Portia; Or, By Passions Rocked

At this Roger takes her up in his arms and kisses her warmly, and tells her he has "something lovely" for her up-stairs in his portmanteau, and that after dinner she must come up with him to his room, and they will unpack it together.

This announcement is very near being the cause of bloodshed. Jacky and Pussy, who have been listening intently to every word of it, now glare fiendishly upon the favored Boodie, and sullenly, but with fell determination, make a movement toward her. In another moment all might have been over, and the poor Boodie a mangled corse, but that Roger, coming hurriedly to the rescue, declares there are two other "lovely things" in his portmanteau, suitable to the requirements of Pussy and her brother, whereon peace is once more restored.

To Sir Christopher this unexpected return of Roger is an indescribable blessing. His mind at once rises above all things disagreeable; Slyme and his impertinence fade out of remembrance, at least for the present. He sees and thinks of nothing but his handsome lad, who has returned to him safe and sound. There is quite a confusion indeed just at first; every one is talking together, and nobody is dreaming of listening to anybody. All Dulce's heart seems to go out to Roger, as she marks the glad light that brightens his dark eyes as he returns Fabian's greeting.

After a little while every one sobers down, and Roger, who is looking brown and healthy, if a trifle thin, seats himself besides Dulce upon the small ottoman, that, as a rule, is supposed to be only equal to the support of one individual at a time. As neither Dulce nor Roger, however, appear in the very slightest degree uncomfortable upon it, a doubt is at once and forever afterwards thrown upon this supposition. Once only a little hitch occurs that throws a slight damp upon their content. Roger, feeling the Boodie's offering growing warm within his hands, mechanically opens it, even while carrying on his smiling tete-a-tete with Dulce, but soon the smiles vanish! There, on his open palm, lies a very serpent, a noisome reptile, a box of chocolate creams!

A most improper word escapes him. He precipitately drops the box (it is a very pretty box with a lovely young lady on the cover), chocolates and all, behind the ottoman, where they fall softly, being in a high state of decay and damp, and looks gloomily at Dulce. She responds with fervor; she is, indeed, perhaps, a trifle the gloomiest, and for a moment silence is unbroken.

Then they sigh, then they look again, then they try to pretend that nothing has happened to disturb them, and presently so far succeed that conversation once more falls into an easy channel and flows on unbrokenly.

She is smiling up at him in a happy fashion, long unknown to her, and he is looking down at her with such an amount of satisfaction and content in his gaze as cannot be mistaken. One might easily believe he has forgotten the manner of their parting, and is now regarding her as his own particular possession.

When this sort of thing has gone on for five minutes, Gower, feeling he can stand it no longer, draws his breath quickly, and going over to the small ottoman seats himself upon a low chair, quite close to his betrothed; this effort he makes to assert his position, with all the air of a man who is determined to do or die. Her fan is lying on her knee. Taking it up, with a defiant glance at Roger, he opens it, and trifles with it idly, in a sort of proprietary fashion.

Yet even while he does it, his heart is sad within him and filled with a dire foreboding. The thought that he is unwelcome, that his presence at this moment is probably being regarded in the light of an intrusion by these two, so near to him, fills him with bitterness; he is almost afraid to look at Dulce, lest he shall read in her eyes a cold disapprobation of his conduct in thus interrupting her tete-à-tete, when to his surprise a little hand is laid upon his arm, and Dulce's voice asks him a question that instantly draws him into the conversation.

She is smiling very kindly at him; more kindly indeed than she has done for many days; she is in such a happy mood, in such wonderfully gay, bright spirits, that all the world seems good to her, and it becomes necessary to her to impart her joyousness to all around. Every one must be happy to-night, she tells herself; and so, as I have said before, she smiles on Gower, and pats him gently on the arm, and raises him at once to the seventh heaven out of the very lowest depths of despair.

The change is so sudden that Stephen naturally loses his head a little. He draws his chair even nearer to the ottoman. He determines to outsit Roger. In five minutes – in half an hour, at all events – the fellow will be obliged to go and speak to somebody else, if only for decency's sake. And then there is every chance that the dressing-bell will soon ring. Dulce's extreme delight, so innocently expressed at her cousin's return had certainly given him a severe shock, but now there is no reason why he should not remain victor, and keep the prize he had been at such pains to win.

