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

Mr. Dare does not put in appearance, and breakfast is got through--without, indeed, an outbreak of any sort, but in a dismal fashion that bespeaks breakers ahead, and suggests hidden but terrible possibilities in the future.

Dulce is decidedly cross; a sense of depression is weighing her down, a miserable state of melancholy that renders her unjust in her estimate of all those around her. She tells herself she hates Roger; and then again that she hates Stephen, too; and then the poor child's eyes fill with tears born of a heartache and difficult of repression; to analyze them she knows instinctively would be madness, so she blinks them bravely back again to their native land, and having so got rid of them, gives herself up to impotent and foolish rage, and rails inwardly against the world and things generally.

Even to Portia she is impatient, and Julia she has annihilated twice. The latter has been lamenting all the morning over a milliner's bill that in length and heaviness has far exceeded her anticipations.

But this is nothing; Julia is always so lamenting, and indeed, I never yet saw the milliner's bill, however honest, that wasn't considered a downright swindle, and three times as exorbitant as it ought to be!

"Now look at this, my dear Dulce," says the unobservant Julia, holding out a strip of paper about half a yard in length to Miss Blount, who has been ominously silent for the past hour. "I assure you the trimmings on that dress _never_ came to that. They were meagre to the last degree; just a little _suspicion_ of lace, and a touch of velvet here and there. It is absurd--it is a fraud. Did _your_ trimmings ever come to that?"

"Don't know, I'm sure," says Dulce, impatiently; "I never keep any accounts of my own money. I make a _point_ of not doing that. If it's spent, it's spent, you know, and one gains nothing by thinking of it. It only shows one how extravagant one has been, and I do so _hate_ scolding myself!"

"But, my dear child, Madame Grande _must_ have made a mistake. It is all nonsense; if you would just look it over, if only to convince yourself. I am not unreasonable."

"I won't look it over," says Miss Blount, promptly. "I _hate_ looking over things, and I hate bills, and I hate Madame Grande, and I hate--everything."

After this outburst she makes for the door, and the morning-room knows her no more for a considerable time. Portia looks up from her painting in some surprise, and Julia tries to smother the thought that the final expression of hatred should have ended in the word "_you_."

In the hall outside, Dulce almost runs into Stephen's arms, who has come up to see her very early, being in a restless and most unsatisfactory mood. His eyes brighten and he flushes warmly as he meets her, but she, drawing back from him, gives him to understand by the very faintest of imperative gestures that he is to come no nearer.

"You!" she says, ungraciously.

"Yes--you expected me?" This question suggests the possibility that he fears he is not altogether welcome. She waives it, and goes on as though she had not heard him.

"Have you done what you promised?" she asks, coldly.

"No, you mean--?" he hesitates.

"You _must_ remember. You were to tell Roger next day; _this_ (though it hardly sounds right) is next day; _have_ you told him that I have promised to marry you some time?"

There is not the faintest nervousness or girlish confusion in her tone. Stephen, watching her closely, feels a terrible despair that threatens to overwhelm him. If only one little blush would mantle her cheek, if for one second her beautiful, feverishly bright eyes would droop before his! He battles with the growing misery, and for the time being, allays it.

"Not yet;" he says. Then he colors hotly, and his eyes leaving her face seek the ground. A sense of shame betrays itself in every feature. "It is early yet," he says, in a strange reluctant tone; "and if--if you think it better to put it off for a day or two, or even to let him find out for himself by degrees--or--"

"No!"--remorselessly--"he shall be told _now--at once_! Remember all you said about him last evening. _I_ have not forgotten. What!" cries she, with sudden passion, "do you think I will live another day believing he imagines me regretful of my decision--cut to the heart, perhaps, that I am no longer anything to him? I tell you no! The very thought is intolerable."

"But--"

"There must be no hesitation," she says, interrupting him with a quick gesture. "It was in our agreement that he should be told to-day. If one part of that agreement is to be broken, why then, let us break it all; it is not too late yet. _I_ shall not care, and perhaps it will be better if--"

Her cruelty stings him into vehement declaration.

"It will _not_ be better," he says, wrathfully. "I will do anything, everything, you wish, except"--bitterly--"give you up."

To him it seems a wretched certainty that it _is_ her wish _already_ to break the bond formed between them but a few short hours ago. Has she so soon repented?

"Where is Roger?" he asks, turning from her, all the lover's gladness gone from his eyes. He is looking stern and pale, and as a man might who is determined to do that against which his soul revolts.

How shall he tell this man, who was once his dearest friend, that he has behaved as a very traitor to him.

