Part 24 (1/2)

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 att.i.tude, marked also the emaciation which was so painfully apparent in the strong suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate. ”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 pa.s.sive, 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 pa.s.s 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 cus.h.i.+ons, 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 s.h.i.+nes on it. The trouble is,--” he laughed a little--”to get the sun to s.h.i.+ne.”