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

proximity to each other at this moment, the allusion to the loss they are supposed to have sustained is not very affecting.

"No. Though we were rather in a hole now," says Mr. Dare, rather at a loss for a word. "I am very _glad_ we fought."

"Oh, Roger!"

"Aren't you?"

"How can you ask me such a heartless question?"

"Don't you see what it has done for us? Has it not taught us that"--very tenderly this--"we _love_ each other?" His tone alone would have brought her round to view anything in his light. "And somehow," he goes on, after a necessary pause--"I mean," with an effort that speaks volumes for his sense of propriety, "Gower will give in, and absolve you from your promise. He may as well, you know, when he sees the game is up."

"But when will he see that?"

"He evidently saw it to-day."

"Well, he was very far from giving in to-day, or even dreaming of granting absolution."

"Well, we must make him see it even _more_ clearly," says Roger, desperately.

"But how?" dejectedly.

"By making violent love to me all day long, and by letting me make it to you. It will wear him out," says Mr. Dare confidently. "He won't be able to stand it. Would--would you much mind trying to make violent love to me?"

"Mind it?" says Dulce, enthusiastically, plainly determined to render herself up a willing (very willing) sacrifice upon the altar of the present necessity. "I should _like_ it!"

This _naive_ speech brings Roger, _if possible_, a little closer to her.

"I think I must have been utterly without intellect in the old days, not to have seen then what a darling you are."

"Oh, no," says Dulce, meekly, which might mean that, in her opinion, either _he_ is not without intellect, or she is not a darling.

"I was abominable to you then," persists Roger, with the deepest self-abasement. "I wonder you can look with patience at me now. I was a perfect bear to you!"

"_Indeed_ you were not," says Dulce, slipping her arm round his neck. "You couldn't have been, because I am sure I loved you even then; and besides," with a little soft, coaxing smile, "I won't listen to you at all if you call my own boy bad names."

Rapture; and a prolonged pause.

"What _shall_ we do if that wretched beggar won't relent and let me marry you?" says Roger, presently.

"Only bear it, I suppose," with profoundest resignation; it is _so_ profound that it strikes Mr. Dare as being philosophical, and displeases him accordingly.

"_You_ don't seem to care much," he says, in an offended tone, getting up and standing with his back to the mantelpiece, and his face turned to her, as though determined to keep an eye on her.

"I don't care?" reproachfully.

"Not to any very great extent, I think; and of course it is not to be wondered at. I'm not much, I allow, and perhaps there are others--"

"Now that is not at all a pretty speech," interrupts Dulce, sweetly; "so you sha'n't finish it. Come here directly and give me a little kiss, and don't be cross."

This decides everything. He comes here directly, and gives her a little kiss, and isn't a bit cross.

"Why shouldn't you defy him and marry me?" says Roger, defiantly. "What right has he to extort such a promise from you? Once we were man and wife he would be powerless."

"But there is my word--I swore to him," returns she, earnestly. "I cannot forget that. It was an understanding, a bargain."

"Well, but," begins he again; and then he sees something in the little, pale, but determined face gazing pathetically up into his that deters him from further argument. She will be quite true to her word once pledged, he knows that; and though the knowledge is bitter to him, yet he respects her so highly for it, that he vows to himself he will no longer strive to tempt her from her sense of right. Lifting one of her hands, he lays it upon his lips, as though to keep himself by her dear touch from further speech.

"Never mind," he says, caressing her soft fingers tenderly. "We may be able to baffle him yet, and even if not, we can be happy together in spite of him. Can we not. I know _I_ can." Drawing her closer to him, he whispers gently,


"A smile of thine shall make my bliss!"


After a while it occurs to them that they ought to return to the drawing-room and the prosaic humdrumedness of everyday life. It is wonderful how paltry everything has become in their sight, how it is dwarfed and stunted by comparison with the great light of love that is surrounding them. All outside this mist seems lost in a dull haze, seems pale, expressionless.

Opening the library-door with slow, reluctant fingers, they almost stumble against a figure crouching near the lintel. This figure starts into nervous life at their appearance, and, muttering something inaudible in a heavy indistinct tone, shuffles away from them, and is lost to sight round a corner of the corridor.

"Surely that was old Gregory," says Dulce, after a surprised pause.

"So it was," returns Roger, "and, _as_ usual, as drunk as a fiddler."

"Isn't it dreadful of him?" says Dulce. "Do you know, Roger, his manner is so strange of late, that I verily believe that man is going mad."

"Well, he won't have far to go, at any rate," says Mr. Dare, cheerfully. "He has been on the road, I should say, a considerable time."


CHAPTER XXVI.


"Let the dead past bury its dead."--LONGFELLOW.


