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

A gleam of something like comfort comes into his eyes as he says this.

"What _did_ you do?" demands Dicky Browne, in an agony of hope and doubt. "Can't you say it at once and be done with it? Speak out, man--_do_!"

"Curse me! _Kill_ me if you will!" cries Slyme, with sudden vehemence, stretching out his hands to Fabian, and still deaf to any voice but his. "You have been deceived, falsely accused, most treacherously dealt with. It was I forged that check--not you!"

The miserable man, as he makes this confession, falls upon his knees and covers his face with his hands.

A terrible cry bursts from Dulce; she springs to her feet, and would have rushed to Fabian but that Roger, catching her in his arms, prevents her. And indeed, it is no time to approach Fabian. He has wakened at last into life out of his curious calm, and the transition from his extreme quietude of a moment since to the state of ungovernable passion in which he now finds himself is as swift as it is dangerous.

"_You!_" he says, staring at the abject figure kneeling before him, in a tone so low as to be almost inaudible, yet with such an amount of condensed fury in it as terrifies the listeners. "_You!_" He makes a step forward as though he would verily fall upon his enemy and rend him in pieces, and so annihilate him from the face of the earth; but before he can touch him, a slight body throws itself between him and Slyme, and two small, white hands are laid upon his breast. These little hands, small and powerless as they are, yet have strength to force him backwards.

"Think," says Portia, in a painful whisper. "Think! Fabian, you would not harm that old man."

"My dear fellow, don't touch him," says Dicky Browne. "Don't. In your present frame of mind a gentle push of yours would be his death."

"Death!" says old Slyme, in such a strange voice that instinctively they all listen to him. "It has no terrors for me." He has raised his head from his hands, and is now gazing again at Fabian, as though fascinated, making a wretched and withal a piteous picture, as his thin white locks stream behind him. "What have I to live for?" he cries, miserably. "The boy I slaved for, sinned for, for whom I ruined you and my own soul, is dead, cold in his grave. Have pity on me, therefore, and send me where I may rejoin him."

Either the excitement of his confession, or the nervous dread of the result of it, has proved too much for him; because just as the last word passes his lips, he flings his arms wildly into the air, and, with a muffled cry, falls prone, a senseless mass, upon the ground.

When they lift him, they find clutched in his hand a written statement of all he has confessed so vaguely. They are very gentle in their treatment of him, but when he has recovered consciousness and has been carried by the servants to his own room, it must be acknowledged that they all breathe more freely.

Sir Christopher is crying like a child, and so is Dicky Browne. The tears are literally running in little rivulets all down Dicky's plump cheeks, but he is not in the least ashamed of them--as indeed, why should he be? As in between his sobs he insists on telling everybody he is so glad--so awfully glad, his apparent grief, had they been in the mood for it, would have struck them all as being extremely comic.

The effect of their tears upon the women has the most desirable result. It first surprises, and then soothes them inexpressibly. It leaves indeed a new field entirely open to them. Instead of being petted, they can pet.

Julia instantly undertakes Dicky, who doesn't quite like it; Dulce appropriates Sir Christopher, who likes it very much.

Fabian, now that his one burst of passion is at an end, is again strangely silent. Mark Gore, laying his hand upon his shoulder, says something to him in a low tone unheard by the rest, who are all talking together and so making a solitude for these two.

"It is too late," says Fabian, replying to him slowly; "too late." There is more of settled conviction than of bitterness in his tone, which only renders it the more melancholy. "He was right. He has ruined my life. Were I to live twice the allotted time given to man, I should never forget these last five horrible years. They have killed me; that is, the best of me. I tell you, deliverance has come _too late_!"

Even as his voice dies away another rises.

"Do not say that--_anything_ but that," entreats Portia, in deep agitation. Once more this evening she lays her small, jeweled hand upon his breast and looks into his eyes. "Fabian, there is renewed hope, a fresh life before you; take courage. Remember--Oh, Mark, _speak_ to him!"

She is trembling violently, and her breath is coming with suspicious difficulty. Her lips are quivering, and pain, actual physical pain, dimming the lustre of her violet eyes. The old ache is tugging angrily at her heart strings now.

Still Fabian does not relent. As yet the very salve that has cured his hurt has only made the hurt more unendurable by dragging it into public notice. Now that he is free, emancipated from the shadow of this crime that has encompassed him as a cloud for so long, its proportions seem to grow and increase until they reach a monstrous size. To have been wounded in the body, or deprived of all one's earthly goods at a stroke, or bereaved of one's nearest and dearest, would all have been sore trials no doubt. But, alas! to make him a fixed figure for scorn to point his slow, unmoving finger at. What agony, with misfortune, could cope with that?

