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

illusion. On my soul, Isabel, what a wicked waste it is! Have you forgotten the days when you and I roamed over the world together? Have you forgotten Egypt and all we did there? Life was worth having then."
"Ah! I thought so." She met his look with eyes that did not seem to see him. "We were children then, Eustace," she said, "children playing on the sands. But the great tide caught us. You breasted the waves, but I was broken and thrown aside. I could never play on the sands again. I can only lie and wait for the tide to come again and float me away."
He clenched his hands. "Do you think I would let you go--like that?" he said.
"It is the only kindness you can do me," she answered in her low voice of pleading.
He swung round to go. "I curse the day," he said very bitterly, "that you ever met Basil Everard! I curse his memory!"
She flinched at the words as if they had been a blow. Her face turned suddenly grey. She clasped her hands very tightly together, saying no word.
He went to the door and paused, his back towards her. "I came in," he said then, "to tell you that the de Vignes have offered to put us up at their place for the wedding. And I have accepted."
He waited for some rejoinder but she made none. It was as if she had not heard. Her eyes had the impotent, stricken look of one who has searched dim distances for some beloved object--and searched in vain.
He did not glance round. His temper was on edge. With a fierce movement he pulled open the door and departed. And behind him like a veil there fell the silence of a great despair.


CHAPTER IV
THE NEW HOME

A small figure was already standing outside the station when the car Sir Eustace drove whirled round the corner of the station yard. He was greeted by the waving of a vigorous hand, as he dashed up, grinding on the brakes in the last moment as was his impetuous custom. Everyone knew him from afar by his driving, and the village children were wont to scatter like rabbits at his approach.
Dinah however stood her ground with a confidence which his wild performance hardly justified, and the moment he alighted sprang to meet him with the eagerness of a child escaped from school.
"Oh, Eustace, it is fun coming here! I was so horribly afraid something would stop me just at the last. But everything has turned out all right, and we are going to have ever such a fine wedding with crowds and crowds of people. Did you know Isabel wrote and said she would give me my wedding dress? Isn't it dear of her? How is she now?"
"Where is your luggage?" said Eustace.
She pointed to a diminutive dress-basket behind her. "That's all there is. I'm not to stay more than a week as the time is getting so short I don't feel as if I shall ever be ready as it is. I've never been so rushed before. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be almost better to put it off a few weeks."
"Jump up!" commanded Eustace, with a curt sign to a porter to pick up his _fiancee's_ humble impediments.
Dinah sprang up beside him and slipped a shy hand onto his knee. "You look more like Apollo than ever," she whispered, awe-struck, "when you frown like that. Is anything the matter?"
His brow cleared magically at her action. "I began to think I should have to come down to Perrythorpe and fetch you," he said, grasping the little nervous fingers. "I thought you meant to give me the slip--if you could."
"Oh no!" said Dinah, shocked at the suggestion. "I wanted to come; only--only--I couldn't be spared sooner. It wasn't my fault," she urged pleadingly. "Truly it wasn't!"
He smiled upon her. "All right,--Daphne. I'll forgive you this time," he said. "But now I've got you, my nymph of the woods, I am not going to part with you again in a hurry. And if you talk of putting off the wedding again, I'll simply run away with you. So now you know what to expect."
Dinah uttered her giddy little laugh. The excitement of this visit--the first she had ever paid to anyone--had turned her head. "Do you know Rose is actually going to be my chief bridesmaid?" she said. "Isn't that--magnanimous of her? She is pretending to be pleased, but I know she is frightfully jealous underneath. The other bridesmaid is the Vicar's daughter. She is quite old, nearly thirty but I couldn't think of anyone else, except the infant schoolmistress, and they wouldn't let me have her. I shall feel rather small, shan't I? Even Rose is twenty-five. I wonder if I shall feel grown up when I'm married. Do you think I shall?"
"Not till you cease to be--Daphne," said Sir Eustace enigmatically.
He started the car with the words, and they shot forward with a suddenness that made Dinah hold her breath.
But in a few moments she was chattering again, for she was never quiet for long. How was Scott? Was he at home? And Isabel--he hadn't told her. She did hope dear Isabel was keeping better. Was she? Was she?
She pressed the question as he did not seem inclined to answer it, and saw again the frown that had darkened his handsome face upon arrival.
"Do tell me!" she begged. "Isn't she so well?"
And at last with the curtness of speech which always denoted displeasure with him, he made reply.
"No, she has gone back a good deal since she got home. She lies on a sofa and broods all day long. I am looking to you to wake her up. For heaven's sake be as lively as you can!"
"Oh, poor Isabel!" Quick concern was in Dinah's voice. "What is it, do you think? Doesn't the place suit her?"
