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

the warm earth, that, like a cruel stepmother, has driven them too early from her breast, have moved slowly onwards until they find themselves beside a fountain that used to be a favorite haunt of theirs long ago.

Dulce, seating herself upon the stone-work that surrounds it, though the water is too chilly to be pleasant, still toys lightly with it with her idle fingers, just tipping it coquettishly now and then, with her eyes bent thoughtfully upon as it sways calmly to and fro beneath the touch of the cold wind that passes over it.

Just now she raises her eyes and fixes them inquiringly on Roger.

"Go on," she says, quietly. "You were surely going to ask me something. Are you afraid of me?"

"A little, I confess."

"You need not." She is still looking at him very earnestly.

"Well, then," says Roger, as though nerving himself for a struggle--"tell me this." He leaves where he is standing and comes closer to her. "Did--did you ever kiss Gower?"

"Never--_never_!" answers Dulce, growing quite pale.

"I have no right to ask it, I know that," says Roger. "But," desperately, "did he ever kiss _you_?"

"Never, indeed."

"Honor bright?"

"Honor bright."

A long silence. Miss Blount's fingers are quite deep in the water now, and I think she does not even feel the cold of it.

"He has been engaged to you for three months and more and never wanted to kiss you!" exclaims Roger at last, in a tone expressive of great amazement and greater contempt.

"I don't think I said quite _that_," returns she, coloring faintly.

"Then"--eagerly--"it was _you_ prevented him!"

"I don't care much about that sort of thing," says Dulce, with a little shrug.

"Don't you? Then I don't believe you care a button about _him_," replies he, with glad conviction.

"That is mere surmise on your part. Different people"--vaguely--"are different. I don't believe if I had any affection for a person that a mere formal act like kissing would increase the feeling."

"Oh, wouldn't it, though!" says Mr. Dare--"that's all you know about it! You just try it, that's all."

"Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind," says Dulce, with much indignation, and some natural disappointment--that _he_ should recommend such a course to her!

"I didn't mean that you should--should--I didn't, in the least, that you should be a bit civiller to Gower, or any one, than you are _now_," says Roger, hastily, greatly shocked at the construction she has put upon his words, and rather puzzled for language in which to explain himself more clearly. At this the cloud disappears from her pretty face, and she bestows a smile upon him that at once restores him to equanimity.

"I can't say I think much of Gower as a lover," he says, after a while, a touch of scorn in his voice. "To be engaged to you for three whole months, and never once to kiss you."

"_You_ were engaged to me for three whole _years_," replies his cousin, quietly, yet with a flash from her deep gray eyes that means much, "and I cannot remember that you ever cared to kiss me _at all_."

This is a home-thrust.

"I don't know what was the matter with me then," he says, making no attempt at denial, though there certainly were one or two occasions he might have referred to; "I don't believe"--in a low tone--"I ever knew I was fond of you until--until I lost you."

"Oh, you must not talk to me like this!" entreats she, the tears coming into her eyes and trembling on her long lashes.

"I suppose not. But this new-found knowledge is hard to suppress; why _did_ I not discover it all sooner?"

"Better late than never," says Dulce, with a poor attempt at lightness and a rather artificial little laugh, meant to conceal the sorrow that is consuming her. "I think you ought to feel gladness in the thought that you know it at last. Knowledge is power, isn't it?"

"I can feel only sorrow," says Roger, very sadly. "And I have no power."

Dulce's wretched fingers are getting absolutely benumbed in the cold water, yet she seems to feel nothing. Roger, however, stooping over her, lifts the silly little hand and dries it very tenderly, and holds it fast between both his own; doubtless only with the intention of restoring some heat to it. It is quite amazing the length of time it takes to do this.

"Dulce!"

"Well?" She has not looked at him even once during the last five minutes.

"If you are unhappy in your present engagement--and I think you are--why not break with Gower? I spoke to you of this yesterday, and I say the same thing to-day. You are doing both him and yourself an injustice in letting it go on any longer."

"I don't know what to say to him."

"Then get some one else to say it. Fabian, or Uncle Christopher."

"Oh, _no_!" says Dulce, with a true sense of delicacy. "If it is to be done at all I shall do it myself."

"Then do it. Promise me if you get the opportunity you will say something to him about it."

"I promise," says Dulce, very faintly. Then she withdraws the hand from his, and without another word, not even a hint at what the gaining of her freedom may mean to either--or rather both--of them, they go slowly back to the garden, where they meet all the others sitting in a group upon a huge circular rustic seat beneath a branching evergreen; all, that is, except Fabian, who of late has become more and more solitary in his habits.

As Stephen has not put in an appearance at the Court now for fully two days, speculation is rife as to what has become of him.

