Part 33 (2/2)
He spoke with stern insistence, looking Scott straight in the eyes; and after a moment or two Scott yielded the point.
”All right, old chap! I'm not much good, I know. But for heaven's sake, lose no time.”
”No time will be lost.” Sir Eustace turned round upon the Colonel. ”We can't have any but young men on this job,” he said. ”See if you can muster two or three to go with me, will you? A doctor if possible! And we shall want blankets and restoratives and lanterns. Stumpy, you can see to that. Yes, and send for a guide too though he won't be much help in a thick mist. And take that wailing woman away! Have everything ready for us when we come back! They can't have gone very far. Isabel hasn't the strength. I shall be ready immediately.”
He turned to the stairs and went up them in great leaps, leaving the little group below to carry out his orders.
There was a momentary inaction after his departure, then Scott limped across to the door and opened it. Thick darkness met him, the clammy darkness of fog, and the faint, faint rustle of falling snow.
He closed the door and turned back, meeting the Colonel's eyes, ”It's hard to stay behind, sir,” he said.
The Colonel nodded. He liked Scott. ”Yes, infernally hard. But we'll do all we can. Will you find the doctor and get the necessaries together?
I'll see to the rest.”
”Very good, sir; I will.” Scott went to the old woman who still sobbed piteously into her ap.r.o.n. ”Come along, Biddy! There's plenty to be done.
Miss Isabel's room must be quite ready for her when she comes back, and Miss Bathurst's too. We shall want boiling water--lots of it. That's your job. Come along!”
He urged her gently to the stairs, and went up with her, holding her arm.
At the top she stopped and gave him an anguished look. ”Ah, Master Scott darlint, will the Almighty be merciful? Will He bring her safe back again?”
He drew her gently on. ”That's another thing you can do, Biddy,” he said.
”Ask Him!”
And before his look Biddy commanded herself and grew calmer. ”Faith, Master Scott,” she said, ”if it isn't yourself that's taught me the greatest lesson of all!”
A very compa.s.sionate smile shone in Scott's eyes as he pa.s.sed on and left her. ”Poor old Biddy,” he murmured, as he went. ”It's easy to preach to such as you. But, O G.o.d, there's no denying it's bitter work for those who stay behind!”
He knew that he and Biddy were destined to drink that cup of bitterness to the dregs ere the night pa.s.sed.
CHAPTER XX
THE VISION OF GREATHEART
The darkness of the night lay like a black pall upon the mountain. The snow was falling thickly, and ever more thickly. It drifted in upon Dinah, as she crouched in the shelter of an empty shed that had been placed on that high slope for the protection of sheep from the spring storms. They had come upon this shelter just as the gloom had become too great for even Isabel to regard further progress as possible, and in response to the girl's insistence they had crept in to rest. They had lost the beaten track long since; neither of them had realized when. But the certainty that they had done so had had its effect upon Isabel. Her energies had flagged from the moment that it had dawned upon her. A deadly tiredness had come over her, a feebleness so complete that Dinah had had difficulty in getting her into the shelter. Return was utterly out of the question. They were hopelessly lost, and to wander in that densely falling snow was to court disaster.
Very thankful Dinah had been to find even so poor a refuge in that waste of drifting fog; but now as she huddled by Isabel's side it seemed to her that the relief afforded was but a prolonging of their agony. The cold was intense. It seemed to penetrate to her very bones, and she knew by her companion's low moaning that she was suffering keenly also.
Isabel seemed to have sunk into a state of semi-consciousness, and only now and then did broken words escape her--words scarcely audible to Dinah, but which testified none the less to the bitterness of despair that had come upon her.
She sat in a corner of the desolate place with Dinah pressed close to her, while the snow drifted in through the door-less entrance and sprinkled them both. But it was the darkness rather than the cold or the snow that affected the girl as she crouched there with her arms about her companion, striving to warm and shelter her while she herself felt frozen to the very heart. It was so terrible, so monstrous, so nerve-shattering.
And the silence that went with it was like a nightmare horror to her shrinking soul. For all Dinah's sensibilities were painfully on the alert. No merciful dulness of perception came to her. Responsibility had awakened in her a nervous energy that made her realize the awfulness of their position with appalling vividness. That they could possibly survive the night she did not believe. And Death--Death in that fearful darkness--was a terror from which she shrank almost in panic.
That she retained command of her quivering nerves was due solely to the fact of Isabel's helplessness--Isabel's dependence upon her. She knew that while she had any strength left, she must not give way. She must be brave. Their sole chance of rescue hung upon that.
Like Scott, she thought of the guide, though the hope was a forlorn one.
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