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

to credit her senses.

"Really nothing."

"Then what did you go to London for last week?" demands the irate Boodie, with rising and totally unsuppressed indignation.

This question fills Mr. Browne with much secret amusement.

"There have been rare occasions," he says, mildly, "on which I have gone to town to do a few other things besides purchasing gifts for you."

"I never heard anything so mean," says the Boodie, alluding to his unprofitable visit to the metropolis, "I wouldn't"--with the finest, the most withering disgust--"have believed it of you! And let me tell you this, Dicky Browne, I'll take very good care I don't give you the present I have been keeping for you for a whole week; and by-and-bye, when you hear what it is, you will be sorrier than ever you were in your life."

This awful speech she delivers with the greatest gusto. Mr. Browne, without a moment's hesitation, flings himself upon his knees before her in an attitude suggestive of the direst despair.

"Oh, _don't_ do me out of my Christmas-box," he entreats, tearfully; "I know what your gifts are like, and I would not miss one for any earthly consideration. My lovely Boodie! reconsider your words. I _will_ give you a present to-morrow" (already the biggest doll in Christendom is in her nurse's possession, with strict injunctions to let her have it, with his love and a kiss, the first thing in the morning); "I'll do _anything_, if you will only bestow upon me the priceless treasure at which you have darkly hinted."

"Well, we'll see," returns the Boodie, in a reserved tone; after which Mr. Browne once more returns to his seat and his senses.

But, unfortunately, the Boodie has not yet quite finished all she has to say. Rolling her little, lithe body over until she rests upon her back, and letting her arms fall behind her sunny head in one of her graceful, kittenish ways, she says, pathetically:

"Oh, how I wish Roger was here! He always was good to us, wasn't he, Pussy?" to her sister, who is striving hard to ruin her sight by stringing glass beads in the flickering firelight. "I wonder where he is now!"

As Roger Dare's name has been tabooed amongst them of late, this direct and open allusion to him falls like a thunderbolt in their midst.

Nobody says anything. Nobody does anything. Only in one dark corner, where the light does not penetrate, one white hand closes nervously upon another, and the owner of both draws her breath hurriedly.

Dicky Browne is the first to recover himself. He comes to the rescue with the most praiseworthy nonchalance.

"Didn't you hear about him?" he asks the Boodie, in a tone replete with melancholy. "He traveled too far, his hankering after savages was as extraordinary as it was dangerous; in _his_ case it has been fatal. One lovely morning, when the sun was shining, and all the world was alight with smiles, they caught him. It was breakfast hour, and they were hungry; therefore they ate him (it is their playful habit), nicely fried in tomato sauce."

At this doleful tale, Jacky, who is lying about in some other corner, explodes merrily, Pussy following suit; but the Boodie, who is plainly annoyed at this frivolous allusion to her favorite, maintains her gravity and her dignity at the same time.

"Nobody would eat Roger," she says.

"Why not? Like 'the boy, Billie,' he is still 'young and tender.'"

"Nobody would be unkind to Roger," persists the Boodie, unmoved. "And besides, when he was going away he told me he would be back on New Year's Day, and Roger never told a lie."

"'He will return, I know him well,'" quotes Mr. Browne.

This quotation is thrown away upon the Boodie.

"Yes, he will," she says, in all good faith. "He will be here, I _know_, to-morrow week. I am going to keep the present I have for him, until then. I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it any longer," says the Boodie, regretfully, "because--"

She hesitates.

"Because it wouldn't let you. I know what it is, it is chocolate creams," says Dicky Browne, making this unlucky speech triumphantly.

It is too much! The bare mention of these sweetmeats, fraught as they are to her with bitterest memories, awake a long slumbering grief within Dulce's breast. Fretted by her interview with Stephen; sore at heart because of the child's persistent allusion to her absent cousin, this last stab, this mention of the curious cause of their parting, quite overcomes her.

Putting up her hands to her face, she rises precipitately to her feet, and then, unable to control herself, bursts into tears.

"Dulce! what is it?" exclaims Portia, going quickly to her, and encircling her with her arms. Stephen, too, makes a step forward, and then stops abruptly.

"It is nothing--nothing," sobs Dulce, struggling with her emotion; and then, finding the conflict vain, and that grief has fairly conquered her, she lays down her arms, and clinging to Portia, whispers audibly, with all the unreasoning sorrow of a tired child, "_I want Roger_."

Even as she makes it, the enormity of her confession comes home to her, and terrifies her. Without daring to cast a glance at Stephen, who is standing rigid and white as death against the mantelpiece, she slips out of Portia's arms and escapes from the room.

Another awkward pause ensues. Decidedly this Christmas Eve is not a successful one. To tell the truth, everyone is very much frightened, and is wondering secretly how Stephen will take it. When the silence has become positively unbearable, Sir Mark rises to the situation.

