_ PART I CHAPTER XVII. THE UNKNOWN FORCE
"Arrah thin, Miss Isabel darlint, and can't ye rest at all?"
Old Biddy stooped over her charge, her parchment face a mass of wrinkles. Isabel was lying in bed, but raised upon one elbow in the attitude of one about to rise. She looked at the old woman with a queer, ironical smile in her tragic eyes.
"I am going up the mountain," she said. "It is moonlight, and I know the way. I can rest when I get to the top."
"Ah, be aisy, darlint!" urged the old woman. "It's much more likely he'll come to ye if ye lie quiet."
"No, he will not come to me." There was unalterable conviction in Isabel's voice. "It is I who must go to him. If I had waited on the mountain I should never have missed him. He is waiting for me there now."
She flung off the bedclothes and rose, a gaunt, white figure from which all the gracious lines of womanhood had long since departed. Her silvery hair hung in two great plaits from her shoulders, wonderful hair that shone in the shaded lamplight with a lustre that seemed luminous.
"Will I have to fetch Master Scott to ye?" said Biddy, eyeing her wistfully. "He's very tired, poor young man. There's two nights he's had no sleep at all. Won't ye try and rest aisy for his sake, Miss Isabel darlint? Ye can go up the mountain in the morning, and maybe that little Miss Bathurst will like to go with ye. Do wait till the morning now!" she wheedled, laying a wiry old hand upon her. "It's no Christian hour at all for going about now."
"Let me go!" said Isabel.
Biddy's black eyes pleaded with a desperate earnestness. "If ye'd only listen to reason, Miss Isabel!" she said.
"How can I listen," Isabel answered, "when I can hear his voice in my heart calling, calling, calling! Oh, let me go, Biddy! You don't understand, or you couldn't seek to hold me back from him."
"Mavourneen!" Biddy's eyes were full of tears; the hand she had laid upon Isabel's arm trembled. "It isn't meself that's holding ye back. It's God. He'll join the two of ye together in His own good time, but ye can't hurry Him. Ye've got to bide His time."
"I can't!" Isabel said. "I can't! You're all conspiring against me. I know--I know! Give me my cloak, and I will go."
Biddy heaved a great sigh, the tears were running down her cheeks, but her face was quite resolute. "I'll have to call Master Scott after all," she said.
"No! No! I don't want Scott. I don't want anyone. I only want to be up the mountain in time for the dawn. Oh, why are you all such fools? Why can't you understand?" There was growing exasperation in Isabel's voice.
Biddy's hand fell from her, and she turned to cross the room.
Scott slept in the next room to them, and a portable electric bell which they adjusted every night communicated therewith. Biddy moved slowly to press the switch, but ere she reached it Isabel's voice stayed her.
"Biddy, don't call Master Scott!"
Biddy paused, looking back with eyes of faithful devotion.
"Ah, Miss Isabel darlint, will ye rest aisy then? I dursn't give ye the quieting stuff without Master Scott says so."
"I don't want anything," Isabel said. "I only want my liberty. Why are you all in league against me to keep me in just one place? Ah, listen to that noise! How wild those people are! It is the same every night--every night. Can they really be as happy as they sound?"
A distant hubbub had arisen in the main corridor, the banging of doors and laughter of careless voices. It was some time after one o'clock, and the merry-markers were on their way to bed.
"Never mind them!" said Biddy. "They're just a set of noisy children. Lie down again, Miss Isabel! They'll soon settle, and then p'raps ye'll get to sleep. It's not this way they'll be coming anyway."
"Someone is coming this way," said Isabel, listening with sudden close attention.
She was right. The quiet tread of a man's feet came down the corridor that led to their private suite. A man's hand knocked with imperious insistence upon the door.
"Sir Eustace!" said Biddy, in a dramatic whisper. "Will I tell him ye're asleep, Miss Isabel? Quick now! Get back to bed!"
But Isabel made no movement to comply. She only drew herself together with the nervous contraction of one about to face a dreaded ordeal.
Quietly the door opened. Biddy moved forward, her face puckered with anxiety. She met Sir Eustace on the threshold.
"Miss Isabel hasn't settled yet, Sir Eustace," she told him, her voice cracked and tremulous. "But she'll not be wanting anybody to disturb her. Will your honour say good night and go?"
There was entreaty in the words. Her eyes besought him. Her old gnarled hands gripped each other, trembling.
But Sir Eustace looked over her head as though she were not there. His gaze sought and found his sister; and a frown gathered on his clear-cut, handsome face.
"Not in bed yet?" he said, and closing the door moved forward, passing Biddy by.
Isabel stood and faced him, but she drew back a step as he reached her, and a hunted look crept into her wide eyes.
