Portia by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (great novels .TXT) 📕

in a quick, nervous fashion. "Nothing matters much, does it? And now that we are on it, I will answer your question. I believe if I were the only woman in the world, Roger would never have even liked me! He seemed _glad, thankful_, when I gave him a release; _almost_," steadily, "as glad as I was to give it!"

"_Were_ you glad!" asks Gower, eagerly. Going up to her, he takes her hand and holds it with unconscious force in both his own.

"Am I to think that you doubt me?" she says with a frown.

"Shall I ever have occasion to doubt you?" says Gower, with sudden passion. "Dulce! now that you are free, will you listen to me? I have only one thought in the world, and that is you, always you! Have I any chance with you? My darling, my own, be kind to me and try to take me to your heart."

The tears well into her eyes. She does not turn from him, but there is no joy in her face at this honest outburst, only trouble and perplexity, and a memory that stings. There is, too, some very keen gratitude.

"_You_ at least do not hate me," she says, with a faint, sobbing cadence in her voice, that desolates, but sweetens it. Her lips quiver. In very truth she is thankful to him in a measure. Her heart warms to him. There is to her a comfort in the thought (a comfort she would have shrunk from acknowledging even to herself) in the certainty that he would be only too proud, too pleased, to be to her what another might have tried to be but would not. Here is this man before her, willing at a word from her to prostrate himself at her feet, while Roger--

"Hate you!" says Gower, with intense feeling. "Whatever joy or sorrow comes of this hour, I shall always know that I really _lived_ in the days when I knew you. My heart, and soul and life, are all yours to do with as you will. I am completely at your mercy."

"Do not talk to me like that," says Dulce, faintly.

"Darling, let me speak now, once for all. I am not perhaps just what you would wish me, but _try_ to like me, will you?"

He is so humble in his wooing that he would have touched the hearts of most women. Dulce grows very pale, and moves a step away from him. A half-frightened expression comes into her eyes, and shrinking still farther away, she releases her hand from his grasp.

"You are angry with me," says Stephen, anxiously, trying bravely not to betray the grief and pain her manner has caused him; "but hear me. I will be your true lover till my life's end; your will shall be my law. It will be my dearest privilege to be at your feet forever. Let me be your slave, your servant, _anything_, but at least yours. I love you! Say you will marry me some time."

"Oh, no--_no_--NO!" cries she, softly, but vehemently, covering her eyes with her hands.

"You shall not say that," exclaims he passionately; "why should I not win my way with you as well as another, now that you say that you are heart whole. Let me plead my cause?" Here he hesitates, and then plays his last card. "You tell me you have discarded Roger," he says, slowly; "when you did so (forgive me), did he appeal against your decision?"

"No," says Dulce, in a tone so low that he can scarcely hear her.

"Forgive me once more," he says, "if I say that he never appreciated you. And you--where is your pride? Will you not show him now that what he treated with coldness another is only too glad to give all he has for in exchange? Think of this, Dulce. If you wished it I would die for you."

"I almost think I do wish it," says Dulce, with a faint little laugh; but there is a kindness in her voice new to it, and just once she lifts her eyes and looks at him shyly, but sweetly.

Profiting by this gleam of sunshine, Gower takes possession of her hand again and draws her gently towards him.

"You _will_ marry me," he says, "when you think of everything." There is a meaning in his tone she cannot fail to understand.

"Would you," she says tremulously, "marry a woman who does not care for you?"

"When you are once my wife I will teach you to care for me. Such love as mine must create a return."

"You think that now; you feel sure of it. But suppose you failed! No drawing back. It is too dangerous an experiment."

"I defy the danger. I will not believe that it exists; and even if it did--still I should have you."

"Yes, that is just it," she says, wearily. "But how would it be with me? I should have you, too, but--" Her pause is full of eloquence.

"Try to trust me," he says, in a rather disheartened tone. He is feeling suddenly cast down and dispirited, in spite of his determination to be cool and brave, and to win her against all odds.

To this she says nothing, and silence falls upon them. Her eyes are on the ground; her face is grave and thoughtful. Watching her with deepest anxiety, he tells himself that perhaps after all he may still be victor--that his fears a moment since were groundless. Is she not content to be with him? Her face--how sweet, how calm it is! She is thinking, it may be, of him, of what he has said, of his great and lasting love for her, of--

"I wonder whom Roger will marry now," she says, dreamily, breaking in cruelly upon his fond reverie, and dashing to pieces by this speech all the pretty Spanish castles he has been building in mid-air.

"Can you think of nothing but him?" he says, bitterly, with a quick frown.

"Why should I not think of him?" says Dulce, quite as bitterly. "Is it not natural? An hour ago I looked upon him as my future husband; now he is less to me than nothing! A sudden transition, is it not, from one character to another? _Then_ a possible husband, _now_ a stranger! It is surely something to let one's mind dwell upon."

"Well, let us discuss him, then," exclaims he, savagely. "You speak of his marrying. Perhaps he will bestow his priceless charms on Portia."

"Oh, no!" hastily; "Portia is quite unsuited to him."

"Julia, then?"

"Certainly not _Julia_," disdainfully.

"Miss Vernon, then? She has position and money and so-called beauty."

"Maud Vernon! what an absurd idea; he would be wretched with her."

"Then," with a last remnant of patience, "let us say Lilian Langdale."

"A fast, horsey, unladylike girl like that! How could you imagine Roger would even _look_ at her! Nonsense!"

"It seems to me," says Stephen, with extreme acrimony, "that no one in this county is good enough for Roger; even you, it appears, fell short."

"I did not," indignantly. "It was I, of my own free will, who gave him up."

"Prove that to him by accepting _me_."

"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 grass at her feet, he lifts both her hands and presses them passionately 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 basement; 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.