Portia Part 54

CHAPTER XXIII.

"I do perceive here a divided duty."--_Oth.e.l.lo._

JEALOUSY is the keenest, the most selfish, the most poignant of all sufferings. "It is," says Milton, "the injured lover's h.e.l.l." 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 sky Falls 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.

To-day is fine, though frosty, and everybody, the children included, are skating on the lake, which is to be found about half a mile from the house at the foot of a "wind-beaten hill." The sun is shining coldly, as though steadily determined to give no heat, and a sullen wind is coming up from the distant sh.o.r.e. "Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound," and must now, therefore, be happy, as Boreas is a.s.serting himself n.o.bly, both on land and sea.

Some of the _jeunesse doree_ of the neighborhood, who have been lunching at the Court, are with the group upon the lake, and are cutting (some of them) the most remarkable figures, in every sense of the word, to their own and everybody else's delight.

Dulce, who is dressed in brown velvet and fur, is gliding gracefully hither and thither with her hand fast locked in Roger's. Julia is making rather an exhibition of herself, and Portia, who skates--as she does everything else--to perfection, but who is easily tired, is just now sitting upon the bank with the devoted d.i.c.ky by her side. Sir Mark, coming up to these last two, drops lazily down on the gra.s.s at Portia's other side.

"Why don't you skate, Mark?" asks Portia, turning to him.

"Too old," says Gore.

"Nonsense! You are not too old for other things that require far greater exertion. For one example, you will dance all night and never show sign of fatigue."

"I like waltzing."

"Ah! and not skating."

"It hurts when one falls," says Mark, with a yawn; "and why put oneself in a position likely to create stars before one's eyes, and a violent headache at any moment?"

"Inferior drink, if you take enough of it, will do all that sometimes,"

says Mr. Browne, innocently.

"Will it? I don't know anything about it" (severely). "You do, I shouldn't wonder; you speak so feelingly."

"If you address me like that again, I shall cry," says d.i.c.ky, sadly.

"Why are not you and Portia skating? It is far too cold to sit still on this damp gra.s.s."

"I am tired," says Portia, smiling rather languidly. "It sounds very affected, doesn't it? but really I am very easily fatigued. The least little exertion does me up. Town life, I suppose. But I enjoy sitting here and watching the others."

"So do I," says Sir Mark. "It quite warms my heart to see them flitting to and fro over there like a pretty dream."

"What part of your heart?" asks Mr. Browne, with a suppressed chuckle--"the c.o.c.kles of it?" It is plain he has not yet forgotten his snubbing of a minute since.

n.o.body takes any notice of this outrageous speech. It is pa.s.sed over very properly in the deadliest silence.

"By Jove!" says Sir Mark, presently, "there's Macpherson down again.

That's the eighteenth time; I've counted it."

"He can't skate a little screw," says d.i.c.ky. "It's a pity to be looking at him. It only raises angry pa.s.sions in one's breast. He ought to go home and put his head in a bag."

"A well-floured one," responded Sir Mark.

Portia laughs. Her laugh is always the lowest, softest thing imaginable.

"Charitable pair," she says.

"Why, the fellow can't stand," says Mr. Browne, irritably. "And he looks so abominably contented with himself and his deplorable performance.

That last time he was merely trying to get from that point there to that," waving his hand in both directions. "Any fool could do it. See, I'll show you." He jumps to his feet, gets on to the ice, essays to do what Captain Macpherson had tried to do, and succeeds in doing exactly what Captain Macpherson _did_. That is to say, he instantly comes a most tremendous cropper right in front of Portia.

Red, certainly, but consumed with laughter at his own defeat, he returns to her side. There is no use in attempting it, nothing earthly could have power to subdue d.i.c.ky's spirits. He is quite as delighted at his own discomfiture as if it had happened to somebody else.

"You were right, d.i.c.ky," says Sir Mark, when he can speak, "_Any_ fool could do it. _You_ did it."

"I did," says d.i.c.ky, roaring with laughter; "with a vengeance. Never mind--

'Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'"

"I hardly think I follow you," says Sir Mark. "Where's the dust, d.i.c.ky, and where's the just? I can't see either of them."

"My dear fellow, never be literal; nothing is so--so boring," says Mr.

Browne, with conviction. "I'm," striking his chest, "the dust, and there," pointing to the lake, "is the just, and--no, by-the-by, that don't sound right--I mean--"