_ PART II CHAPTER X. THE HOURS OF DARKNESS
Dinah could not sleep that night. For the first time in all her healthy young life she lay awake with grim care for a bed-fellow. When in trouble she had always wept herself to sleep before, but to-night she did not weep. She lay wide-eyed, feeling hot and cold by turns as the memory of her lover's devouring passion and Biddy's sinister words alternated in her brain. What was the warning that Biddy had meant to convey? And how--oh, how--would she ever face the morrow and its fierce, prolonged courtship, from the bare thought of which every fibre of her being shrank in shamed dismay?
"There won't be any of me left by night," she told herself, as she sought to cool her burning face against the pillow. "Oh, I wish he didn't love me quite so terribly."
It was no good attempting to bridle wish or fears. They were far too insistent. She was immured in the very dungeons of Doubting Castle, and no star shone in her darkness.
Towards morning her restlessness became unendurable. She arose and tremblingly paced the room, sick with a nameless apprehension that seemed to deprive her alike of the strength to walk or to be still.
Her whole body was in a fever as though it had been scourged with thongs; in fact, she still seemed to feel the scourge, goading her on.
To and fro, to and fro, she wandered, scarcely knowing what she wanted, only urged by that unbearable restlessness that gave her no respite. Of the future ahead of her she did not definitely think. Her marriage still seemed too intangible a matter for serious contemplation. She still in her child's heart believed that marriage would make a difference. He would not make such ardent love to her when they were married. They would both have so many other things to think about. It was the present that so weighed upon her, her lover's almost appalling intensity of worship and her own utter inadequacy and futility.
Again, as often before, the question arose within her, How would Rose have met the situation? Would she have been dismayed? Would she have shrunk from those fiery kisses? Or could she--could she possibly--have remained calm and complacent and dignified in the midst of those surging tempests of love? But yet again she failed completely to picture Rose so mastered, so possessed, by any man; Rose the queen whom all men worshipped with reverence from afar. She wondered again how Sir Eustace had managed to elude the subtle charm she cast upon all about her. He had actually declared that her perfection bored him. It was evident that she left him cold. Dinah marvelled at the fact, so certain was she that had he humbled himself to ask for Rose's favour it would have been instantly and graciously accorded to him.
It would have saved a lot of trouble if he had fallen in love with Rose, she reflected; and then the old thrill of triumph went through her, temporarily buoying her up. She had been preferred to Rose. She had beaten Rose on her own ground, she the little, insignificant adjunct of the de Vigne party! She was glad--oh, she was very glad!--that Rose was to have so close a view of her final conquest.
She began to take comfort in the thought of her approaching wedding and all its attendant glories, picturing every detail with girlish zest. To be the queen of such a brilliant ceremony as that! To be received into the County as one entering a new world! To belong to that Society from which her mother had been excluded! To be in short--her ladyship.
A new excitement began to urge Dinah. She picked up a towel and draped it about her head and shoulders like a bridal veil. Her mother would have rated her for such vanity, but for the moment vanity was her only comfort, and the thought of her mother did not trouble her. This was how she would look on her wedding-day. There would be a wreath of orange-blossoms of course; Isabel would see to that. And--yes, Isabel had said that her bouquet should be composed of lilies-of-the-valley. She even began to wish it were her wedding morning.
The glamour spread like a rosy dawning; she forgot the clouds that loomed immediately ahead. Standing there in her night attire, poised like a brown wood-nymph on the edge of a pool, she asked herself for the first time if it were possible that she could have any pretensions to beauty. It was not in the least likely, of course. Her mother had always railed at her for the plainness of her looks. Did Eustace--did Scott--think her plain? She wondered. She wondered.
A slight sound, the opening of a window, in the room next to hers, made her start. That was Isabel's room. What was happening? It was three o'clock in the morning. Could Isabel be ill?
