_ PART I CHAPTER XV. THE MOUNTAIN CREST
That sleigh-drive was to Dinah the acme of delight, and for ever after the jingle of horse-bells was to recall it to her mind. The sight of the gay red trappings, the trot of the muffled hoofs, the easy motion of the sleigh slipping over the white road, and above all, Isabel, clad in purple and seated beside her, a figure of royal distinction, made a picture in her mind that she was never to forget. She rode in a magic chariot through wonderland.
She longed to delay the precious moments as they flew, like a child chasing butterflies in the sunshine; but they only seemed to fly the faster. She chattered almost incessantly for the first few miles, and occasionally Isabel smiled and answered her; but for the most part it was Scott, seated opposite, who responded to her raptures,--Scott, unfailingly attentive and courteous, but ever watchful of his sister's face.
She gazed straight ahead when she was not looking at anything to which Dinah called her attention. Her eyes had the intense look of one who watches perpetually for something just out of sight.
Quiet but alert, he marked her attitude, marked also the emaciation which was so painfully apparent in the strong sunshine and formed so piteous a contrast to the vivid youth of the girl beside her. Presently Dinah came out of her rhapsodies and observed his vigilance. She watched him covertly for a time while she still chatted on. And she noted that there were very weary lines about his eyes, lines of anxiety, lines of sleeplessness, that filled her warm heart with quick sympathy and a longing to help.
The road was one of wild beauty. It wound up a desolate mountain pass along which great black boulders were scattered haphazard like the mighty toys of a giant. The glittering snow lay all around them, making their nakedness the more apparent. And far, far above, the white crags shone with a dazzling purity in the sunlit air.
Below them the snow lay untrodden, exquisitely pure, piled here in great drifts, falling away there in wonderful curves and hollows, but always showing a surface perfect and undesecrated by any human touch. And ever the sleigh ran smoothly on over the white road till it seemed to Dinah as if they moved in a dream. She fell silent, charmed by the swift motion, and by the splendour around her.
"You are quite warm, I hope?" Scott said, after an interval.
She was wrapped in a fur cloak belonging to Isabel. She smiled an affirmative, but she saw him as through a veil. The mystery and the wonder of creation filled her soul.
"I feel," she said, "I feel as if we were being taken up into heaven."
"Oh, that we were!" said Isabel, speaking suddenly with a force that had in it something terrible. "Do you see those golden peaks, sweetheart? That is where I would be. That is where the gates of Heaven open--where the lost are found."
Dinah's hand was clasped in hers under the fur rug, and she felt the thin fingers close with a convulsive hold.
Scott leaned forward. "Heaven is nearer to us than that, Isabel," he said gently.
She looked at him for a moment, but her eyes at once passed beyond. "No, no, Stumpy! You never understand," she said restlessly. "I must reach the mountain-tops or die. I am tired--I am tired of my prison. And I stifle in the valley--I who have watched the sun rise and set from the very edge of the world. Why did they take me away? If I had only waited a little longer--a little longer--as he told me to wait!" Her voice suddenly vibrated with a craving that was passionate. "He would have come with the next sunrise. I always knew that the dawn would bring him back to me. But"--dull despair took the place of longing--"they took me away, and the sun has never shone since."
"Isabel!" Scott's voice was very grave and quiet. "Miss Bathurst will wonder what you mean. Don't forget her!"
Dinah pressed close to her friend's side. "Oh, but I do understand!" she said softly. "And, dear Mrs. Everard, I wish I could help you. But I think Mr. Studley must be right. It is easier to get to heaven than to climb those mountain-peaks. They are so very steep and far away."
"So is Heaven, child," said Isabel, with a sigh of great weariness.
As it were with reluctance, she again met the steady gaze of Scott's eyes, and gradually her mood seemed to change. Her brief animation dropped away from her; she became again passive, inert, save that she still seemed to be watching.
Scott broke the silence, kindly and practically. "We ought to reach the _chalet_ at the head of the pass soon," he said. "You will be glad of some tea."
