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

the whispering has reached a certain point, the Boodie gives Jacky an encouraging push, whereupon that young hero darts away from her side like an arrow from a bow, and disappears swiftly round the corner.

Meanwhile, having arrived at the Beeches, a rather remote part of the ground, beautiful in Summer because of the luxuriant foliage of the trees, but now bleak and bare beneath the rough touch of Winter, Stephen stops short and faces his companion steadily. His glance is stern and unforgiving; his whole bearing relentless and forbidding.

To say Miss Blount is feeling nervous would be saying very little. She is looking crushed in anticipation by the weight of the thunderbolt she _knows_ is about to fall. Presently it descends, and once down, she acknowledges to herself it was only a shock after all, worse in the fancy than in the reality; as are most of our daily fears.

"So you wish our engagement at an end?" says Stephen, quite calmly, in a tone that might almost be termed mechanical.

He waits remorselessly for an answer.

"I--you--I didn't tell you so," stammers Dulce.

"No prevarications, please. There has been quite enough deception of late." Dulce looks at him curiously. "Let us adhere to the plain truth now at least. This is how the case stands. You never loved me; and now your cousin has returned you find you do love him; that all your former professions of hatred toward him were just so much air--or, let us say, so much wounded vanity. You would be released from me. You would gladly forget I ever played even a small part in the drama of your life. Is not all this true?"

For the second time this afternoon speech deserts Dulce. She grows very white, but answer she has none.

"I understand your silence to mean yes," goes on Stephen, in the same monotonous tone he had just used, out of which every particle of feeling has been absolutely banished. "It would, let me say, have saved you much discomfort, and your cousin some useless traveling, if you had discovered your passion for him sooner." At this Dulce draws her breath quickly, and throws up her head with a haughty gesture. Very few women like being _told_ they entertain a passion for a man, no matter how devotedly they adore him.

Mr. Gower, taking no notice of her silent protest, goes on slowly.

"What your weakness and foolish pride have cost _me_," he says, "goes for nothing."

There is something in his face now that makes Dulce sorry for him. It is a want of hope. His eyes, too, look sunk and wearied as if from continued want of sleep.

"If by my reprehensible pride and weakness, of which you justly accuse me, I have caused you pain--" she begins tremulously, but he stops her at once.

"That will do," he says, coldly. "Your nature is incapable of comprehending all you have done. We will not discuss that subject. I have not brought you here to talk of myself, but of you. Let us confine ourselves to the business that has brought me to-day--for the last time, I hope--to the Court."

His tone, which is extremely masterful, rouses Dulce to anger.

"There is one thing I _will_ say," she exclaims, lifting her eyes fairly to his. "But for _you_ and your false sympathy, and your carefully chosen and most insidious words that fanned the flame of my unjust wrath against him, Roger and I would never have been separated."

"You can believe what you like about that," says Gower, indifferently, unmoved by her vehement outburst. "Believe anything that will make your conduct look more creditable to you, anything that will make you more comfortable in your mind--if you _can_. But as I have no wish to detain you here longer than is strictly necessary, and as I am sure you have no wish to be detained, let us not waste time in recriminations, but come at once to the point."

"What point? I do not understand you," says Dulce, coldly.

"Yesterday, when passing by the southern end of the lake, hidden by some shrubs, I came upon you and your cousin unawares, and heard you distinctly tell him (what I must be, indeed, a dullard, not to have known before) that you did not love me. This was the substance of what you said, but your tone conveyed far more. It led me to believe you held me in positive detestation."

"Oh! You were eavesdropping," says Dulce, indignantly.

Stephen smiles contemptuously.

"No, I was not," he says, calmly. He takes great comfort to his soul in the remembrance that he might have heard much more that was not intended for his ears had he stayed in his place of concealment yesterday, which he had not. "Accident brought me to that part of the lake, and brought, too, your words to my ears. When I heard them I remembered many trivial things, that at the moment of their occurrence had seemed as naught. But now my eyes are opened. I am no longer blind. I have brought you here to tell you I will give you back your promise to marry me, your _freedom_"--with a sudden bitterness, as suddenly suppressed--"on _one_ condition."

"And that?" breathlessly.

"Is, that you will never marry Roger without my consent."

The chance of regaining her liberty is so sweet to Dulce at this first moment that it chases from her all other considerations. Oh, to be free again! In vain she strives to hide her gladness. It will _not_ be hidden. Her eyes gleam; her lips get back their color; there is such an abandonment of joy and exultation in her face that the man at her side--the man who is now resigning all that makes life sweet to him--feels his heart grow mad with bitter hatred of her, himself, and all the world as he watches her with miserable eyes. And he--poor fool!--had once hoped he might win the priceless treasure of this girl's love! No words could convey the contempt and scorn with which he regards himself.

