went through her. How was it they were bestowing so much care upon her, unless Isabel--Isabel--
She did not dare to put her doubt into words, but he read it and instantly answered it. "Don't be anxious!" he said in his kindly, tired voice. "All is well. Isabel is asleep--actually sleeping quietly without any draught. The doctor is quite satisfied about her."
He spoke the simple truth, she knew; he was incapable of doing anything else. A great wave of thankfulness went through her, obliterating the worst of her misery.
"I am so glad," she told him weakly. "I was--so dreadfully afraid. I--I had to go with her, Mr. Studley. I do hope everyone understands."
"Everyone does," he made answer gently. "Now let me give you this, and then you must sleep too."
She drank from the cup he held, and felt revived.
He did not speak again till she had finished; then he leaned slightly towards her, and spoke with great earnestness. "Miss Bathurst, do you realize, I wonder, that you saved my sister's life by going with her? I do; and I shall never forget it."
She was sure now that she caught the gleam of tears in the grey eyes. She slipped her hands out to him. "I only did what I could," she murmured confusedly. "Anyone would have done it. And please, Mr. Greatheart, will you call me Dinah?"
"Or Mercy?" he suggested smiling, her hands clasped close in his.
She smiled back with shy confidence. The memory of her dream was in her mind, but she could not tell him of that.
"No," she said. "Just Dinah. I'm not nice enough to be called anything else. And thank you--thank you for being so good to me."
"My dear child," he made quiet reply, "no one who really knows you could be anything else."
"Oh, don't you think they could?" said Dinah wistfully. "I wish there were more people in the world like you."
"No one ever thought of saying that to me before," said Scott.


CHAPTER XXII
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

After that interview with Scott there followed a long, long period of pain and weakness for Dinah. She who had never known before what it meant to be ill went down to the Valley of the Shadow and lingered there for many days and nights. And there came a time when those who watched beside her began to despair of her ever turning back.
So completely had she lost touch with the ordinary things of life that she knew but little of what went on around her, dwelling as it were apart, conscious sometimes of agonizing pain, but more often of a dreadful sinking as of one overwhelmed in the billows of an everlasting sea. At such times she would cling piteously to any succouring hand, crying to them to hold her up--only to hold her up. And if the hand were the hand of Greatheart, she always found comfort at length and a sense of security that none other could impart.
Her fancy played about him very curiously in those days. She saw him in many guises,--as prince, as knight, as magician; but never as the mean and insignificant figure which first had caught her attention on that sunny morning before the fancy-dress ball.
This man who sat beside her bed of suffering for hours together because she fretted when he went away, who held her up when the gathering billows threatened to overwhelm her fainting soul, who prayed for her with the utmost simplicity when she told him piteously that she could not pray for herself, this man was above and beyond all ordinary standards. She looked up to him with reverence, as one of colossal strength who had power with God.
But she never dreamed again that golden dream of Greatheart in his shining armour with the light of a great worship in his eyes. That had been a wild flight of presumptuous fancy that never could come true.
His was not the only hand to which she clung during those terrible days of fear and suffering. Another presence was almost constantly beside her night and day,--a tender, motherly presence that watched over and ministered to her with a devotion that never slackened. For some time Dinah could not find a name for this gracious and comforting presence, but one day when a figure clothed in a violet dressing-gown stooped over her to give her nourishment an illuminating memory came to her, and from that moment this loving nurse of hers filled a particular niche in her heart which was dedicated to the Purple Empress. She could think of no other name for her. That quiet and stately presence seemed to demand a royal appellation. In her calmer moments Dinah liked to lie and watch the still face with its crown of silvery hair. She loved the touch of the white hands that always knew with unerring intuition exactly what needed to be done. There seemed to be healing in their touch.
Very strangely the thought of Eustace never came to her, or coming, but flitted unrecorded and undetained across the surface of her mind. He had receded with all the rest of the world into the far, far distance that lay behind her. He had no place in this region of many shadows where these others so tenderly guided her wandering feet. No one else had any place there save old Biddy who, being never absent, seemed a part of the atmosphere, and the doctor who came and went like a presiding genie in that waste of desolation.
She did not welcome his visits, although he was invariably kind, for on one occasion she caught a low murmur from him to the effect that her mother had better come to her, and this suggestion had thrown her into a most painful state of apprehension. She had implored them weeping to let her mother stay away, and they had hushed her with soothing promises; but she never saw the doctor thereafter without a nervous dread that she might also see her mother's gaunt figure accompanying him. And she was sure--quite sure--that her mother would be very angry with her when she saw her helplessness.
Nightmares of her mother's advent began to trouble her. She would start up in anguish of soul, scarcely believing in the soothing arms that held her till their tenderness hushed her back to calmness.
"No one can come to you, sweetheart, while I am here." How often she heard the low words murmured lovingly over her head! "See, I am holding you! You are quite safe. No one can take you from me."
And Dinah would cling to her