"You are late," she said. "I thought you had forgotten to say good night."
He was still in evening dress. It was evident that he had only just come upstairs. "No, I didn't forget," he said. "And it seems I am not too late for you. I shouldn't have disturbed you if you had been asleep."
She smiled a quivering, piteous smile. "You knew I should not be asleep," she said.
He glanced towards the bed which Biddy was setting in order with tender solicitude. "I expected to find you in bed nevertheless," he said. "What made you get up again?"
She shook her head in silence, standing before him like a child that expects a merited rebuke.
He put a hand on her shoulder that was authoritative rather than kind. "Lie down again!" he said. "It is time you settled for the night."
She threw him a quick, half-furtive look. "No--no!" she said hurriedly. "I can't sleep. I don't want to sleep. I think I will get a book and read."
His hand pressed upon her. "Isabel!" he said quietly. "When I say a thing I mean it."
She made a quivering gesture of appeal. "I can't go to bed, Eustace. It is like lying on thorns. Somehow I can't close my eyes to-night. They feel red-hot."
His hold did not relax. "My dear," he said, "you talk like a hysterical child! Lie down at once, and don't be ridiculous!"
She wavered perceptibly before his insistence. "If I do, Scott must give me a draught. I can't do without it--indeed--indeed!"
"You are going to do without it to-night," Eustace said, with cool decision. "Scott is worn out and has gone to bed. I made him promise to stay there unless he was rung for. And he will not be rung for to-night."
Isabel made a sharp movement of dismay. "But--but--I always have the draught sooner or later. I must have it. Eustace, I must! I can't do without it! I never have done without it!"
Eustace's face did not alter. It looked as if it were hewn in granite. "You are going to make a beginning to-night," he said. "You have been poisoned by that stuff long enough, and I am going to put a stop to it. Now get into bed, and be reasonable! Biddy, you clear out and do the same! You can leave the door ajar if you like. I'll call you if you are wanted."
He pointed to the half-open door that led into the small adjoining room in which Biddy slept. The old woman stood and stared at him with consternation in her beady eyes.
"Is it meself that could do such a thing?" she protested. "I never leave my young lady till she's asleep, Sir Eustace. I'd sooner come under the curse of the Almighty."
He raised his brows momentarily, but he kept his hand upon his sister. He was steadily pressing her towards the bed. "If you don't do as you are told, Biddy, you will be made," he observed. "I am here to-night for a definite purpose, and I am not going to be thwarted by you. So you had better take yourself out of my way. Now, Isabel, you know me, don't you? You know it is useless to fight against me when my mind is made up. Be sensible for once! It's for your own good. You can't have that draught. You have got to manage without it."
"Oh, I can't! I can't!" moaned Isabel. She was striving to resist his hold, but her efforts were piteously weak. The force of his personality plainly dominated her. "I shall lie awake all night--all night."
"Very well," he said inexorably. "You must. Sleep will come sooner or later, and then you can make up for it."
"Oh, but you don't understand." Piteously she turned and clasped his arm in desperate entreaty. "I shall lie awake in torture. I shall hear him calling all night long. He is there beyond the mountains, wanting me. And I can't get to him. It is agony--oh, it is agony--to lie and listen!"
He took her between his hands, very firmly, very quietly. "Isabel, you are talking nonsense--utter nonsense! And I refuse to listen to it. Get into bed! Do you hear? Yes, I insist. I am capable of putting you there. If you mean to behave like a child, I shall treat you as one. Now for the last time, get into bed."
"Sir Eustace!" pleaded Biddy in a hoarse whisper. "Don't force her, Sir Eustace! Don't now! Don't!"
He paid no attention to her. His eyes were fixed upon his sister's death-white face, and her eyes, strained and glassy were upturned to his.
He said no more. Isabel's breath came in short sobbing gasps. She resisted him no longer. Under the steady pressure of his hands, her body yielded. She seemed to wilt under the compulsion of his look. Slowly, tremblingly, she crumpled in his hold, sinking downwards upon the bed.
He bent over her, laying her back, taking the bedclothes from Biddy's shaking hands and drawing them over her.
Then over his shoulder briefly he addressed the old woman. "Turn out the light, and go!"
Biddy stood and gibbered. There was that in her mistress's numb acquiescence that terrified her. "Sure, you'll kill her, Sir Eustace!" she gasped.
He made a compelling gesture. "You had better do as I say. If I want your help--or advice--I'll let you know. Do as I say! Do you hear me, Biddy?"
His voice fell suddenly and ominously to a note so deep that Biddy drew back still further affrighted and began to whimper.
Sir Eustace turned back to his sister, lying motionless on the pillow. "Tell her to go, Isabel! I am going to stay with you myself. You don't want her, do you?"
