Greatheart | Page 7

Scott quietly.
But he did not attempt to withstand her. They turned side by side up the
hard, snowy track.
For some time they walked in silence. At a short distance from the
hotel, the road ascended steeply through a pine-wood, dark and
mysterious as an enchanted forest, through which there rose the sound
of a rushing stream.
Scott paused to listen, but instantly his sister laid an imperious hand
upon him.
"I can't wait," she said. "I am sure he is just round the corner. I heard
him whistle."
He moved on in response to her insistence. "I heard that whistle too,"
he said. "But it was a mountain-boy."

He was right. At a curve in the road, they met a young Swiss lad who
went by them with a smile and salute, and fell to whistling again when
he had passed.
Isabel pressed on in silence. She had started in feverish haste, but her
speed was gradually slackening. She looked neither to right nor left; her
eyes perpetually strained forward as though they sought for something
just beyond their range of vision. For a while Scott limped beside her
without speaking, but at last as they sighted the end of the pine-wood
he gently broke the silence.
"Isabel dear, I think we must turn back very soon."
"Oh, why?" she said. "Why? You always say that when--" There came
a break in her voice, and she ceased to speak.
Her pace quickened so that he had some difficulty in keeping up with
her, but he made no protest. With the utmost patience he also pressed
on.
But it was not long before her strength began to fail. She stumbled once
or twice, and he put a supporting hand under her elbow. As they neared
the edge of the pines it became evident that the road dwindled to a mere
mountain-path winding steeply upwards through the snow. The sun
shone dazzlingly upon the great waste of whiteness.
Very suddenly Isabel stopped. "He can't have gone this way after all,"
she said, and turned to her brother with eyes of tragic hopelessness.
"Stumpy, Stumpy, what shall I do?"
He drew her hand very gently through his arm. "We will go back,
dear," he said.
A low sob escaped her, but she did not weep. "If I only had the strength
to go on and on and on!" she said. "I know I should find him some day
then."
"You will find him some day," he answered with grave assurance. "But

not yet."
They went back to the turn in the road where the sound of the stream
rose like fairy music from an unseen glen. The snow lay pure and
untrodden under the trees.
Scott paused again, and this time Isabel made no remonstrance. They
stood together listening to the rush of the torrent.
"How beautiful this place must be in springtime!" he said.
She gave a sharp shiver. "It is like a dead world now."
"A world that will very soon rise again," he answered.
She looked at him with vague eyes. "You are always talking of the
resurrection," she said.
"When I am with you, I am often thinking of it," he said with
simplicity.
A haunted look came into her face. "But that implies--death," she said,
her voice very low.
"And what is Death?" said Scott gently, as if he reasoned with a child.
"Do you think it is more than a step further into Life? The passing of a
boundary, that is all."
"But there is no returning!" she protested piteously. "It must be more
than that."
"My dear, there is never any returning," he said gravely. "None of us
can go backwards. Yesterday is but a step away, but can we retrace that
step? No, not one of us."
She made a sudden, almost fierce gesture. "Oh, to go back!" she cried.
"Oh, to go back! Why should we be forced blindly forward when we
only want to go back?"

"That is the universal law," said Scott. "That is God's Will."
"It is cruel! It is cruel!" she wailed.
"No, it is merciful. So long as there is Death in the world we must go
on. We have got to get past Death."
She turned her tragic eyes upon him. "And what then? What then?"
Scott was gazing steadfastly into her face of ravaged beauty.
"Then--the resurrection," he said. "There are millions of people in the
world, Isabel, who are living out their lives solely for the sake of that,
because they know that if they only keep on, the Resurrection will give
back to them all that they have lost. My dear, it is not going back that
could help anyone. The past is past, the present is passing; there is only
the future that can restore