"It is the oddest thing I ever knew," Julia is saying, as the cousins come up to the rustic-seat.

"What is it?" asks Roger, idly.

"Stephen's defection. He used to be as true as the morning post, and now--I hope he hasn't made away with himself," says Dicky Browne.

"He has had since this time yesterday to do it," says Sir Mark. "I wonder if it takes long to cut one's throat."

"It entirely depends on whether you have sharpened your razor sufficiently, and if you know _how_ to sharpen it. I should think a fellow devoid of hirsute adornment would take a good while to it," returns Mr. Browne, with all the air of one who knows. "He wouldn't be up to it, you know. But our late lamented Stephen was all right. He shaved regular."

"He was at the lake yesterday," says Portia. "He came up to us from the southern end of it."

At this both Dulce and Roger start, and the former changes color visibly.

"I really wonder _where_ he can be," says Julia.

"So do I," murmurs Dulce, faintly, but distinctly, feeling she is in duty bound to say something. "Stephen never used to miss a day."

"Here I am, if you want me," says Stephen, coming leisurely up to them from between the laurels. "I thought I heard somebody mention my name."

He is looking pale and haggard, and altogether unlike the languid, unemotional Stephen of a month ago. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his mouth looks strangely compressed, and full of an unpleasant amount of determination.

"I mentioned it," says Dulce. She is compelled to say this, because he has fixed his eyes upon her, and plainly everybody expects her to reply to him.

"Did you want me?" asks he, casting a scrutinizing glance upon her. So absorbed is he in his contemplation of her that he has positively forgotten the fact that he has omitted to bid any one a "fair good-morrow."

"I was certainly wondering where you were," says Dulce, evasively. She is frightened and subdued--she scarcely knows why. There is something peculiar in his manner that overawes her.

"It was very good of you to remember my existence. Then you were only wondering at my absence. You did not want me?"

Dulce makes no reply. She would have given anything to be able to make some civil, commonplace rejoinder, but at this moment her wits cruelly desert her.

"I see. Never mind," says Stephen. "Well, even if you don't want me, I do want _you_--you will come with me as far as the Beeches?"

His tone is more a command than a question. Hearing it, Roger moves involuntarily a step forward, that brings him nearer to Dulce. He even puts out his hand as though to lay it upon her arm, when Stephen, by a gesture, checks him.

"Don't be alarmed," he says, with a low, sneering laugh, every vestige of color gone from his face. "I shall do her no harm. I shan't murder her, I give you my word. Be comforted, she will be quite as safe with me as she would even be with--_you_." He laughs again, dismisses Roger from his thoughts by an indescribable motion of his hand, and once more concentrates his attention upon the girl near him, who, with lowered eyes and a pale, distressed face, is waiting unwillingly for what he may say next.

All this is so unusual, and really, every one is so full of wonder at Stephen's extraordinary conduct, that up to this none of the spectators have said one word. At this juncture, however, Sir Mark clears his throat as if to say something, and, coming forward, would probably have tried the effect of a conciliatory speech, but that Stephen, turning abruptly away from them, takes Dulce's hand in his, and leads her in silence and with a brow dark as Erebus, up the gravelled path, and past the chilly fountain, and thus out of sight.

It is as though some terrible ogre from out of a fairy tale had descended upon them and plucked their fairest damsel from their midst, to incarcerate her in a 'donjon keep' and probably eat her by and by, when she is considered fit to kill.

"Do--_do_ you think he has gone mad?" asked Julia, with clasped hands and tearful eyes.

"My dear Mark, I think something ought to be done,--some one ought to go after her," says Portia, nervously. "He really looked quite dreadful."

"I'll go," says Roger, angrily.

"No, you won't," says Sir Mark, catching hold of him. "Let them have it out,--it is far the best thing. And if she gets a regular, right-down, uncommonly good scolding, as I hope she will"--viciously,--"I can only say she richly deserves it."

"I can only say I don't know whether I am standing on my head or on my heels," says Mr. Browne, drawing a long breath; "I feel cheap. Any one might have me now for little or nothing--quite a bargain."

"I don't think you'd be a bargain at any price," says Sir Mark; but this touching tribute to his inestimable qualities is passed over by Mr. Browne in a silence that is almost sublime.

"To think Stephen could look like that!" he goes on, as evenly as if Sir Mark had never spoken. "Why, Irving is a fool to him. Tragedy is plainly his _forte_. Really, one never knows of what these aesthetic-looking people are capable. He looked murderous."

At this awful word the children--who have been silent and most attentive spectators of the late scene, and who have been enchanted with it--turn quite pale, and whisper together in a subdued fashion. When