All is going well. Even with Roger freshly returned by her side, she has shown kindness to him, she has smiled upon him with a greater warmth than usual. I daresay she is determined to show her cousin her preference for him (Stephen). This thought makes him positively glow with hope and pride. By guarding against any insidious advances on the part of the enemy, by being ever at Dulce's side to interpose between her and any softly worded sentimental converse, he may conquer and drive the foe from off the field.

Not once this evening until the friendly bedroom candlesticks are produced will he quit her side – never until —

In one moment his designs are frustrated. All his plans are laid low. The voice of Julia breaks upon his ear like a death-knell. She, being fully convinced in her own mind that "poor dear Stephen" is feeling himself in the cold, and is, therefore, inconceivably wretched, determines, with most mistaken kindness, to come to the rescue.

"Stephen, may I ask you to do something for me?" she says, in her sweetest tones and with her most engaging smile.

"You may," says Mr. Gower, as in duty bound, and in an awful tone.

"Then do come and help me to wind this wool," says Julia, still in her most fetching manner, holding out for his inspection about as much scarlet wool as it would take an hour to wind, doing it at one's utmost speed.

With a murderous expression Stephen crosses the room to where she is sitting – at the very antipodes from where he would be, that is, from Dulce – and drops sullenly into a chair at her side.

"Poor dear fellow, already he is feeling injured and out of spirits," says Julia to herself, regarding him with furtive compassion.

"Beast! she is in a plot against me!" says Mr. Gower to his own soul, feeling he could willingly strangle her with her red wool.

So do we misunderstand the feelings and motives of our best friends in this world.

Dulce and Roger thus left to their own resources, continue to be openly and unrestrainedly happy. Every now and then a laugh from one or other of them comes to the stricken Stephen, sitting on his stool of repentance, winding the endless wool. By and by it becomes worse when no laugh is heard, and when the two upon the ottoman seem to be conversing in a tone that would be a whisper if it dared. To Gower it is already a whisper, and frenzy ensues.

Wild thoughts arise within his breast; something it seems to him must be done, and that soon. Shall he throw this vile wool, this scarlet abomination, in Julia's placid face, and with a naughty word defy her to hold him prisoner any longer? Or shall he fling himself bodily upon Roger and exterminate him? Or shall he publicly upbraid Dulce with her perfidy? No; this last is too mild a course, and something tells him would not create the havoc that alone can restore peace to his bosom. Shall he —

Oh, blessed sound, the dressing bell. Now she must tear herself away from this new-found cousin and go up-stairs – doubtless to array herself in her choicest garments for his delectation later on. He grinds his teeth again, as this thought comes to torment him.

Regardless of Julia's cry of horror and remonstrance, he drops the wool and rises to his feet, leaving it a hopeless mass on the carpet. He makes a step in Dulce's direction, but she, too, has got up, and before he can reach her has disappeared through the doorway, and is half-way up the old oak staircase.

He takes her in to dinner, certainly, later on, but finds, on seating himself, that Roger, by some unaccountable chance, has secured the seat on her other side. He finds out, too, presently, that she is devoting all her conversation to her cousin, and seems curiously inquisitive about his travels. She appears indeed positively athirst for information on this subject; and the soup is as naught, and the fish as sawdust, in the eyes of Mr. Gower.

"You were in Egypt, too? Tell me all about it. I have always so longed to hear about Egypt," says Dulce, with soft animation.

"Egypt?" says Roger, with some natural hesitation as to how to begin; Egypt is a big place, and just now seems a long way off. "Well, there is a good deal of it, you know; what do you want to know most?"

"Whether you enjoyed yourself – whether you were happy there?" replies she, promptly. I daresay it isn't quite the answer he had expected, because he looks at her for half a minute or so very intently.