"No," said Isabel. "I want Scott."
"You can't have Scott to-night." There was absolute decision in his voice. "It is essential that he should get a rest. He looked ready to drop to-night."
"Ah! You think me selfish!" she said, catching her breath.
He sat down by her side. "No," he answered quietly. "But I think you have not the least idea how much he spends himself upon you. If you had, you would be shocked."
She moved restlessly. "You don't understand," she said. "You never understand. Eustace, I wish you would go away."
"I will go in half an hour," he made calm rejoinder, "if you have not moved during that time."
"You know that is impossible;" she said.
"Very well then. I shall remain." His jaw set itself in a fashion that brought it into heavy prominence.
"You will stay all night?" she questioned quickly.
"If necessary," he answered.
Biddy had turned the lamp very low. The faint radiance shone upon him as he sat imparting a certain mysterious force to his dominant outline. He looked as immovable as an image carved in stone.
A great shiver went through Isabel. "You want to see me suffer," she said.
"You are wrong," he returned inflexibly. "But I would sooner see you suffer than give yourself up to a habit which is destroying you by inches. It is no kindness on Scott's part to let you do it."
"Don't talk of Scott!" she said quickly. "No one--no one--will ever know what he is to me--how he has helped me--while you--you have only looked on!"
Her voice quivered. She flung out a restless arm. Instantly, yet without haste, he took and held her hand. His fingers pressed the fevered wrist. He spoke after a moment while he quelled her instinctive effort to free herself. "I am not merely looking on to-night. I am here to help you--if you will accept my help."
"You are here to torture me!" she flung back fiercely. "You are here to force me down into hell, and lock the gates upon me!"
His hold tightened upon her. He leaned slightly towards her. "I am here to conquer you," he said, "if you will not conquer yourself."
The sudden sternness of his speech, the compulsion of his look, took swift effect upon her. She cowered away from him.
"You are cruel!" she whispered. "You always were cruel at heart--even in the days when you loved me."
Sir Eustace's lips became a single, hard line. His whole strength was bent to the task of subduing her, and he meant it to be as brief a struggle as possible.
He said nothing whatever therefore, and so passed his only opportunity of winning the conflict by any means save naked force.
To Isabel in her torment that night was the culmination of sorrows. For years this brother who had once been all the world to her had held aloof, never seeking to pass the barrier which her widowed love had raised between them. He had threatened many times to take the step which now at last he had taken; but always Scott had intervened, shielding her from the harshness which such a step inevitably involved. And by love he had never sought to prevail. Her mental weakness seemed to have made tenderness from him an impossibility. He could not bear with her. It was as though he resented in her the likeness to one beloved whom he mourned as dead.
Possibly he had never wholly forgiven her marriage--that disastrous marriage that had broken her life. Possibly her clouded brain was to him a source of suffering which drove him to hardness. He had ever been impatient of weakness, and what he deemed hysteria was wholly beyond his endurance; and the spectacle of the one being who had been so much to him crushed beneath a sorrow the very existence of which he resented was one which he had never been able to contemplate with either pity or tolerance. As he had said, he would rather see her suffering than a passive slave to that sorrow and all that it entailed.
So during the dreadful hours that followed he held her to her inferno, convinced beyond all persuasion---with the stubborn conviction of an iron will--that by so doing he was acting for her welfare, even in a sense working out her salvation.
He relied upon the force of his personality to accomplish the end he had in view. If he could break the fatal rule of things for one night only, he believed that he would have achieved the hardest part. But the process was long and agonizing. Only by the sternest effort of will could he keep up the pressure which he knew he must not relax for a single moment if he meant to attain the victory he desired.
There came a time when Isabel's powers of endurance were lost in the abyss of mental suffering into which she was flung, and she struggled like a mad creature for freedom. He held her in his arms, feeling her strength wane with every paroxysm, till at last she lay exhausted, only feebly entreating him for the respite he would not grant.
But even when the bitter conflict was over, when she was utterly conquered at last, and he laid her down, too weak for further effort, he did not gather the fruits of victory. For her eyes remained wide and glassy, dry and sleepless with the fever that throbbed ceaselessly in the poor tortured brain behind.
She was passive from exhaustion only, and though he closed the staring eyes, yet they opened again with tense wakefulness the moment he took his hand from the burning brow.
The night was far advanced when Biddy, creeping softly came to her mistress's side in the belief that she slept at last. She had not dared to come before, had not dared to interfere though she had listened with a wrung heart to the long and futile battle; for Sir Eustace's wrath was very terrible, too terrible a thing to incur with impunity.