"Oh, are we going to stop for tea?" said Dinah.
"That's the idea," said Scott. "And then back by another way. We ought to get a good view of the sunset. I hope it won't be misty, but they say a change is coming."
"I hope it won't come yet," said Dinah fervently. "The last few days have been so perfect. And there is so little time left."
Scott smiled. "That is the worst of perfection," he said. "It never lasts."
Dinah's eyes were wistful. "It will go on being perfect here long after we have left," she said. "Isn't it dreadful to think of all the good things--all the beauty--one misses just because one isn't there?"
"It would be if there were nothing else to think of," said Scott. "But there is beauty everywhere--if we know how to look for it."
She looked at him uncertainly. "I never knew what it meant before I came here," she told him shyly. "There is no time for beautiful things in my life. It's very, very drab and ugly. And I am very discontented. I have never been anything else."
Her voice quivered a little as she made the confession. Scott's eyes were so kind, so full of friendly understanding. Isabel had dropped out of their intercourse as completely as though her presence had been withdrawn. She lay back against her cushions, but her eyes were still watching, watching incessantly.
"I think the very dullest life can be made beautiful," Scott said, after a moment. "Even the desert sand is gold when the sun shines on it. The trouble is,--" he laughed a little--"to get the sun to shine."
Dinah leaned forward eagerly, confidentially. "Yes?" she questioned.
He looked her suddenly straight in the eyes. "There is a great store of sunshine in you," he said. "One can't come near you without feeling it. Isabel will tell you the same. Do you keep it only for the Alps? If so,--" he paused.
Dinah's face flushed suddenly under his look. "If so?" she asked, under her breath.
He smiled. "Well, it seems a pity, that's all," he said. "Rather a waste too when you come to think of it."
Dinah's eyes caught the reflection of his smile. "I shall remember that, Mr. Greatheart," she said.
"Forgive me for preaching!" said Scott.
She put out a hand to him quickly, spontaneously. "You don't preach--and it does me good," she said somewhat incoherently. "Please--always--say what you like to me!"
"At risk of hurting you?" said Scott. He held the small, impulsive hand a moment and let it go.
"You could never hurt me," Dinah answered. "You are far too kind."
"I think the kindness is on your side," he answered gravely. "Most people of my acquaintance would think me a bore--if nothing worse."
"Most people have never really met you, Stumpy," said Isabel unexpectedly. "Dinah is one of the privileged few, and I am glad she appreciates it."
"Good heavens!" said Scott, flushing a deep red. "Spare me, Isabel!"
Dinah broke into her gay, infectious laugh. "Please--please don't be upset about it! I'm glad I'm one of the few. I've felt you were a prince in disguise all along."
"Very much in disguise!" protested Scott. "Remove that, and there would be nothing left."
"Except a man," said Isabel, "You can't get away, Stumpy. You're caught."
A fleeting smile crossed her face like a gleam of light and was gone. She turned her look upon Dinah, and became silent again.
Scott, much disconcerted, hunted in every pocket for his cigarette-case. "You don't mind my smoking, I hope?" he murmured.
"I like it," said Dinah. "Let me help you light up!"
She made a screen with her hands, and guarded the flame from the draught.
He thanked her courteously, recovering his composure with a smile that was not without self-ridicule, and in a moment they were talking again upon impersonal matters. But the episode, slight though it was, dwelt in Dinah's mind thereafter with an odd persistence. She felt as if Isabel had given her a flashlight glimpse of something which otherwise she would scarcely have realized. In that single fleeting moment of revelation she had seen that which no vision of knight in shining armour could have surpassed.
They reached the _chalet_ at the top of the pass, and descended for tea. The windows looked right down the snow-clad valley up which they had come. The sun had begun to sink, and the greater part of it lay in shadow.
Far away, rising out of the shadows, all golden amid floating mists, was a mighty mountain crest, higher than all around. The sun-rays lighted up its wondrous peaks. The glory of it was unearthly, almost more than the eye could bear.