"Do not try to restrain your relief," he says, in a hoarse, unnatural tone, seeing she has turned her head a little aside, as though to avoid his searching gaze. "You know the condition I impose--you are prepared to abide by it?"

Dulce hesitates. "Later on he will forget all this, and give his consent to my marrying--any one," she thinks, hurriedly, in spite of the other voice within her, that bids her beware. Then out loud she says, quietly:

"Yes."

Even if he _should_ prove unrelenting, she tells herself, it will be better to be an old maid than an unloving wife. She will be rid of this hateful entanglement that has been embittering her life for months, and--and, of course, he _won't_ keep her to this absurd arrangement after a while.

"You swear it?"

"I swear it," says Dulce, answering as one might in a dream. Hers is a dream, happy to recklessness, in which she is fast losing herself.

"It is an oath," he says again, as if to give her a last chance to escape.

"It is," replies she, softly, still wrapt in her dream of freedom. She may now love Roger without any shadow coming between them, and--ah! how divine a world it is!--he may perhaps love her too!

"Remember," says Gower, sternly, letting each word drop from him as if with the settled intention of imprinting or burning them upon her brain, "I shall never relent about this. You have given me your solemn oath, and--I shall _keep you to it_! I shall never absolve you from it, as I have absolved you from your first promise to-day. Never. Do not hope for that. Should you live to be a hundred years old, you cannot marry your cousin without my consent, and that I shall never give. You quite understand?"

"Quite." But her tone has grown faint and uncertain. What has she done? Something in his words, his manner, has at last awakened her from the happy dream in which she was reveling.

"Now you can return to your old lover," says Stephen, with an indescribably bitter laugh, "and be happy. For your deeper satisfaction, too, let me tell you that for the future you shall see very little of me."

"You are going abroad?" asks she, very timidly, in her heart devoutly hoping that this may be the reading of his last words.

"No; I shall stay here. But the Court I shall trouble with my presence seldom. I don't know," exclaims he, for the first time losing his wonderful self control and speaking querulously, "what is the matter with me. Energy has deserted me with all the rest. You have broken my heart, I suppose, and that explains everything. There, _go_," turning abruptly away from her; "your being where I can see you only makes matters worse."

Some impulse prompts Dulce to go up to him and lay her hand gently on his arm.

"Stephen," she says, in a low tone, "if I have caused you any unhappiness forgive me now."

"Forgive you?" exclaims he, so fiercely that she recoils from him in absolute terror.

Lifting her fingers from his arm as though they burn him, he flings them passionately away, and, plunging into the short thick underwood, is soon lost to sight.

Dulce, pale and frightened, returns by the path by which she had come, but not to those she had left. She is in no humor now for questions or curious looks; gaining the house without encountering any one, she runs up-stairs, and seeks refuge in her own room.

But if she doesn't return to gratify the curiosity of the puzzled group on the rustic-seat, somebody else does.

Jacky, panting, dishevelled, out of breath with quick running rushes up to them, and precipitates himself upon his mother.

"It's all right," he cries, triumphantly. "He didn't do a bit to her. I watched him all the time and he never _touched_ her."

"Who? What?" demands the bewildered Julia. But Jacky disdains explanations.

"He only talked, and talked, and talked," he goes on, fluently; "and he said she did awful things to him. And he made her swear at him--and--and--"

"_What?_" says Sir Mark.

"It's impossible to know anybody," sighs Dicky Browne, regretfully, shaking his head at this fresh instance of the frailty of humanity. "Who could have believed Dulce capable of using bad language? I hope her school-children and her Sunday class won't hear it, poor little things. It would shake their faith forever."

"How do you know he is talking of Dulce?" says Julia, impatiently. "Jacky, how _dare_ you say dear Dulce swore at any one?"

"He _made_ her," says Jacky.

"He must have behaved awfully bad to her," says Dicky, gravely.

"He said to her to swear, and she did it at once," continues Jacky, still greatly excited.

"_Con amore_," puts in Mr. Browne.

"And he scolded her very badly," goes on Jacky, at which Roger frowns angrily; "and he said she broke something belonging to him, but I couldn't hear what; and then he told her to go away, and when she was going she touched his arm, and he pushed her away awfully roughly, but he didn't try to _murder_ her at all."

"What on earth is the boy saying?" says Julia, perplexed in the extreme, "Who didn't try to murder who?"

"I'm telling you about Dulce and Stephen," says Jacky, in an aggrieved tone, though still ready to burst with importance. "When he took her