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

you of this, honestly."

She moves towards the door. There is a moment's hesitation, and then Portia intercepts her, and placing her back against the door to bar egress, she says, in slow, determined tones:

"You shall tell him nothing. You shall not leave this room until you promise to keep secret all that has passed here. Do you understand?--you are to tell him _nothing_."

"Oh! yes, I shall," says Miss Blount, contemptuously, knowing herself much the stronger of the two. "And even sooner than I first intended. I shall go to meet him on his return from the wood, and tell him then."

She turns back; and, crossing the room again, goes towards another door; that opening discloses a large closet beyond, in which many dresses and other articles of feminine attire are hanging, like so many Blue Beard's wives. A little window, lattice-paned, illumines this tiny chamber.

Portia following her, lays her hand upon her arm. She has changed her tone completely, from command to entreaty.

"_Do_ not speak to Fabian of this," she says. "Do not let him think we two have discussed the wretched subject."

"I shall tell him precisely what has happened," says Dulce, unsoftened. "That you think him nothing less than a common _felon_."

"Oh! do not put it into language," says Portia, sharp pain in her voice; she puts up her hands as she speaks, as, though to ward off a blow. "And I implore you, as you _love_ him, to let things rest as they are."

"And so to give you scope to practise your wiles without hindrance," says Dulce, with a short, unlovely laugh. "No, I shall try my very utmost to lower you in his esteem, and so kill his fatal infatuation for you."

"You will fail," says Portia, hopelessly. "You will only succeed in hurting him."

"How sure you are of your power," says Dulce, angrily. "Yet I will not be disheartened. I will save him if I can."

"You are quite determined?"

"Quite."

"You will go now to meet him, _now_ when your anger is hot, and say to him what will surely grieve or wound him?"

"Let us talk sense," says Dulce, impatiently. "I shall simply warn him to have nothing more to do with a woman who looks upon him with scorn and contempt."

As she speaks she enters the closet that is nothing more than a big wardrobe, and, as she does so, Portia, quick as thought follows her, and, closing the door behind her, turns the key in the lock.

"You shall stay there until you promise me to tell nothing of this hour's conversation to Fabian," she says, with determination.

"Then I shall probably stay here forever," replies Dulce from within, with equal determination.

Portia going over to the fire seats herself by it. Dulce going to the latticed window inside seats herself by _it_. An hour goes by. The little clock up over the mantelpiece chimes five. A gun is fired off in the growing dark outside. There is a sound as of many voices in the hall far down below. A laugh that belongs to Dicky Browne floats upwards, and makes itself heard in the curious stillness of the room above where the jailer sits guarding her prisoner.

Then Portia, rising, goes to the door of the condemned cell, and speaks as follows:

"Dulce."

There is no answer.

"Dulce; you are unwise not to answer me."

Still no answer; whereupon Portia, going back to the fire, lets another half hour pass in silence. Then she says, "Dulce!" again, and again receives no reply.

Time flies!--and now at last the dressing bell rings loud and clear through the house, warning the inmates that the best time in the day draws on apace.

"Dulce," says Portia, in despair, rising for the third time. To tell the truth, she is growing a little frightened at the persistent silence, and begins to wonder nervously if Dulce could get smothered in the small room, because of all the clothes that surround her.

"Dulce! _will_ you promise?" she says. And now, to her relief, even though the words that come are unfavorable, Dulce answers.

"Never. Not if I stayed here till Doomsday," says Miss Blount, in uncompromising tones, and quite as unconcernedly as if she was sitting in the room outside instead of having been ignominiously incarcerated for the last two hours. "The very moment you open the door, I shall go down-stairs and tell him everything."

"Then I won't let you out," says Portia, feebly, because she knows that soon dinner will come, and then she _must_ let her out willy-nilly.

"I didn't ask you," says the rebel. "Dress yourself now, I would advise you, and go down to dinner. I hope you will enjoy it. When they make inquiries about my non-appearance, I should think you will have to explain it later on."

"Come out," says Portia, with a sigh of utter weariness; and then she opens the door and the incarcerated one steps forth, and sails past her with the air of a haughty queen, and with an unlowered crest.

Miss Vibart is vanquished. Even to her own soul she confesses so much. Dulce, passing her in dignified silence, goes toward the bedroom that opens off the boudoir, where they have been carrying on this most civil (or rather _un_civil) war, and entering it, closes the door, and fastens it with unmistakable firmness behind her.

Conquered and subdued, and sick at heart, Portia traverses the corridor that divides her room from Dulce's, and prepares with languid interest to make her dinner toilette.


