Portia Part 39

"You think he wants proof?" She is facing him now, and her eyes are flashing in the growing twilight.

"I do," says Stephen, defiantly. "For months he has treated you with all the airs of a proprietor, and you have submitted to it. All the world could see it. He will believe you _sorry_ by-and-by for what has now happened; and if he should marry before you, what will they all say--what will you feel? What--"

She is now as pale as death. She lifts her hand and lays it impulsively against his lips, as though to prevent his further speech. She is trembling a little (from anger, she tells herself), and her breath is coming quickly and unevenly, so she stands for a moment collecting herself, with her fingers pressed against his lips, and then the agitation dies, and a strange coldness takes its place.

"You are sure you love me?" she asks, at length, in a hard, clear voice, so unlike her usual soft tones, that it startles even herself.

"My beloved, can't you see it?" he says, with deep emotion.

"Very well, then, I will marry you some day. And--and to-morrow--it must be _to-morrow_--you will let Roger know I am engaged to you? You quite understand?"

He does, though he will not acknowledge it even to himself.

"Dulce, my own soul!" he says, brokenly; and, kneeling on the gra.s.s at her feet, he lifts both her hands and presses them pa.s.sionately to his lips.

They are so cold and lifeless that they chill him to his very heart.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Too early seen unknown, and known too late!"

--ROMEO AND JULIET.

"There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee."

--HENRY IV.

IT is next day. There has been rain in the night--_heavy_ rain--and the earth looks soaked and brown and desolate. Great storms, too, had arisen, and scattered the unoffending leaves far and wide, until all the paths are strewn with rustling types of death. Just now the drops are falling, too--not so angrily as at the midnight past, but persistently, and with a miserable obstinacy that defies all hope of sunshine. "The windy night" has made "a rainy morrow," and sorrowful, indeed, is the face of Nature.

Sorrowful, too, is the household. A lack of geniality pervades it from garret to bas.e.m.e.nt; no one seems quite to know what is the matter, but "_suspect_" that "crow that flies in Heaven's sweetest air" stalks rampant up stairs and down, and damps the ardor of everyone.

Dulce had waked early, had risen from her bed, and--with the curious feeling full upon her of one who breaks her slumber _knowingly_ that some grief had happened to her over night, the remembrance of which eludes her in a tantalizing fashion--had thrown wide her window, and gazed with troubled eyes upon the dawning world.

Then knowledge came to her, and the thought that she had made a new contract that must influence all her life, and with this knowledge a sinking of the heart, but no drawing back and no repentance. She dressed herself; she knelt down and said her prayers, but peace did not come to her, or rest or comfort of any sort, only an unholy feeling of revenge, and an angry satisfaction that should not have found a home in her gentle breast.

She dressed herself with great care. Her prettiest morning gown she donned, and going into the garden plucked a last Marechal Niel rose and placed it against her soft cheek, that was tinted as delicate as itself.

And then came breakfast. And with a defiant air, but with some inward shrinking she took her place behind the urn, and prepared to pour out tea for the man who yesterday was her affianced husband, but who for the future must be less than nothing to her.

But as fate ordains it she is not called upon to administer bohea to Roger this morning. Mr. Dare does not put in appearance, and breakfast is got through--without, indeed, an outbreak of any sort, but in a dismal fashion that bespeaks breakers ahead, and suggests hidden but terrible possibilities in the future.

Dulce is decidedly cross; a sense of depression is weighing her down, a miserable state of melancholy that renders her unjust in her estimate of all those around her. She tells herself she hates Roger; and then again that she hates Stephen, too; and then the poor child's eyes fill with tears born of a heartache and difficult of repression; to a.n.a.lyze them she knows instinctively would be madness, so she blinks them bravely back again to their native land, and having so got rid of them, gives herself up to impotent and foolish rage, and rails inwardly against the world and things generally.

Even to Portia she is impatient, and Julia she has annihilated twice.

The latter has been lamenting all the morning over a milliner's bill that in length and heaviness has far exceeded her antic.i.p.ations.