"Heaven knows," he answered gloomily, "I have a house down at Heath-on-Sea where we keep the yacht, but I doubt if it would do her much good to go there this time of the year. She and Scott might try it later--after the wedding."
"Couldn't we all go there?" suggested Dinah ingenuously.
He gave her a keen glance. "For the honeymoon? No I don't think so," he said.
"Only for the first part of it," said Dinah coaxingly; "till Isabel felt better."
He uttered a brief laugh. "No, thanks, Daphne. We're going to be alone--quite alone, for the first part of our honeymoon. I am going to take you in this car to the most out-of-the-way corner in England, where--even, if you run away--there'll be nowhere to run to. And there you'll stay till--" he paused a moment--"you realize that you are all mine for ever and ever, till in fact, you've shed all your baby nonsense and become a wise little married woman."
Dinah gave a sudden sharp shiver, and pulled her coat closer about her.
He glanced at her again. "You'll like it better than being a maid-of-all-work," he said, with his swift, transforming smile.
She smiled back at him with ready responsiveness. "Oh, I shall! I'm sure I shall. I've always wanted to be married--always. Only--it'll seem a little funny, just at first. You won't get impatient with me, will you, if--if sometimes I forget how to behave?"
He laughed and abruptly slackened speed. They were running down a narrow lane bordered with bare trees through which the spring sunshine filtered down. On a brown upland to one side of them a plough was being driven. On the other the ground sloped away to deep meadows where wound a willow-banked river.
The car stopped. "How pretty it is!" said Dinah.
And then very suddenly she found that it was not for the sake of the view that he had brought her to a standstill in that secluded place. For he caught her to him with the hot ardour she had learned to dread and kissed with passion the burning face she sought to hide.
She struggled for a few seconds like a captured bird, but in the end she yielded palpitating, as she had yielded so often before, mutely bearing that which her whole soul clamoured inarticulately to escape. When he let her go, her cheeks were on fire. He was laughing, but she was on the verge of tears.
He started on again without words, and in a very brief space they were racing forward at terrific speed, seeming scarcely to touch the ground so rapid was their progress.
Dinah sat with her two hands clutched upon her hat, thankful for the cold rush of air that gave her relief after the fiery intensity of those unsparing kisses. Her heart was beating in great thumps. Somehow the fierceness of him always exceeded either memory or expectation. He was so terribly strong, so disconcertingly absolute in his demands upon her. And every time he seemed to take more.
She hardly noticed anything further of the country through which they passed. Her agitation possessed her overwhelmingly. She felt exhausted, unnerved, very curiously ashamed. It was good to have so princely a lover, but his tempestuous wooing was altogether too much for her. She wondered how Rose, the sedate and composed beauty, would have met those wild gusts of passion. They would not have disconcerted her; nothing ever did. She would probably have endured all with a smile. No form of adoration could come amiss with her. She did not fancy that Rose's heart was capable of beating at more than the usual speed. Her very blushes savoured of a delicate complacency that enhanced her beauty without disturbing her serenity. A great wave of envy went through Dinah. "Ah, why had she not been blessed with such a temperament as that?"
His voice broke in upon her disjointed meditations. "Well, Daphne? Feeling better?"
She glanced at him with the confused consciousness that she dared not meet his eyes. She was glad that he was laughing, but the turbulent feeling of uncertainty that his nearness always brought to her was with her still. She was as one who had passed by a raging fire, and the scorching heat of the flame yet remained with her. Breathlessly she spoke. "I can't think--or do anything--in this wind. Are we nearly there?"
"We are there," he made answer.
And she discovered that which in her distress of mind she had failed to notice. They were running smoothly along a private avenue of fir-trees towards an old stone mansion that stood on a slope overlooking the long river valley.
She drew a hard breath. "But this is better--ever so much--than the Court!" she said.
"Your future home, my queen!" said Sir Eustace royally.
She breathed again deeply, wonderingly. "Is it real?" she said.
He laughed. "I almost think so. You see that other house right away in the distance, across that further slope? That is the Dower House where Isabel and Scott are to live when we are married."
"Oh!" There was a quick note of disappointment in Dinah's voice. "I thought they would live with us."
"I don't know why," said Sir Eustace with a touch of sharpness, and then softening almost immediately, "It's practically the same thing, my sprite of the woods. But I wish you to be mistress in your own home--when we do settle down, which won't be at present. For we're not coming back from our honeymoon till you have learnt that I am the only person in the world that matters."
Again a slight shiver caught Dinah, but she repressed it instantly. "I expect it won't take me very long to learn that, Apollo," she said, with her shy, fleeting smile.
And then they glided up to the wide steps