CHAPTER XIX.


"We must live our lives, though the sun be set,
Must meet in the masque, where parts we play,
Must cross in the maze of Life's minuet;
Our yea is yea, and our nay is nay:
But while snows of Winter or flowers of May,
Are the sad years' shroud or coronet,
In the season of rose or of violet,
I shall never forget till my dying day!"
--A. LANG.


DINNER to-night, so far as Dulce and Portia are concerned, is gone through in utter silence. Not a word escapes either. To Portia, even to say yes or no to the butler, is a wearying of the flesh; to Dulce, it is an open annoyance. Their positive determination to enter into no conversation might have been observed sooner or later by somebody, but for Dicky Browne. He talks for everybody, and is, indeed, in such a genial mood, that their unusual silence passes unnoticed.

Fabian, too, for a wonder, has risen above his usual taciturnity and is almost talkative. A change so delightful to Sir Christopher, that he, in his turn, brightens up, and grows more festive than he has been for many a day. In fact, for all but the two girls, the dinner may be counted a distinct success.

Portia, who is dressed in filmy black, is looking white and nervous, and has in her eyes an intense wrapt expression, such as one might have whose nerves are all unstrung, and who is in momentary expectation of something unpleasant, that may or may not happen. Dulce on the contrary is flushed and angry. Her eyes are brilliant, and round her generally soft lips lies a touch of determination foreign to them, and hardly becoming.

Presently dinner comes to an end, and then the three women rise and rustle away toward the drawing-room, where follows a dreary half hour, indeed.

Julia, who is always drowsy after her claret, sinks complacently into the embrace of the cosiest arm-chair she can find, and under pretence of saving her priceless complexion (it really does cost a good deal) from the fire, drops into a gentle slumber behind her fan.

This makes things even harder for Portia and Dulce. I need hardly say they are not on speaking terms--that has explained itself, I hope. Thrown now, therefore, upon their own resources, they look anxiously around for a chance of mitigating the awkwardness of the situation that has thrust itself upon them.

At such trying moments as these how blessed is the society of children. Even crusty old bachelors, educated to the belief that the young and innocent are only one gigantic fraud, have been known on occasions like the present to bestow upon them a careful, not to say artful, attention.

To-night, Portia, Jacky and the Boodie are having it all their own way. "Quite a bully time, don't you know," says Master Jacky, later, to the all-suffering nurse, whose duty it is to look after them and put them to bed. They are talked to and caressed and made much of by both girls, to their excessive surprise; surprise that later on mounts to distrust.

"Why may I have this album to-night when I mightn't _last_ night?" asks the Boodie, shrewdly, her big sapphire eyes bigger than usual. "You scolded me about it last night, and every other time I touched it. And what's the matter with your eyes?" staring up at Portia, who has turned a page in the forbidden album, and is now gazing at a portrait of Fabian that is smiling calmly up at her.

It is a portrait taken in that happy time when all the world was fair to him, and when no "little rift" had come to make mute the music of his life. Portia is gazing at it intently. She has forgotten the child--the book--everything, even the fear of observation, and her eyes are heavy with unshed tears, and her hands are trembling.

Then the child's questioning voice comes to her; across the bridge of past years she has been vainly trying to travel, and perforce she gives up her impossible journey, and returns to the sure but sorry present.

Involuntarily she tightens her hand upon the Boodie's. There is entreaty in her pressure, and the child (children, as a rule, are very sympathetic), after a second stare at her, shorter than the first, understands, in a vague fashion, that silence is implored of her, and makes no further attempts at investigation.

After a little while the men come; all except Fabian. Their entrance is a relief to the girls, whatever it may be to Julia. She rouses herself by a supreme effort to meet the exigencies of the moment, and really succeeds in looking quite as if she has not been in the land of Nod for the past sweet thirty minutes.

"You have broken in upon a really delicious little bit of gossip," she says to Sir Mark, coquettishly; whereupon Sir Mark, as in duty bound, entreats her to retail it again to him.

She doesn't.

"I hope you have been miserable without us," says Dicky Browne, sinking into a chair beside Portia, and lifting the Boodie on to his knee. (It would be impossible to Dicky Browne to see a child anywhere without lifting it on to his knee). "We've been wretched in the dining-room; we thought Sir Christopher would never tip us the wink--I mean," correcting himself with assumed confusion, "give us the word to join you. What are you looking at? An album?"

"Yes; you may look at it, too," says Portia, pushing it