"Happy? That includes such a great deal," he says, at length. "It is a very interesting country beyond doubt, and there are Pyramids, you know; you heard of 'em once or twice, I shouldn't wonder; and there are beggars and robbers, and more sand than I ever saw in my life, and —No," with a sudden, almost startling change of tone, "I was not happy there, or anywhere else, since last I saw you!"

"Robbers!" says Dulce, hastily, with a rather forced little laugh; "regular brigands, do you mean, going about in hordes, with tunics, and crimson sashes, and daggers. How could one be happy with such terrible people turning up at every odd corner? I daresay," trifling nervously with a wine glass, "it would make one often wish to be at home again."

"I often wished to be at home again." Somehow his manner gives her to understand that the gentlemen in crimson sashes had nothing whatever to do with this wish.

"I fancied brigands belonged exclusively to Greece and Italy," says Dulce, still intent upon the wine-glass. "Are they very picturesque, and do they really go about dressed in all the colors of the rainbow?"

Plainly Miss Blount has been carefully studying the highly-colored prints in the old school-books, in which the lawless Greeks are depicted as the gayest of the gay.

"They are about the most ill-looking ruffians it has ever been my fate to see," says Mr. Dare, indifferently.

"How disappointing! I don't believe you liked being in Egypt after all," says Dulce, who cannot resist returning to tread once more the dangerous ground.

"I think one place is about as good as another," says Mr. Dare, discontentedly, "and about as bad. One shouldn't expect too much, you know."

"Perhaps it would be as well if one didn't expect anything," says Dulce.

"Better, no doubt."

"You take a very discontented view of things; your traveling has made you cynical, I think."

"Not my traveling?"

This is almost a challenge, and she accepts it.

"What then?" she asks, a little coldly.

"Shall I tell you?" retorts he, with an unpleasant smile. "Well, no; I will spare you; it would certainly not interest you. Let us return to our subject; you are wondering why I am not in raptures about Egypt; I am wondering why I should be."

"No; I was finding fault with you because you gave me the impression that all places on earth are alike indifferent to you."

"Perhaps that is true. I don't defend myself. But I know there was a time when certain scenes were dear to me."

"There was?"

"Yes; I've outgrown it, I suppose; or else memory, rendering all things bitter, is to blame. It is our cruelest enemy, I dare say we might all be pretty comfortable forever if we could only 'Quaff the kind Nepenthe, and forget our lost Lenores!'"

"'Ock, 'm?" asks the sedate butler at this emotional moment, in his most prosaic tones.

Dulce starts perceptibly, and says "No," though she means "Yes." Roger starts too, and, being rather absent altogether, mistakes the sedate butler's broken English for good German, and says, "Hockheim?" in a questioning voice; whereupon Dicky Browne, who has overheard him, laughs immoderately and insists upon repeating the little joke to everybody. They all laugh with him, except, indeed, Portia, who happens to be miles away in thought from them, and does not hear one word of what is being said.

"Portia," says Dicky, presently.

No answer; Portia's soul is still winging its flight to unseen regions.

"Still deaf to my entreaties," says Mr. Browne, eyeing her fixedly. Something in his tone rouses her this time from her day-dreams, and, with a rather absent smile, she turns her face to his. Fabian, who has been listening to one of Mark Gore's rather pronounced opinions upon a subject that doesn't concern us here, looks up at this moment and lets his eyes rest upon her.

"Will you not deign to bestow even one word upon your slave?" asks Dicky, sweetly. "Do. He pines for it. And after all the encouragement, too, you have showered upon me of late, this behavior – this studied avoidance is strange."

"You were asking me – ?" begins Portia vaguely, with a little soft laugh.

"'Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant?'" quotes Mr. Browne, with sentimental reproach. As usual, he attacks his favorite author, and, as usual also, gives to that good man's words a meaning unknown to him.

Portia, raising her head, meets Fabian's eyes regarding her earnestly, and then and there colors hotly; there is no earthly reason why she should change color, yet she does so unmistakably, nay, painfully. She is feeling nervous and unstrung, and – not very well to-night, and even this light mention of the word love has driven all the blood from her heart to her cheeks. A moment ago they were pale as Lenten lilies, now they are dyed as deep as a damask rose.