But the moment she looked upon Isabel's face, her courage came upon a flood of indignation that carried all before it.
"Faith, I believe you've killed her!" she uttered in a sibilant whisper across the bed. "Is it yourself that has no heart at all?"
He looked back to her, dominant still, though the prolonged struggle had left its mark upon him also. His face was pale and set.
"This is only a phase," he said quietly. "She will fall asleep presently. You can get her a cup of tea if you can do it without making a fuss."
Biddy turned from the bed. That glimpse of Isabel's face had been enough. She had no further thought of consequences. She moved across the room to set about her task, and in doing so she paused momentarily and pressed the bell that communicated with Scott's room.
Sir Eustace did not note the action. Perhaps the long strain had weakened his vigilance somewhat. He sat in massive obduracy, relentlessly watching his sister's worn white face.
Two minutes later the door opened, and a shadowy figure slipped into the room.
He looked up then, looked up sharply. "You!" he said, with curt displeasure.
Scott came straight to him, and leaned over his sister for a moment with a hand on his shoulder. She did not stir, or seem aware of his presence. Her eyes gazed straight upwards with a painful, immovable stare.
Scott stood up again. His hand was still upon Eustace. He looked him in the eyes. "You go to bed, my dear chap!" he said. "I've had my rest."
Eustace jerked back his head with a movement of exasperation. "You promised to stay in your room unless you were rung for," he said.
Scott's brows went up for a second; then, "For the night, yes!" he said. "But the night is over. It is nearly six. I shan't sleep again. You go and get what sleep you can."
Eustace's jaw looked stubborn. "If you will give me your word of honour not to drug her, I'll go," he said. "Not otherwise."
Scott's hand pressed his shoulder. "You must leave her in my care now," he said. "I am not going to promise anything more."
"Then I remain," said Eustace grimly.
A muffled sob came from Biddy. She was weeping over her tea-kettle.
Scott took his brother by the shoulders as he sat. "Go like a good fellow," he urged. "You will do harm if you stay."
But Eustace resisted him. "I am here for a definite purpose," he said, "and I have no intention of relinquishing it. She has come through so far without it, I am not going to give in at this stage."
"And you think your treatment has done her good?" said Scott, with a glance at the drawn, motionless face on the pillow.
"Ultimate good is what I am aiming at," his brother returned stubbornly.
Scott's hold became a grip. He leaned suddenly down and spoke in a whisper. "If I had known you were up to this, I'm damned if I'd have stayed away!" he said tensely.
"Stumpy!" Eustace opened his eyes in amazement. Strong language from Scott was so unusual as to be almost outside his experience.
"I mean it!" Scott's words vibrated. "You've done a hellish thing! Clear out now, and leave me to help her in my own way! Before God, I believe she'll die if you don't! Do you want her to die?"
The question fell with a force that was passionate. There was violence in the grip of his hands. His light eyes were ablaze. His whole meagre body quivered as though galvanized by some vital, electric current more potent than it could bear.
And very curiously Sir Eustace was moved by the unknown force. It struck him unawares. Stumpy in this mood was a complete stranger to him, a being possessed by gods or devils, he knew not which; but in any case a being that compelled respect.
He got up and stood looking down at him speculatively, too astonished to be angry.
Scott faced him with clenched hands. He was white as death. "Go!" he reiterated. "Go! There's no room for you in here. Get out!"
His lips twisted over the words, and for an instant his teeth showed with a savage gleam. He was trembling from head to foot.
It was no moment for controversy. Sir Eustace recognized the fact just as surely as he realized that his brother had completely parted with his self-control. He had the look of a furious animal prepared to spring at his throat.
Greek had met Greek indeed, but upon ground that was wholly unsuitable for a tug of war. With a shrug he yielded.
"I don't know you, Stumpy," he said briefly. "You've got beyond yourself. I advise you to pull up before we meet again. I also advise you to bear in mind that to administer that draught is to undo all that I have spent the whole night to accomplish."
Scott stood back for him to pass, but the quivering fury of the man seemed to emanate from him like the scorching draught from a blast furnace. As Eustace said, he had got beyond himself,--so far beyond that he was scarcely recognizable.
"Your advice be damned!" he flung back under his breath with a concentrated bitterness that was terrible. "I shall follow my own judgment."
Sir Eustace's mouth curled superciliously. He was angry too, though by no means so angry as Scott. "Better look where you go all the same," he observed, and passed him by, not without dignity and a secret sense of relief.
The long and fruitless vigil of the night had taught him one thing at least. Rome was not built in a day. He would not attempt the feat a second time, though neither would he rest till he had gained his end.
As for Scott, he would have a reckoning with him presently--a strictly private reckoning which should demonstrate once and for all who was master. _