"That is just like Dulce," he says--and really the amount of feigned amusement he throws into his tone is worthy of all admiration; though to be quite honest I must confess it imposes upon nobody--"when she is out of spirits she invariably asks for somebody on whom she is in the habit of venting her spleen. Poor Roger! he is well out of it to-night, I think. We have all noticed, have we not," turning, with abject entreaty in his eyes, to every one in the room except Stephen, "that Dulce has been very much depressed during the last hour?"

"Yes, we have all noticed that," says Portia, hurriedly, coming nobly to his assistance.

Dicky Browne, stooping towards her, whispers, softly:


"Quoth Hudibras--'It is in vain,
I see, to argue 'gainst the grain!'"


"I don't understand," says Portia; just because she doesn't want to.

"Don't you?--well, you ought. Can't you see that, in spite of her determination to hate Roger, she loves him a thousand times better than that fellow over there?--and I'm very glad of it," winds up Dicky, viciously, who has always sorely missed Roger, and, though when with him quarrelled from dawn to dewy eve, he still looks upon him as the one friend in the world to whom his soul cleaveth.

"Yes, I, too, have noticed her curious silence. Who could have vexed her! Was it you, Stephen?" asks Julia, who is as clever as Dicky at always saying the wrong thing.

"Not that I am aware of," replies Gower, haughtily. Calling to mind his late conversation with his betrothed, he naturally looks upon himself as the aggrieved party. All she had said then, her coldness, her petulance--worse than all, her indifference--are still fresh with him, and rankles within his breast. Coming a little more into the ruddy light of the fire, he says, slowly, addressing Portia,

"As--as Miss Blount seems rather upset about something, I think I shall not stay to dinner to-night. Will you excuse me to her?"

"Oh, do stay!" says Portia, uncertain how to act. She says this, too, in spite of a pronounced prod from Dicky Browne, who is plainly desirous of increasing the rupture between Stephen and Dulce. May not such a rupture reinstate Roger upon his former throne? Oddly enough, Dicky, who has no more perspicacity than an owl, has arranged within himself that Roger would be as glad to renew his old relations with Dulce as she would be to renew hers with him.

"There are other things that will take me home to-night, irrespective of Dulce," says Stephen, smiling upon Portia, and telling his lie valiantly. "Good night, Miss Vibart."

And then he bids adieu to the others, quite composedly, though his brain is on fire with jealousy, not even omitting the children. Sir Mark and Dicky, feeling some vague compassion for him, go with him to the hall door, and there, having bidden him a hearty farewell, send him on his way.

"I give you my word," says Dicky Browne, confidentially detaining Sir Mark, forcibly, "we haven't had a happy day since she engaged herself to Gower; I mean since Roger's departure. Look here, Gore, it is my opinion she doesn't care _that_ for him," with an emphatic and very eloquent snap of his fingers.

"For once in my life, Dicky, I entirely agree with you," says Sir Mark, gloomily.


CHAPTER XXII.


"Sir, You are very welcome to our house:
It must appear in other ways than words,
Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy."
--SHAKESPEARE.


FROM Christmas Day to New Year's Day we all know is but a week--but _what_ a week it is! For my part I think this season of supposed jollity the most uncomfortable and forlorn of any in the year. During all these seven interminable days the Boodie still clings to her belief in Roger, and vows he will surely return before the first day of '82 shall have come to an end. It is very nearly at an end now; the shadows have fallen long ago; the night wind has arisen; the snow that all day long has been falling slowly and steadily, still falls, as if quite determined never again to leave off.

They are all sitting in the library, it being considered a snugger room on such a dreary evening that the grander drawing-room. Stephen Gower, who has just come in, is standing by the centre-table with his back to it, and is telling them some little morsel of scandal about a near neighbor. It is a bare crumb, yet it is received with avidity and gratitude, and much laughter, so devoid of interest have been all the other hours of the day.

Nobody quite understands how it now is with Dulce and Stephen. That they have patched up their late quarrel is apparent to everybody, and as far as an ordinary eye can see, they are on as good terms with each other as usual.

Just now she is laughing even more merrily than the rest at his little story, when the door opens, and Sir Christopher and Fabian enter together.

Sir Christopher is plainly very angry, and is declaring in an extremely audible voice that "he will submit to it no longer;" he furthermore announces that he has "seen too much of it," whatever "_it_" may be, and that for the future he "will turn over a very different leaf." I wonder how many times in the year this latter declaration is made by everybody?

Fabian, who is utterly unmoved by his vehemence, laying his hand upon his uncle's shoulder, leads him up to the fireplace and into the huge arm-chair, that is his perpetual abiding-place.

"What is