"In the stables, no doubt," replies she, scornfully. The change in his manner has not touched her; nay, he tells himself it has not so much as been noticed by her.

Moving abruptly away, he goes down the hall and out of the open door, and down the stone steps across the gleaming sunshine, and so is lost to sight.

Dulce watches him until the portico outside hides him from view, and then, walking very slowly and with bent head, she goes in the direction of Fabian's room. She is so absorbed in her own reflections that she hardly hears approaching footsteps, until they are quite close to her. Looking up, with a quick start, she finds herself face to face with Roger.

The surprise is so sudden that she has not time to change color until she has passed him. Involuntarily she moves more quickly, as though to escape him, but he follows her, and standing right before her, compels her to stop and confront him.

"One moment," he says. His tone is haughty, but his eyes are more searching than unkind. "You meant what you said last evening?" he asks, quickly, and there is a ring in his voice that tells her he will be glad if she can answer him in the negative. Hearing it, she grows even paler, and shrinks back from him.

"Have I given you any reason to doubt it?" she says, coldly.

"No--certainly not." His tone has grown even haughtier. "I wish, however, to let you know I regret anything uncivil I may have said to you on--that is--at our last interview."

"It is too late for regrets." She says this so low that he can scarcely hear her.

"You are bent, then, upon putting an end to everything between us?"

"Yes." At this moment it seems impossible to her to answer him in anything but a monosyllable. Her obstinacy angers him.

"Perhaps you are equally bent," he says, sneeringly, "upon marrying Gower?"

I suppose he has expected an indignant denial to this question, because, when silence follows it, he starts, and placing both his hands upon her shoulders, draws her deliberately over to a side window, and stares into her downcast face.

"Speak," he says roughly. "_Are_ you going to marry him?"

"Yes."

The word comes with difficulty from between her pale, dry lips.

"He has asked you?"

"He has."

"You were engaged to him even _before_ you broke off your engagement with me?"

"Oh, _no_, NO!"

"Since when, then? Was it last evening he spoke to you?"

"Yes."

"After you had parted from me? Sharp work, upon my life."

He laughs--a short, unmirthful laugh--and taking his hands from her shoulders, moves back from her, yet always with his eyes on her face.

"You should be glad," she says, slowly.

"No doubt. So he was your confidant--your father-confessor, was he? All my misdemeanors were laid bare to him. And then came pity for one linked to such an unsympathetic soul as mine, and then naturally came what pity is akin to! It is a pretty story. And for its hero 'mine own familiar friend.'" He laughs again.

She makes a movement as though to leave him, but he stops her.

"No, do not go yet," he says. "Let me congratulate you. _Le roi est mort, vive le roi._ My successor, it seems, was not difficult to find; and--By-the-by, why are you alone now? Why is not your _new_ lover by your side?"

"My _first_ lover--_not_ my new lover," she says, bitterly, speaking now with some spirit.

"I didn't count, I suppose."

"_You--!_" She draws her breath quickly, and, then, having subdued the indignation that had almost overcome her, goes on quietly: "you never loved me. There was never a moment in all my knowledge of you when I could have flattered myself with the thought that I was more to you than a cousin."

"He is very different, I suppose?" He flushes a dark crimson as he puts this question.

"Altogether--_utterly_! At least, I can tell myself, I am to him something more than a necessary evil, a thing forced upon him by circumstances. To _you_ I was only that, and _worse_. There were moments when I believe you _hated_ me."

"We need not discuss that now," says Dare coldly. "Where is Gower?"

"I don't know; at least, I am not sure. What do you want with him? There is no use in quarreling with him," she says, nervously.

"Why should I quarrel with any man because a woman chooses to prefer him to me? That is her affair altogether."

He walks away from her, and she, moving into the deep embrasure of the large bow window, stands staring blankly upon the sunlit landscape without.

But presently he returns and, standing beside her, gazes out, too, upon the flowers that are bowing and simpering as the light wind dances over them.

"I am going away this evening," he says, at length, very gently. "It is uncertain when I shall return. Good-by."

He holds out his hand, awkwardly enough, and even when, after a momentary hesitation, she lays hers in it, hardly presses it. Yet still, though he has paid his adieux, he lingers there, and loiters aimlessly, as if he finds a difficulty in putting an end to the miserable _tete-a-tete_.

"You were wrong just now," he says, somewhat abruptly, not looking at her; "there was never one second in my life when I _hated_ you; you need not have said _that_."

"Where are you going?" asks she, brokenly.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. But before I go, I want to say to you--that--that--if ever you _want_ me, even if I should be at the end of the world, _send_ for me, and I will come to you."

_Are_ there tears in his eyes? He drops her hand, and turning hastily away, goes