For a moment only. She draws her breath quickly, full of anger at her own want of self-control, and then the flush fades, and she is even paler than she was before. Again she glances at Fabian, but not again do her eyes meet his. He has seemingly forgotten her very existence and has returned to his discussion with Sir Mark. He is apparently deeply interested, nay, animated, and even as she watches him he laughs aloud, a rare thing for him.

She tells herself that she is glad of this; very glad, because it may prove he has not noticed her emotion. Her awkward blush, doubtless, was unseen by him. Yet I think she is piqued at his indifference, because her eyes grow duller and her lips sadder, and there is a small, but painful, flutter at her heart, that reminds her of the days before she came to Old Court, and that compels her to press her fingers tightly together, under cover of the table-cloth, in a vain effort to subdue it.

Dicky, who had noticed her quick transitions of color, and who feels there is something wrong, without knowing what, and who also understands that he himself, however unwittingly, has been the cause of it, grows annoyed with himself, and, to distract attention, turns to the Boodie, who is generally to be found at his elbow when anything sweet is to be had.

The butler and his attendant are politely requesting the backs of all the heads to try a little jelly, or cream, or so on. This, at the Court, is virtually the children's hour, as Sir Christopher – who adores them – is of opinion that they prefer puddings to fruit, and that, as they should be made free of both, they are to put in an appearance with the first sweet every evening.

The Boodie, whose "vanity" is whipped cream, has just been helped to it, and Dicky, at this moment (that he may give Portia time to recover herself) turning to the golden-haired fairy beside him, adds to her felicity by dropping some crimson jelly into the centre of the cream.

"There now, I have made an island for you," he says.

Julia overhears him, and thinking this a capital opportunity to show off the Boodie's learning, says, proudly:

"Now, darling, tell Dicky what an island really is."

Dicky feels honestly obliged to her for following up his lead, and so breaking the awkward silence that has descended upon him and Portia.

"A tract of land entirely surrounded by water," says the Boodie, promptly, betraying a faint desire to put her hands behind her back.

"Not at all," says Mr. Browne, scornfully; "it is a bit of red jelly entirely surrounded by cream!"

"It is not," says the Boodie, with a scorn that puts his in the shade. To be just to the Boodie, she is always eager for the fray. Not a touch of cowardice about her. "How," demands she, pointing to the jelly, with a very superior smile, "how do you think one could live upon that?"

"Why not? I don't see how anyone could possibly desire anything better to live upon."

"Just fancy Robinson Crusoe on it," says the Boodie, with a derisive smile.

"I could fancy him very fat on it; I could also fancy him considering himself in great luck when he found it, or discovered it. They always discovered islands, didn't they? I should like to live on just such an island for an indefinite number of years."

"You are extremely silly," says Miss Beaufort, politely; "you know as well as I do that it wouldn't keep you up."

"Well, not, perhaps, so strongly as a few other things," acknowledges Mr. Browne, gracefully; "but I think it would support me for all that, – for a time, at least."

"Not for one minute. Why, you couldn't stand on it."

"A prolonged acquaintance with it alone might make me totter, I confess," says Mr. Browne. "But yet, if I had enough of it, I think I could stand on it very well."

"You could not," says the Boodie, indignant at being so continuously contradicted on a point so clear. "If you had ten whole jellies – if you had one as big as this house – you couldn't manage it."

"I really beg your pardon," protests Mr. Browne, with dignity. "It is my belief that I could manage it in time. I'm very fond of jelly."

"You would go right through it and come out at the other side," persists the Boodie, nothing daunted.

"Like the Thames Tunnel. How nice!" says Dicky Browne, amiably.

"Well, you can't live on it now, anyway," says the Boodie, putting the last bit of the jelly island into her small mouth.

"No, no, indeed," says Dicky, shaking his head with all the appearance of one sunk in the very deepest dejection.

CHAPTER XXIII

"I do perceive here a divided duty." —Othello.

Jealousy is the keenest, the most selfish, the most poignant of all sufferings. "It is," says Milton, "the injured lover's hell." This monster having now seized upon Stephen, is holding him in a close embrace and is swiftly crushing within him all hope and peace and joy.

