_ PART I CHAPTER X. THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
Dinah ran swiftly down the corridor to her own room.
As a matter of fact, she had intruded upon the Colonel and Lady Grace in the secret hope of finding a propitious moment for once again pressing her request to be allowed to accept Scott's invitation to tea. Her failure to do so added fuel to the flame, arousing in her an almost irresistible impulse to rebel openly.
The fear of consequences alone restrained her, for to be escorted home in disgrace after only a week in this Alpine paradise was more than she could face. All her life the dread of her mother's wrath had overhung Dinah like a cloud, sometimes near, sometimes distant, but always present. She had been brought up to fear her from her cradle. All through her childhood her punishments had been bitterly severe. She winced still at the bare thought of them; and she was as fully convinced as was Lady Grace that her mother had never really loved her. To come under the ban of her displeasure meant days of harsh treatment, nor, now that her childhood was over, had the discipline been relaxed. She never attempted to rebel openly. Her fear of her mother had become an integral part of herself. Her spirit shrank before her fits of violence. But for her father and Billy she sometimes thought that home would be an impossible place.
But her affection for her father was of a very intense order. Lazy, self-indulgent, supremely easy-going, yet possessed of a fascination that had held her from babyhood, such was Guy Bathurst. Despised at least outwardly by his wife and adored by his daughter, he went his indifferent way, enjoying life as he found it and quite impervious to snubs.
"I never interfere with your mother," was a very frequent sentence on his lips, and by that axiom he ruled his life, looking negligently on while Dinah was bent without mercy to the wheel of tyranny.
He was fond of Dinah,--her devotion to him made that inevitable--but he never obtruded his fondness to the point of interference on her behalf; for both of them were secretly aware that the harshness meted out to her had much of its being in a deep, unreasoning jealousy of that very selfish fondness. They kept their affection as it were for strictly private consumption, and it was that alone that made life at home tolerable to Dinah.
For upon one point her father was insistent. He would not part with her unless she married. He did not object to her working at home for his comfort, but the idea of her working elsewhere and making her living was one which he refused to consider. With rare self-assertion, he would not hear of it, and when he really asserted himself, which was seldom, his wife was wont to yield, albeit ungraciously enough, to his behest.
Besides Dinah was undoubtedly useful at home, and would certainly grow out of hand if she left her.
Not very willingly had she agreed to let her go upon this Alpine jaunt with the de Vignes, but Billy had been so keen, and the invitation would scarcely have been extended to him alone.
The whole idea had originated between the heads of the two families, riding home together after a day's hunting. Dinah had chanced to come into the conversation, and the Colonel, comparing her with that of his own daughter and being stirred to pity, had suggested that the two children might like to join them on their forthcoming expedition. Bathurst had at once accepted the tentative proposal, and had blurted forth the whole matter to his assembled family on his return with the result that Billy's instant and eager delight had made it virtually impossible for his mother to oppose the suggestion.
Dinah had been delighted too, almost deliriously so; but she had kept her pleasure to herself, not daring to show it in her mother's presence till the actual arrival of the last day. Then indeed she had lost her head, had sung and danced and made merry, till some trifling accident had provoked her mother's untempered wrath and a sound boxing of ears had quite sobered her enthusiasm. She had fared forth finally upon the adventure with tearful eyes and drooping heart, her mother's frigid kiss of farewell hurting her more poignantly than her drastic punishment of an hour before. For Dinah was intensely sensitive, keenly susceptible to rebuke and coldness, and her warm heart shrank from unkindness with a shrinking that was actual pain.
She knew that the little social world of Perrythorpe looked down upon her mother though not actually refusing to associate with her. Bathurst had married a circus-girl in his green Oxford days; so the story went,--a hard, handsome woman older than himself, and fiercely, intensely ambitious. Lack of funds had prevented her climbing very high, and bitterly she resented her failure. He had never done a day's work in his life, but, unlike his wife, he had plenty of friends. He was well-bred, a good rider, a straight shot, and an entertaining guest. He knew everyone within a radius of twenty miles, and was upon terms of easy intimacy with the de Vignes and many others who received him with pleasure, but very seldom went out of their way to encounter his wife.
Dinah shrewdly suspected that this fact accounted for much of the bitterness of her mother's outlook. Her ambition had apparently died of starvation long since, but her resentment remained. Her hand was against practically all the world, including her daughter, whose fairy-like daintiness and piquancy were so obvious a contrast to the somewhat coarse and flashy beauty that had once been hers. For all that Dinah inherited from her mother was her gipsy darkness. Mrs. Bathurst was not flashy now, and any attempt at personal adornment on Dinah's part was always very sternly repressed. She had met and writhed under the eye of scornful criticism too often, and she distrusted her own taste. She was determined that Dinah should never be subjected to the same humiliation.
