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

/> It is but a little half-hour afterwards when they bring him back again, and lay him gently and in silence upon the wet sand--cold and dead! Some spar had struck him, they hardly know what, and had left him as they brought him home.

Many voices are uplifted at this sad return, but all grow hushed and quiet as a girl with bare head presses her way resolutely through the crowd, and, moving aside those who would mercifully have delayed her, having reached her dead, sits down upon the sand beside him, and, lifting his head in her arms, dank and dripping with sea-foam, lays it tenderly upon her knees. Stooping over it, she presses it lovingly against her breast, and with tender fingers smooths back from the pale forehead the short, wet masses of his dark hair. She is quite calm, her fingers do not even tremble, but there is a strange, strange look in her great eyes.

_His_ eyes are closed. No ugly stain of blood mars the beauty of his face. He lies calm and placid in her embrace, as though wrapt in softest slumber--but oh! how irresponsive to the touch that once would have thrilled his every sense with rapture!

There is something so awful in the muteness of her despair, that a curious hush falls upon those grouped around her--and him. The whole scene is so fraught with a weird horror, that when one woman in the background bursts into bitter weeping, she is pushed out of sight, as though emotion of a demonstrative nature is out of place just here. Noisy grief can have no part in this hopeless sorrow.

Dicky Browne, bending over her (Roger has taken Dulce home), says:

"Oh, Portia! that it should end like this, and just now--_now_, when life had opened out afresh for him!" His voice is choked and almost inaudible. Now that he is gone, they all know how dear he has been to them, how interwoven with theirs has been his quiet melancholy life.

"I knew it," says Portia, not quickly, but yet with some faint, soft vehemence. "I am not surprised, I am not grieved." She whispers something else after this repeatedly, and Dicky, bending lower, hears the words, "And soon--and soon." She repeats them in an ecstatic undertone; there is joy and an odd _certainty_ in it. They are the last words she ever spoke to _him_.

"He is very cold," she says then, with a little shiver.

Sir Mark, seeing the tears are running down Dicky's cheeks and that he is incapable of saying anything further, pushes him gently to one side, and murmurs something in Portia's ear. She seems quite willing to do anything they may desire.

"Yes, yes. He must come home. It will be better. I will come home with him." And then with a long-drawn sigh, "Poor Uncle Christopher!" This is the last time her thoughts ever wander away from her dead love. "It will be well to take him away from the cruel sea," she says, lifting her eyes to the rough but kindly faces of the boatmen who surround her. "But," piteously, "oh! do not _hurt_ him!"

"Never fear, missy," says one old sailor, in a broken voice; and a young fellow, turning aside, whispers to a comrade that he was "her man" in tones of heartfelt pity.

Still keeping his head within her arms, she rises slowly to her knees, and then the men, careful to humor her, so lift the body that she--even when she has gained her feet--has still this dear burden in her keeping. At the very last, when they have laid him upon the rude bier they have constructed for him in a hurry, she still hesitates, and regards with anguish the hard spot where she must lay her burden down.

She gazes distressfully around her, and then plucks with a little mournful, helpless fashion at a dainty, fleecy thing that lies close to her throat, and is her only covering from the angry blast. One of the women divining her purpose, presses forward, and, in silence, folds her own woollen shawl and lays it on the bier, and then unfastening the white Shetland fabric round Portia's neck, lays that upon her own offering, so that the dead man's cheek will rest on it. Her womanly soul has grasped the truth, that the girl wants his resting-place to be made softer by some gift of hers; and when her task is completed, and the men, gathering up their load, silently prepare to move with it towards the old Court, Portia turns upon this woman a smile so sweet, so full of gratitude, that she breaks into bitter weeping, and, flinging her apron over her honest, kindly, sunburnt face, runs hurriedly away.

"She was his lass. Poor soul! poor soul!" says another woman in a hushed tone, and with deep pathos.

Holding his dead hand in hers, Portia, with steady steps, walks beside the rough bier, and so the sad procession winds its solemn way up to the old Court, with Sir Mark at its head and Dicky Browne at his feet, and Portia, with bare uplifted head and wrapt eyes, still clinging fondly to the poor clay, so well beloved by all.