To watch Dulce day after day in her cousin's society, to mark her great eyes grow brighter when he comes, is now more than he can endure. To find himself second where he had been first is intolerable to him, and a shrinking feeling that warns him he is being watched and commented upon by all the members of the Blount household, renders him at times half mad with rage and wounded pride.

Not that Dulce slights him in any way, or is cold to him, or gives him to understand, even indirectly, that she would gladly know her engagement at an end. She is both kind and gentle – much more so than before – but any doubt he had ever entertained about her having a real affection for him has now become a certainty.

He had won her unfairly. He had wrought upon her feelings in an evil hour, when her heart was torn with angry doubts and her self-love grievously hurt; when all her woman's soul was aflame with the thought that she was the unwelcome property of a man who would gladly be rid of her.

Her parting with Roger, and the unexpected emotion he had then betrayed, had opened her eyes in part, and had shown her how she had flung away the thing she desired, to gain – naught. Even now, I think she hardly knows how well she loves her cousin, or how well he loves her, so openly displayed is her pleasure in his society, so glad is the smile that welcomes him whenever he enters the room where she is, or seats himself beside her – which is very often – or when he addresses her, which means whenever he has anything at all to say to anybody.

At first he had fought manfully against his growing fears, but when a week had gone by and he had had it forced upon him that the girl he loved was every day becoming more silent and distraite in his presence, and when he had seen how she would gladly have altogether avoided his coming if she could, he lost all heart, and, flinging up his cards, let a bitter revengeful feeling enter and take possession of his heart – where love, alone, before, had held full sway.

If not his – she shall at least never be Roger's. This he swears to himself, with white lips and eyes dangerously bright.

He has her promise, and he will keep her to it. Nothing shall induce him to release her from it; or if he has to consent to her not fulfilling her engagement with him, it shall be only on condition that she will never marry Dare. Even should she come to him with tears in her eyes and on her bended knees to ask him to alter this decision, she will beg in vain. He registers a bitter vow that Roger shall not triumph where he has failed.

He knows Dulce sufficiently well to understand that she will think a good deal of breaking the word she gave him of her own free will, even though she gave it in anger and to her own undoing. He can calculate to a nicety the finer shades of remorse and self-contempt that will possess her when he lays his case in all its nakedness before her. She is a wilful, hot-tempered little thing, but the Blounts for generations have been famed for a strain of honor toward friend and foe that runs in their blood, and is dear to them as their lives. Therefore he knows her word will be as sacred to her as her bond.

To Stephen just at this time the world is a howling wilderness; there is no sun anywhere, and every spring is dry. He has fallen into the habit of coming very seldom to the Court, where he used to be morning, noon, and night, ever since his unlucky engagement; indeed, no one in the house or out of it has seen him since the day before yesterday.

Sitting at home, brooding over his wrongs, with a short and well-blackened pipe in his mouth, he is giving himself up a victim to despair and rage. That he can still love her with even, it seems to him, a deeper intensity than before, is the bitterest drop in his cup. It was all so sudden, so unexpected. He tortures himself now with the false belief that she was beginning to love him, that she might have loved him had time been given him, and had Egypt held Roger but a few months longer in her foster arms. In a little flash it had all come to him, and now his life is barren, void of interest, and full of ceaseless pain.

"Bring withered Autumn leaves,Call everything that grieves,And build a funeral pyre above his head!Heap there all golden promise that deceives,Beauty that wins the heart, and then bereaves,For love is dead."Not slowly did he die.A meteor from the skyFalls not so swiftly as his spirit fled —When, with regretful, half-averted eye,He gave one little smile, one little sigh,And so was sped."

These verses, and such as these, he reads between his doleful musings. It gives him some wretched comfort to believe Dulce had actually some sparks of love for him before her cousin's return. An erroneous belief, as she had never cared for him in that way at all, and at her best moments had only a calm friendship for him. It is my own opinion that even if Roger had never returned she yet would have found an excuse at some time to break off her engagement with Gower, or, at least, to let him understand that she would wish it broken.