JUST at first it is so delightful to Dulce to have Roger making actual love to her, and so delightful to Roger to be able to make it, that they are content with their present and heedless of their future.

Not that everything goes quite smoothly with them, even now. Little skirmishes, as of old, arise between them, threatening to dim the brightness of their days. It was, indeed, only yesterday that a very serious rupture was near taking place, all occasioned by a difference of opinion about the respective merits of Mr. Morton's and Messrs. Crosse & Blackwell's pickles; Dulce declaring for the former, Roger for the latter.

Fortunately, Mark Gore coming into the room smoothed matters over and drew conversation into a more congenial channel, or lamentable consequences might have ensued.

They hold to their theory about the certainty of Stephen's relenting in due time until they grow tired of it; and as the days creep on, and Gower sitting alone in his castle in sullen silence refuses to see or speak to them, or give any intimation of a desire to soften towards them, they lose heart altogether, and give themselves up a prey to despair.

Roger one morning had plucked up courage, and had gone over to the Fens, and had forced himself into the presence of its master and expostulated with him "mildly but firmly," as he assured Dulce afterwards, when she threw out broad hints to the effect that she believed he had lost his temper on the occasion. Certainly, from all accounts, a good deal of temper _had_ been lost, and nothing indeed came of the interview beyond a select amount of vituperation from both sides, an openly avowed declaration on Mr. Gower's part that as he had not requested the pleasure of his society on this, or any other, occasion, he hoped it would be the last time Roger would present himself at the Fens; an equally honest avowal on the part of Mr. Dare to the effect that the discomfort he felt in coming was _almost_ (it never could be _quite_) balanced by the joy he experienced at departing, and a few more hot words that very nearly led to bloodshed.

When Roger thought it all over dispassionately next morning, he told himself that now indeed all things were at an end, that no hope lay anywhere; and now February is upon them, and Spring begins to assert itself, and the land has learned to smile again, and all the pretty early buds are swelling in the hedgerows.

I wonder they don't get tired of swelling only to die in the long run. What does their perseverance gain for them? There is a little sunshine, a little warmth, the songs of a few birds flung across their trailing beauty, and then one heavy shower, and then--death! What a monotonous thing is nature, when all is told? Each year is but a long day; each life but a long year: at morn we rise, at night we lay our weary heads upon our pillows: at morn we rise again, and so on. As Winter comes our flowers fade and die; Spring brings them back again; again the Winter kills them, and so--forever!

Now Spring has come once more to the old Court, to commence its triumphant reign, regardless of the fact that no matter how bright its day may be while it lasts, still dissolution stares it in the face. The young grass is thrusting its head above ground, a few brave birds are singing on the barren branches. There is a stir, a strange vague flutter everywhere of freshly-opening life.

"We shall have to shake off dull sloth pretty early to-morrow," says Dicky Browne, suddenly, _apropos_ of nothing that has gone before; his usual method of introducing a subject.

"Why?" asks Portia, almost startled. It is nearly five o'clock, and Mr. Browne, having sequestrated the remainder of the cake, the last piece being the occasion of a most undignified skirmish between him and the Boodie, the Boodie proving victor, is now at liberty to enter into light and cheerful conversation.

"The meet, you know," says Dicky. "Long way off. Hate hunting myself, when I've got to leave my bed for it."

"You needn't go," says Dulce; "nobody is pressing you."

"Oh! I'm not like _you_," says Mr. Browne, contemptuously, "liking a thing to-day and hating it to-morrow. You used to be a sort of modern--I mean--decent Diana, but lately you have rather shirked the whole thing."

"I had a cold last day, and--and a headache the day before that," stammers Dulce, blushing scarlet.

"Nobody could hunt with a headache," says Roger, at which defence Mr. Browne grins.

"Well, you've got _them_ over," he says. "What's going to keep you at home to-morrow?"

"I don't understand you, Dicky," says Miss Blount, with dignity. "I am going hunting to-morrow; there is nothing that I know of likely to keep me at home."

She is true to her word. Next morning they find her ready equipped at a very early hour, "Taut and trim," as Dicky tells her, "from her hat to her boots."

"Do you know," he says, further, as though imparting to her some information hitherto undiscovered, "joking _apart_, you will understand, you are--_really_--quite a pretty young woman."

"Thank you, Dicky," says she, very meekly; and as a more substantial mark of her gratitude for this gracious speech, she drops a fourth lump of sugar into his coffee.

Shortly after this they start, Dulce still in the very gayest spirits, with Roger on her right hand and Mark Gore on her left. But, as they near the happy hunting-grounds, her brightness flags; she grows silent and preoccupied, and each fresh hoof upon the road behind her makes her betray a desire to hide herself behind somebody.

Of late,