Very softly she opened her own window and leaned forth. It was one of those warm spring nights that come in the midst of March gales. There was a scent of violets on the air. She thought again for a fleeting second of Scott and their walk through fairyland that morning. And then she heard a voice, pitched very low but throbbing with an eagerness unutterable, and at once her thoughts were centred upon Isabel.
"Did you call me, my beloved? I am waiting! I am waiting!" said the voice.
It went forth into the sighing darkness of the night, and Dinah held her breath to listen, almost as if she expected to hear an answer.
There fell a long, long silence, and then there came a sound that struck straight to her warm heart. It seemed to her that Isabel was weeping.
She left her window with the impetuosity of one actuated by an impulse irresistible; she crossed her own room, and slipped out into the dark passage just as she was. A moment or two she fumbled feeling her way; and then her hand found Isabel's door. Softly she turned the handle, opened, and peeped in.
Isabel was on her knees by the low window-sill. Her head with its crown of silver hair was bowed upon her arm and they rested upon the bundle of letters which Dinah had seen on the very first night that she had seen Isabel. Old Biddy hovered shadow-like in the background. She made a sign to Dinah as she entered, but Dinah was too intent upon her friend to notice.
Fleet-footed she drew near, and as she approached a long bitter sigh broke from Isabel and, following it, low-toned entreaties that pierced her anew with the utter abandonment of their supplication.
"Oh God," she prayed brokenly. "I am so tired--so tired--of waiting. Open the door for me! Let me out of my prison! Let me find my beloved in the dawning--in the dawning!"
Her voice sank, went into piteous sobbing. She crouched lower in the depth of her woe.
Dinah stooped over her with a little crooning murmur of pity, and gathered her close in her arms.
Isabel gave a great start. "Child!" she said, and then she clasped Dinah to her, leaning her face against her bosom.
Dinah was crying softly, but she saw that Isabel had no tears. That sobbing came from her broken heart, but it brought no relief. The dark eyes burned with a misery that found no vent, save possibly in the passionate holding of her arms.
"My darling," she whispered presently, "did I wake you?"
"No, dearest, no!" Dinah was tenderly caressing the snowy hair; she spoke with an almost motherly fondness. "I happened to be awake, and I heard you at the window."
"Why were you awake, darling? Aren't you happy?"
Quick anxiety was in the words. Dinah flushed with a sense of guilt.
"Of course I am happy," she made answer. "What more could I have to wish for? But, Isabel, you--you!"
"Ah, never mind me!" Isabel said. She rose with the movement of one who would shield another from harm. "You ought to be in bed, sweetheart. Shall I come and tuck you up?"
"Come and finish the night with me!" whispered Dinah. "We shall both be happy then."
She scarcely expected that Isabel would accede to her desire, but it seemed that Isabel could refuse her nothing. She turned, holding Dinah closely to her.
"My good angel!" she murmured tenderly. "What should I do without you? It is always you who come to lift me out of my inferno."
She left the letters forgotten on the window-sill. By the simple outpouring of her love, Dinah had drawn her out of her place of torment; and she led her now, leaning heavily upon her, through the passage to her own room.
Biddy crept after them like a wise old cat alert for danger. "She'll sleep now, Miss Dinah darlint," she murmured. "Ye won't be anxious at all, at all? It's meself that'll be within call."
"No, no! Go to your own room and sleep, Biddy!" Isabel said. "We are both going to do the same."
She sank into the great double bed that Dinah had found almost alarmingly capacious, with a sigh of exhaustion, and Dinah slipped in beside her. They clasped each other, each with a separate sense of comfort.
Biddy tucked up first one side, then the other, with a whispered blessing for each.
"Ah, the poor lambs!" she murmured, as she went away.
But Isabel's voice had reassured her; she did not linger even outside the door.
Mumbling still below her breath her inarticulate benisons, Biddy passed through her mistress's room into her own. She was very tired, for she had been watching without intermission for nearly five hours. She almost dropped on to her bed and lay as she fell, deeply sleeping.
The letters on the window-sill were forgotten for the rest of that night. _