And she, who had not trusted him when she _might_, will he care that she should trust him now when she _must_?

Slowly he lifts the pale, slender hand, and very gently lets it fall by her side. His meaning is not to be misunderstood; he will none of her. Henceforth their paths shall lie as widely apart as they have lain (of _her own_ choice) for the past few months.

"I repeat it," he says, quietly, letting his eyes rest for a moment upon hers, "it is _too late_!"

And outside the wild winds, flying past with an even fiercer outbreak of wrath, seem to echo those fatal words, "Too late!" The very rain, being full of them, seeks to dash them against the window panes. A sudden roar of thunder resounding overhead comes as a fit adjunct to the despair embodied in them. All nature is awake, and the air seems full of its death-knells.

Portia, sick at heart, moves silently away.


CHAPTER XXVIII.


"If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."
--_Julius Caesar._

"Eyes, look your last;
Arms, take your last embrace!"
--_Romeo and Juliet._


THE night closes in, the rain has ceased, or only now and then declares itself in fitful bursts, but still the wind rages and the storm beats upon land and sea, as though half its fury is not yet expended. The clouds are scudding hurriedly toward the West, and now and then, as they separate, one catches a glimpse of a pale, dying moon trying to shine in the dark vaults above, her sickly gleam only rendering more terrible the aspect of the land below.

Still the lightning comes and goes, and the thunder kills the sacred calm of night; Dulce and Julia, standing in the window, gaze fearfully towards the angry heavens, and speak to each other in whispers. Portia, who is sitting in an arm-chair, with her colorless face uplifted and her head thrown back, is quite silent, waiting with a kind of morbid longing for each returning flash. The very children are subdued, and, lying in a pretty group upon the hearth-rug, forget to laugh or play, or do anything save cry aloud, "Ah! wasn't _that_ a big one?" when the lightning comes, or, "That was the loudest one yet," when the deafening thunder rolls.

The men are standing in another window, talking in low tones of Fabian's exculpation, when Fabian himself comes in, eagerly, excitedly, and so unlike the Fabian of old that Portia gazes at him in silent wonder.

"There's a ship in sore trouble down there," he says, pointing as though he can see the sea down below, where now the angry surf is rolling in, mountains high, hoarsely roaring as it comes. "Brown from the coast-guard station has just run up to tell us of it. They are about to man the life-boat; who will come down to the beach with me?"

They have all come forward by this time, and now the men, going eagerly to seize on any coats and hats nearest to them, make themselves ready to go down and render any assistance that may be required of them. The station is but a little one, the coast-guards few, and of late a sort of intermittent fever has laid many of the fishermen low, so that their help may, for all they yet can know, be sorely needed.

Fabian, who has been delayed in many ways, is almost the last to leave the house. Hurrying now to the doorway, he is stopped by a slight figure, that coming up to him in the gloom of the night, that rushes in upon him from the opened hall-door, seems like some spirit of the storm.

It is Portia. Her face is very white, her lips are trembling, but her eyes are full of a strange, feverish fire.

"May I go, too? Do not prevent me," she says, in an agitated tone, laying her hand upon his arm. "I _must_ go, I cannot stay here alone; thinking, thinking."

"You!" interrupts he; "and on such a night as this! Certainly not. Go back to the drawing-room at once." Involuntarily he puts out his hand across the doorway, as though to bar her egress. Then suddenly recollection forces itself upon him, he drops his extended arm, and coldly averts his eyes from hers.

"I beg your pardon," he says; "Why should I dictate to you? You will do as you please, of course; by what right do I advise or forbid you?"

Oppressed by the harshness of his manner and his determined coldness, that amounts almost to dislike, Portia makes no reply. When first he spoke, his words, though unloving, had still been full of a rough regard for her well-being, but his sudden change to the indifferent tone of an utter stranger had struck cold upon her heart. Cast down and disheartened, she now shrinks a little to one side, and by a faint gesture of the hand motions him to the open door.

As though unconscious, or cruelly careless of the wound he has inflicted, Fabian turns away from her and goes out into the sullen, stormy night, and, reaching the side-path that leads direct through the wood to the shore, is soon lost to sight.

Upon the beach dark forms are hurrying to and fro. Now and