But this is nothing; Julia is always so lamenting, and indeed, I never yet saw the milliner's bill, however honest, that wasn't considered a downright swindle, and three times as exorbitant as it ought to be!

"Now look at this, my dear Dulce," says the un.o.bservant Julia, holding out a strip of paper about half a yard in length to Miss Blount, who has been ominously silent for the past hour. "I a.s.sure you the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs on that dress _never_ came to that. They were meagre to the last degree; just a little _suspicion_ of lace, and a touch of velvet here and there.

It is absurd--it is a fraud. Did _your_ tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs ever come to that?"

"Don't know, I'm sure," says Dulce, impatiently; "I never keep any accounts of my own money. I make a _point_ of not doing that. If it's spent, it's spent, you know, and one gains nothing by thinking of it. It only shows one how extravagant one has been, and I do so _hate_ scolding myself!"

"But, my dear child, Madame Grande _must_ have made a mistake. It is all nonsense; if you would just look it over, if only to convince yourself.

I am not unreasonable."

"I won't look it over," says Miss Blount, promptly. "I _hate_ looking over things, and I hate bills, and I hate Madame Grande, and I hate--everything."

After this outburst she makes for the door, and the morning-room knows her no more for a considerable time. Portia looks up from her painting in some surprise, and Julia tries to smother the thought that the final expression of hatred should have ended in the word "_you_."

In the hall outside, Dulce almost runs into Stephen's arms, who has come up to see her very early, being in a restless and most unsatisfactory mood. His eyes brighten and he flushes warmly as he meets her, but she, drawing back from him, gives him to understand by the very faintest of imperative gestures that he is to come no nearer.

"You!" she says, ungraciously.

"Yes--you expected me?" This question suggests the possibility that he fears he is not altogether welcome. She waives it, and goes on as though she had not heard him.

"Have you done what you promised?" she asks, coldly.

"No, you mean--?" he hesitates.

"You _must_ remember. You were to tell Roger next day; _this_ (though it hardly sounds right) is next day; _have_ you told him that I have promised to marry you some time?"

There is not the faintest nervousness or girlish confusion in her tone.

Stephen, watching her closely, feels a terrible despair that threatens to overwhelm him. If only one little blush would mantle her cheek, if for one second her beautiful, feverishly bright eyes would droop before his! He battles with the growing misery, and for the time being, allays it.

"Not yet;" he says. Then he colors hotly, and his eyes leaving her face seek the ground. A sense of shame betrays itself in every feature. "It is early yet," he says, in a strange reluctant tone; "and if--if you think it better to put it off for a day or two, or even to let him find out for himself by degrees--or--"

"No!"--remorselessly--"he shall be told _now--at once_! Remember all you said about him last evening. _I_ have not forgotten. What!" cries she, with sudden pa.s.sion, "do you think I will live another day believing he imagines me regretful of my decision--cut to the heart, perhaps, that I am no longer anything to him? I tell you no! The very thought is intolerable."

"But--"

"There must be no hesitation," she says, interrupting him with a quick gesture. "It was in our agreement that he should be told to-day. If one part of that agreement is to be broken, why then, let us break it all; it is not too late yet. _I_ shall not care, and perhaps it will be better if--"

Her cruelty stings him into vehement declaration.

"It will _not_ be better," he says, wrathfully. "I will do anything, everything, you wish, except"--bitterly--"give you up."

To him it seems a wretched certainty that it _is_ her wish _already_ to break the bond formed between them but a few short hours ago. Has she so soon repented?

"Where is Roger?" he asks, turning from her, all the lover's gladness gone from his eyes. He is looking stern and pale, and as a man might who is determined to do that against which his soul revolts.

How shall he tell this man, who was once his dearest friend, that he has behaved as a very traitor to him.

"In the stables, no doubt," replies she, scornfully. The change in his manner has not touched her; nay, he tells himself it has not so much as been noticed by her.

Moving abruptly away, he goes down the hall and out of the open door, and down the stone steps across the gleaming sunshine, and so is lost to sight.