Portia Part 16

"Ah! so late!" says Dulce, with a little start. "How swiftly time has gone to-night. I never knew it fly with such hot haste. That proves I have been happy, does it not?"

She smiles down upon Mr. Gower, who is still at her feet, and he smiles up only too willingly at her.

At this moment a dark figure emerges from amongst the moaning firs, and comes toward them. In the uncertain and somewhat ghostly light it appears of an unusually large size. Dulce draws her breath a little quickly, and Julia, feeling her duty lies in this direction, gives way to a dainty scream. Portia, whose eyes have been upon this new comer for a full minute before the others noticed him, only turns her head away, and lets it sink a degree more lazily into the cus.h.i.+on of her chair.

The firs mounting high into the sky, stand out boldly against their azure background. Fabian, in answer to Julia's touch of affectation, advances with more haste, and says:

"It is only me," in his usual clear, slow voice.

Pa.s.sing by Portia's chair, he drops into her lap a little bunch of dark blue flowers.

"Ah!" she says quickly, then checks herself. Taking up the deeply-dyed blossoms, she lays them in her pink palm, and, bending her face over them, examines them silently. Sir Mark, regarding her curiously from the background, wonders whether she is thinking of them or of their donor.

"Why, those are the flowers we were talking about," says Dulce, with a faint contraction of her brows. "Fabian! Did you risk your life to get them?"

"Your life!" says Portia, in an indescribable tone, and as if the words are drawn from her against her will. I think she had made up her mind to keep utter silence, but some horror connected with Dulce's hasty remark has unbound her lips. She turns her eyes upon him, and he can see by the moonlight that her face is very white.

"My dear fellow," says Sir Mark, "you grow more eccentric daily. Now this last act was rashness itself. That cliff is very nearly impa.s.sable, and in this uncertain light--"

"It was the simplest thing in the world," says Fabian, coldly. "There was the ledge Dulce told you of, and plenty of tough heather to hold on by. I a.s.sure you, if there was the smallest danger, I should not have attempted it. And, besides, I was fully rewarded for any trouble I undertook. The view up there to-night is magnificent."

To Portia it is an easy matter to translate this last remark. He is giving her plainly to understand that he neither seeks nor desires thanks from _her_. The view has sufficed him. It was to let his eyes feast upon the glorious riches nature had spread before him that led him up the mountain-side, not a foolish longing to gratify her whim at any cost to himself.

She looks at the flowers again, and with one tapered finger turns them over and over in her hand.

"Well, good people," says Sir Mark, rising to his feet, "as it is eleven o'clock, and as the dew is falling, and as you are all plainly bent on committing suicide by means of rheumatism, neuralgia and catarrhs generally, I shall leave you and seek my virtuous couch."

"What's a catarrh?" asks d.i.c.ky Browne, confidentially, of no one in particular.

"A cold in your nose," replies Roger, uncompromisingly.

"I thought it was something to play on," says Mr. Browne unabashed.

"Dear me! Is it really eleven?" asks Julia. "I should never have thought it,"--in reality she thought it was twelve--"why did you not tell me?"--this to the attentive d.i.c.ky, who is placing a shawl round her shoulders--"you must have known."

"'With thee conversing I forget all time,'" quotes that ardent personage, with a beautiful smile. "I thought it was only nine."

Even with this flagrant lie Julia is well pleased.

"Dulce, tuck up your gown, the gra.s.s is really wet," says Roger, carelessly, "and put this round you." He goes up to her, as he speaks, with a soft white scarf in his hands.

"Thank you; Mr. Gower will put it on for me," says Dulce, rather more wilfully than coquettishly handing the wrap to Stephen, who takes it as if it were some sacred symbol, and, with nervous care, smothers her slender figure in it. Roger, with a faint shrug, turns away, and devotes his attentions to Sir Mark.

Portia, still with the flowers in her hand, has wandered away from the others, and entering the drawing-room before they have mounted the balcony steps, goes up to a mirror and regards herself attentively for a moment.

A little gold brooch, of Indian workmans.h.i.+p, is fastening the lace at her bosom. She loosens it, and then raises the flowers (now growing rather crushed and drooping) as if with the evident intention of placing them, by means of the brooch, against her neck.

Yet, even with her hand half lifted she hesitates, glances at her own image again; and finally, turning away, leaves the brooch empty.

Fabian, entering the drawing-room at this moment with the others, has had time to notice the action, the hesitation, everything.

Then comes bed hour. The men prepare to go to the smoking-room--the women think fondly of their own rooms and their maids.

Fabian, lighting a candle, takes it up to Portia. They are all standing in the hall now, beneath the light of the hanging lamps. She smiles her thanks without letting her eyes meet his, and lets him place the candle in her left hand.

"Have you hurt this?" he asks, lightly touching her right hand as he speaks.

"No." She pauses a moment, and then, slowly opening her closed fingers, shows him the blue flowers lying therein.

"They are lovely," she says, in a low tone, "and I _did_ wish for them.

But never--_never_--do that again."

"Do what again?"

"Endanger your life for me."

"There was no danger--and you had expressed a wish for them."

CHAPTER X.

"Every one is as G.o.d made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse!"

--MIGUEL DE CERVANTES.

WITH a continuous sob and a roar from the distant ocean the storm beats on. All night it has hurled itself upon path and lawn with impotent fury; towards morning it still rages, and even now, when noonday is at its height, its anger is not yet expended.

The rain falls in heavy torrents, the trees bow and creak most mournfully, the rose leaves--sweet-scented and pink as glowing morn--are scattered along the walks, or else, lifted high in air by vehement gusts of wind, are dashed hither and thither in a mazy dance full of pa.s.sion and despair.

"Just three o'clock," says Dulce, drearily, "and what weather!"

"It is always bad on your day," says Julia, with a carefully suppressed yawn. Julia, when yawning, is not pretty. "I remember when I was here last year, that Thursday, as a rule, was the most melancholy day in the week."

Indeed, as she speaks, she looks more than melancholy, almost aggrieved.

She has donned her most sensational garments (there is any amount of red about them) and her most recherche cap to greet the country, and naught cometh but the rain.

"I don't know anything more melancholy at any time than one's at-home day," says d.i.c.ky Browne, meditatively, and very sorrowfully; "It is like Sunday, it puts every one out of sorts, and creates evil tempers all round. I never yet knew any family that didn't go down to zero when brought face to face with the fact that to-day they must receive their friends."

"It's a pity you can't talk sense," says Dulce, with a small curl of her upper lip.

"It's a pity I _can_, you mean. I am too above-board, too genuine for the times in which we live. My candor will be my ruin!" says Mr. Browne, hopelessly unabashed.

"It will!" declares Roger, in a tone that perhaps it will be wise not to go into.

"I suppose n.o.body will come here to-day," says Portia, somewhat disappointedly; they have been indoors all day, and have become so low in spirit, that even the idea of possible visitors is to be welcomed with delight.

"n.o.body," returns Sir Mark, "except the Boers and Miss Gaunt, and _they_ are utter certainties; they always come; they never fail us; they are thoroughly safe people in every respect."