Silently, with breaking hearts, they carry him into the grand old hall, and lay him reverently upon the marble flooring. Silently, they gaze upon his unmarred beauty. Not a sound--not a sob--disturbs the sacred stillness. Portia, always with his hand in hers, falls upon her knees, and, pressing it against her breast, raises her eyes devoutly heavenward. One by one, they all withdraw--Sir Mark, to break the terrible news to the old man. She is alone with her dead! With a little sigh she crouches close to him, and lays her cheek against his. The icy contact conveys no terror to her mind. She does not shrink from him, but softly, tenderly, caresses him from time to time, and yet he moves not, nor wakens into life beneath her gentle touch. Truly,


"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well."



CHAPTER XXIX.


"'Whom the gods love die young,' was said of yore."
--DON JUAN.

"Death came with friendly care."
--COLERIDGE.


IT all happened only yesterday, yet how long ago it seems already; and now the sun is shining again, bravely, cheerily, as though life is all made up of joy and gladness, and as though storms that despoil the earth, and heavier storms that wreck the soul, are miseries unknown; and yet he is dead, and she--

In silence they had carried him to his own chamber, and had laid him on his bed, she going with him always with his clay-cold hand in hers, and never a moan from her pale lips.

The storm had gone down by that, and a strange mournful stillness, terrible after the late rioting of the elements, covered all the land. The silence might be felt, and through it they listened eagerly for her sighs, and hoped for the tears that should have come to ease her stricken heart, but all in vain; and watching her they knew at last that the springs of grief within her were frozen, and that the blessed healing waters that can cool the burning fever of despair were not to flow for her. Only a certain curious calm lay on her, killing all outward demonstrations of grief. She spoke to no one, she was hardly, perhaps, at times, aware of the presence of those around her. Dulce's sobs did not rouse her. She showed no symptom of emotion when Sir Christopher bent his white head in inexplicable woe over the form of the man who had been dear to him as his own soul. As she knelt beside the corpse, she moved now and then, and her breath came and went softly, regularly, but her eyes never departed from the face before her, with its closed eyes and sad, solemn smile. Perhaps, in her strange musings, she was trying to follow him in spirit to where he had


"Gone before,
To that unknown and silent shore"


so dimly dreamt of here, because her eyes are gleaming large and clear, and almost unearthly in their brilliance.

At first, though somewhat in awe of her, they had sought by tenderest means to draw her from the room. But she had resisted, or rather been utterly deaf to all entreaties, and, kneeling by the bed that held all that she had loved or ever could love, still fed her eager gaze with sight of him, and pressed from time to time his ice-cold hand to her cheeks, her lips, her eyes.

Then Sir Mark had admonished them to let her be, and sinking into a chair, with a heavy sigh, had kept her vigil with her. Tall candles gleamed on distant tables. The night wind sighed without; footsteps came and went, and heart-broken sighs and ill-suppressed sobs disturbed the air. The little child he had loved--the poor Boodie--would not be forbidden, and, creeping into the sad room, had stolen to the bedside, and had laid upon his breast a little pallid blossom she had, secretly and alone, braved all the terrors of the dark night to gain, having traversed the quiet garden to pluck it from the tiny plot out there she called her own.

She had not been frightened when she saw him, but had stood gazing in some wonder at the indescribably pathetic smile that glorified his lips, after which she had given her hand obediently to Dicky Browne, and had gone back with him to her nursery, content, and far less sad than when she came.

Sometimes they all came and gazed on him together; Julia trembling, but subdued; Dulce with her hand in Roger's; the old man inconsolable. Now Dicky Browne whispers feeble but well-meant words of comfort to him, now Sir Mark touches his arm in silent sympathy. But they all keep somewhat apart from Portia; she has grown suddenly sacred in their eyes, as one to whom the beloved dead more especially belongs.

One of them, Sir Mark, I believe, seeing a little bit of dark-hued ribbon round his neck, bent forward, and, loosening it, draws to light a flat gold locket with the initials P. V. sunk deeply in it. His hand shook at this discovery; he hesitated; then, some fine instinct revealing to him that it might contain some hidden charm strong enough to rouse her from her unnatural calm, he touched Portia's shoulder and laid the locket in her hand.

Mechanically she opened it, yet testily too, as if unwilling or unable to keep her eyes for even the shortest space of time from the lifeless face so dear to her. But, once opened, her glance riveted itself upon its contents. Her own face looked up at her, her own eyes smiled at her. It was her portrait that she saw, painted by him, no doubt, sadly and in secret, and worn against his heart ever since.

Long she gazed at it. Her whole face changed. The terrible calm has broken up, but no grief came in its place. There was