Portia - Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (top 100 books of all time checklist txt) 📗

or two and is buried in thought. As Roger dances divinely her remark is most uncalled for and vexes him more than he would care to confess.

"Don't let me interfere with you and your new friend," he says, lifting his brows. "If you want to dance all night with Gower, by all means do it; there is really no earthly reason why you shouldn't."

Here, as his own name falls upon his ears, Gower turns and looks at Roger expectantly.

"I absolve you willingly from your engagement to me," goes on Roger, his eyes fixed upon his wilful cousin, his face cold and hard. The extreme calmness of his tone misleads her. Her lips tighten. A light born of passionate anger darkens her gray eyes.

"Do you?" she says, a peculiar meaning in her tone.

"From this engagement only," returns he, hastily.

"Thank you. Of your own free will, then, you resign me, and give me permission to dance with whom I will."

The warm blood is flaming in her cheeks. He has thrown her over very willingly. He is evidently glad to escape the impending waltz. How shall she be avenged for this indignity?

"Mr. Gower," she says, turning prettily to Stephen, "will you get me out of my difficulty? and will you dance this waltz with me? You see," with a brave effort to suppress some emotion that is threatening to overpower her, "I have to throw myself upon your mercy."

"You confer a very great honor upon me," says Gower, gently. The courtesy of his manner is such a contrast to Roger's ill-temper, that the latter loses the last grain of self-control he possesses. There is, too, a little smile of conscious malice upon Gower's lips that grows even stronger as his eyes rest upon the darkened countenance of his whilom friend. His whilom friend, seeing it, lets wrath burn even fiercer within his breast.

"You are not engaged to any one else?" says Dulce, sweetly, forgetting how a moment since she had told Roger she had half promised Gower the dance in question.

"Even if I was, I am at _your_ service now and always," says Gower.

"As my dancing displeases you so excessively," says Roger, slowly, "it seems a shame to condemn you to keep the rest of your engagements with me. I think I have my name down upon your card for two more waltzes. Forget that, and give them to Gower, or any one else that suits you. For my part I do not care to--" He checks himself too late.

"Go on," says Dulce, coldly, in an ominously calm fashion. "You had more to say, surely; you do not care to dance them with _me_ you meant to say. Isn't it?"

"You can think as you wish, of course."

"All the world is free to do that. Then I may blot your name from my card for the rest of the evening?"

"Certainly."

"If those dances are free, Miss Blount, may I ask you for them?" says Stephen, pleasantly.

"You can have them with pleasure," replies she, smiling kindly at him.

"Don't stay too long in the night air, Dulce," says Roger, with the utmost unconcern, turning to go indoors again. This is the unkindest cut of all. If he had gone away angry, silent, revengeful, she might perhaps have forgiven him, but this careful remembrance of her, this calm and utterly indifferent concern for her comfort fills her with vehement anger.

The blood forsakes her lips, and her eyes grow bright with passionate tears.

"Why do you take things so much to heart?" says Stephen, in a low voice. "Do you care so greatly then about an unpleasant speech from him? I should have thought you might have grown accustomed to his _brusquerie_ by this."

"He wasn't brusque just now," says Dulce. "He was very kind, was he not? Careful about my catching cold, and that."

"_Very_," says Gower, significantly. "Yet there are tears in your eyes. What a baby you are."

"No, I am not," says Dulce, mournfully. "A baby is an adorable thing, and I am very far from being that."

"If babies are to be measured by their adorableness, I should say you are the very biggest baby I ever saw," declares Mr. Gower, with such an amount of settled conviction in his tone that Dulce, in spite of the mortification that is still rankling in her breast, laughs aloud. Delighted with his success, Gower laughs, too, and taking her hand draws it within his arm.

"Come, do not let us forget Roger gave you to me for this dance," he says. "If only for that act of grace, I forgive him all his misdeeds." With a last lingering glance at the beauty of the night, together they return to the ballroom.


CHAPTER XV.


"I would that I were low laid in my grave."
--KING JOHN.

"Proteus, I love thee in my heart of hearts."
--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.


THE last guest has departed. Portia has wished "good-night" to a very sleepy Dulce, and has gone upstairs to her own room. In the corridor where she sleeps, Fabian sleeps too, and as she passes his door lightly and on tip-toe, she finds that his door is half open, and, hesitating, wonders, with a quick pang at her heart, why this should be the case.