She humiliated her often enough herself. It was the only means she knew of asserting her authority; for she had no intention of ever being the object of her daughter's contempt. She was harsh to the point of brutality, so that the girl's heart was wont to quicken apprehensively whenever she heard her step. She scolded, she punished, she coerced. But from an outsider, the bare thought of a snub was unendurable, and the possibility that Dinah might by any means lay herself open to one was enough to bring down the vials of wrath upon her head. Dinah remembered still with shivering vividness the whipping she had received on one occasion for demeaning herself by running after the de Vignes's carriage to deliver a message. Her mother's whippings had always been very terrible, vindictively thorough. The indignity of them lashed her soul even more cruelly than the unsparing thong her body. Because of them she went in daily trepidation, submissive almost to the point of abjectness, lest this hateful and demoralizing form of punishment should be inflicted upon her. For some time now, by great wariness and circumspection she had evaded it, and she had begun to entertain the trembling hope that she was at last considered to have passed the age for such childish correction. But her mother's outbreak of violence on the day of their departure had been a painful disillusion, and she knew well what it would mean to return home in disgrace with the de Vignes. Her cheeks burned and tingled still with the shame of the discovery. She felt that another of the old dreadful chastisements would overwhelm her utterly. And yet that she would most certainly have to endure it if she were unruly now was conviction that pressed like a cold weight upon her heart. Had not the letter she had received from her mother only that morning contained a stern injunction to her to behave herself, as though she had been a naughty, wayward child?
"It would kill me!" she told herself passionately. "Oh, why, why, why can't I grow up quick and marry? But I never shall grow up at home. That's the horrible, horrible part of it. And I shall never have a chance of marrying with mother looking on. I'm just a slave--a slave. Other girls can have a good time, do as they like, flirt when they like. But I--never--never!"
Her fit of rebellion lasted long. The emancipation from the home bondage was beginning to work within her as the Colonel had predicted. Seen from a distance, the old tyranny seemed outrageous and impossible, to go back into it monstrous. And yet, so far as she could see, there was no way of escape. She was not apparently to be allowed to make any friends outside her own sphere. The freedom she had begun to enjoy so feverishly had very suddenly been circumscribed, and if she dared to overstep the bounds marked out for her, she knew what to expect.
And yet she longed for freedom as she had never longed in her life before. She was nearly desperate with longing, so sweet had been the first, intoxicating taste thereof. For the first time she had seen life from the standpoint of the ordinary, happy girl, and the contrast to the life she knew had temporarily upset her equilibrium. Her mother's treatment, harsh before, seemed unendurable now. Her cheeks burned afresh with a fierce, intolerable shame. No, no! She could never face it again. She could not! She could not! Already her brief emancipation had begun to cost her dear. She must--she must--find a way of escape ere she went back into thraldom. For she knew her mother's strength so terribly well. It would conquer all resistance by sheer, overwhelming weight. She could not remember a single occasion upon which she had ever in the smallest degree held her own against it. Her will had been broken to her mother's so often that the very thought of prolonged resistance seemed absurd. She knew herself to be incapable of it. She was bound to crumple under the strain, bound to be humbled to the dust long ere the faintest hope of outmatching her mother's iron will had begun to dawn in her soul. The very thought made her feel puny and contemptible. If she resisted to the very uttermost of her strength, yet would she be crushed in the end, and that end would be more horribly painful than she dared to contemplate. All her childhood it had been the same. She had been conquered ere she had passed the threshold of rebellion. She had never been permitted to exercise a will of her own, and the discovery that she possessed one had been something of a surprise to Dinah.
It was partly this discovery that made her long so passionately for freedom. She wanted to grow, to develop, to get beyond the stultifying influence of that unvarying despotism. She longed to get away from the perpetual dread of consequences that so haunted her. She wanted to breathe her own atmosphere, live her own life, be herself.
"I believe I could do lots of things if I only had the chance," she murmured to herself; and then she was suddenly plunged into the memory of another occasion when she had received summary and austere punishment for omitting scales from her practising. But then no one ever liked doing what they must, and she had never had any real taste for music; or if she had had, it had vanished long since under the uninspiring goad of compulsion.
All her morning depression came back while these bitter meditations racked her brain. Oh, if only--if only--her father had chosen a lady for his wife! It was disloyal, she knew, to indulge such a thought, but her mood was black and her soul was in revolt. She was sure--quite sure--that marriage presented the only possibility of deliverance, and deliverance was beginning to seem imperative. Her whole individuality, which this past week of giddy liberty had done so much to develop, cried aloud for it.
She went to the window. Billy had grown tired of waiting and gone off without her. She fancied she could see his sturdy figure on the further slope. Her eyes took in the whole lovely scene, and suddenly, effervescently, her spirits began to rise. The inherent gaiety of her bubbled to the surface. What a waste of time to stay here grizzling while that paradise lay awaiting her! The sweetness of her nature began to assert itself once more, and an almost fevered determination to live in the present, to be happy while she could, entered into her. With impetuous energy she pushed the evil thoughts away. She would be happy. She would! She would! And happiness was not difficult to Dinah. It bubbled in her, a natural spring, that ever flowed again even after the worst storms had forced it from its course.
She even laughed to herself as she prepared to join Billy. Life was good,--oh yes, life was good! And home and the trials thereof were many miles away. Who could be unhappy for long in such a world as this, where the air sparkled like champagne, and the magic of it ran riot in the blood?
The black mood passed away from her spirit like a cloud. She threw on cap and coat and ran to join the merry-makers. _