Dinah stood on the little wooden verandah of the _chalet_ and gazed and gazed till the splendour nearly blinded her.
"Still watching the Delectable Mountains?" said Scott's voice at her shoulder.
She made a little gesture in response. She could not take her eyes off the wonder.
He came and stood beside her in mute sympathy while he finished his cigarette. There was a certain depression in his attitude of which presently she became aware. She summoned her resolution and turned herself from the great vision that so drew her.
He was leaning against a post of the verandah, and she read again in his attitude the weariness that she had marked earlier in the afternoon.
"Are you--troubled about your sister?" she asked him diffidently.
He threw away the end of his cigarette and straightened himself. "Yes, I am troubled," he said, in a low voice. "I am afraid it was a mistake to bring her here."
"I thought her looking better this morning," Dinah ventured.
His grey eyes met hers. "Did you? I thought it a good sign that she should make the effort to speak to strangers. But I am not certain now that it has done her any good. We brought her here to wake her from her lethargy. Eustace thought the air would work wonders, but--I am not sure. It is certainly waking her up. But--to what?"
His eyelids drooped heavily, and he passed his hand across his forehead with a gesture that went to her heart.
"It's rather soon to judge, isn't it?" she said.
"Yes," he admitted. "But there is a change in her; there is an undoubted change. She gets hardly any rest, and the usual draught at night scarcely takes effect. Of course the place is noisy. That may have something to do with it. My brother is very anxious to put a stop to the sleeping-draught altogether. But I can't agree to that. She has never slept naturally since her loss--never slept and never wept. Biddy--the old nurse--declares if she could only cry, all would come right. But I don't know--I don't know."
He uttered a deep sigh, and leaned once more upon the balustrade.
Dinah came close to him, her sweet face full of concern. "Mr. Studley," she murmured, "you--you don't think I do her any harm, do you?"
"You!" He gave a start and looked at her with that in his eyes that reassured her in a moment. "My dear child, no! You are a perfect godsend to her--and to me also, if you don't mind my saying so. No--no! The mischief that I fear will probably develop after you have gone. As long as you are here, I am not afraid for her. Yours is just the sort of influence that she needs."
"Oh, thank you!" Dinah said gratefully. "I was afraid just for a moment, because I know I have been silly and flighty. I try to be sober when I am with her, but--"
"Don't try to be anything but yourself, Miss Bathurst!" he said. "I have confided in you just because you are yourself; and I wouldn't have you any different for the world. You help her just by being yourself."
Dinah laughed while she shook her head. "I wish I were as nice as you seem to think I am."
He laughed also. "Perhaps you have never realized how nice you really are," he returned with a simplicity equal to her own. "Ah! Here comes Isabel! I expect she is ready. We had better go in."
They met her as they turned inwards. The reflection of the sunset glory was in her face recalling some of its faded beauty. She took Dinah's arm, looking at her with a strangely wistful smile.
"I want you now, sweetheart," she said. "Scott can have his turn--afterwards."
"I want you too," said Dinah instantly, squeezing her hand very closely. "Come and look at the mountains! They are so glorious now that the sun is setting."
They turned back for a few moments and Isabel's eyes went to that far and wonderful mountain crest. The gold was turning to rose. The glory deepened even as they watched.
"The peaks of Paradise," breathed Dinah softly.
Isabel was silent for a space, her eyes fixed and yearning. Then at length in a low voice that thrilled with an emotion beyond words she spoke.
"I know now where to look. That is where he is waiting for me. That is where I shall find him."
And then swiftly she turned, aware of her brother close behind her.
He looked at her with eyes of deep compassion. "Some day, Isabel!" he said gently.
She made a swift gesture as of one who brushes aside every hindrance. "Soon!" she said. "Very soon!"
Scott's eyes met Dinah's for a single instant, and she thought they held suffering as well as weariness. But they fell immediately. He stood back in silence for them to pass. _