Summoning courage she advances softly over his threshold, and then sees that the bed within is unoccupied, that to-night, at least, its master is unknown to it.

A shade darkens her face; stepping back on to the corridor she thinks deeply for a moment, and then, laying her candle on a bracket near, she goes noiselessly down the stairs again, across the silent halls, and, opening the hall door, steps out into the coming dawn.

Over the gravel, over the grass, through the quiet pleasaunce she goes unswervingly, past the dark green laurels into the flower garden, and close to the murmuring streamlet to where a little patch of moss-grown sward can be seen, surrounded by aged elms.

Here she finds him!

He is asleep! He is lying on his back, with his arms behind his tired head, and his beautiful face uplifted to the heavens. Upon his long dark lashes lie signs of bitter tears.

Who shall tell what thoughts had been his before kind sleep fell upon his lids and drove him into soothing slumber


"The sweetest joy, the wildest woe, is love;
The taint of earth, the odor of the skies
Is in it."


So sings Bailey. More of wild woe than joy must have been in Fabian's heart before oblivion came to him. Was he thinking of her--of Portia? For many days his heart has been "darkened by her shadow," and to-night--when all his world was abroad, and he alone was excluded from prostrating himself at her shrine--terrible despair had come to lodge with him, and grief, and passionate protest.

Stooping over him, Portia gazes on him long and earnestly, and then, as no dew lies upon the grass, she sits down beside him, and taking her knees into her embrace, stays there silent but close to him, her eyes fixed upon the "patient stars," that are at last growing pale with thought of the coming morn.

The whole scene is full of fantastic beauty--the dawning day; the man lying full length upon the soft green moss in an attitude suggestive of death; the girl, calm, passionless, clad in her white clinging gown, with her arms crossed, and her pale, upturned face beautiful as the dawn itself.

The light is breaking through the skies; the stars are dying out one by one. On the crest of the hill, and through the giant firs, soft beams are coming; and young Apollo, leaping into life, sends out a crimson ray from the far East.

Below, the ocean is at rest--wrapt in sullen sleep. "The singing of the soft blue waves is hushed, or heard no more." And no sound comes to disturb the unearthly solemnity of the hour. Only a little breeze comes from the south, soft and gentle, and full of tenderest love that is as the


"Kiss of morn, waking the lands."


He stirs! His eyes open. He turns restlessly, and then a waking dream is his. But is it a dream? He is looking into Portia's eyes, and she--she does not turn from him, but in a calm, curious fashion returns his gaze, as one might to whom hope and passion are as things forgotten.

No word escapes him. He does not even change his position, but lies, looking up at her in silent wonder. Presently he lifts his hand, and slowly covers it with one of hers lying on the grass near his head.

She does not draw it away--everything seems forgotten--there is only for her at this moment the pale dawn, and the sweet calm, and the solitude and the love so fraught with pain that overfills her soul!

He draws her hand nearer to him--still nearer--until her bare soft arm (chilled by the early day) is lying upon his lips. There he lets it rest, as though he would fain drink into his thirsty heart all the tender sweetness of it.

And _yet_ she says nothing, only sits silent there beside him, her other arm resting on her knees, and her eyes fixed immovably on his.

Oh! the rapture and the agony of the moment--a rapture that will never come again, an agony that must be theirs for ever.

"My life! my love!" he murmurs at last, the words passing his lips as if they were one faint sigh, but yet not so faint but she may hear them.

She sighs, too; and a smile, fine and delicate, parts her lips, and into her eyes comes a strange fond gleam, born of passion and nearness and the sweetness of loving and living.

The day is deepening. More rosy grows the sky, more fragrant the early breeze. Her love is at her feet, her arm upon his lips; and on the fair naked arm his breath is coming and going quickly, unevenly--the feel of it makes glad her very soul!

Then comes the struggle. Oh! the sweetness, the perfectness of life if spent alone with the beloved. To sacrifice all things--to go away to some far distant spot with _him_--to know each opening hour will be their very own: they two, with all the world forgotten and well lost--what bliss could equal it?

Her arm trembles in his embrace; almost she turns to give herself into his keeping for ever, when a sound, breaking the great stillness, changes the face of all things.

Was it a twig snapping, or the rush of the brooklet beyond? or the clear first notes of an awakening bird? She never knows. But all at once remembrance returns to her, and knowledge and wisdom is with her again.

To live with a stained life, however dear; to feel his shame day by day; to distrust a later action because of a former one; to draw miserable and degrading conclusions from a sin