Portia Part 18

"I thought it was arranged that we were not to speak to each other again," says Dulce, with considerable severity.

Now Portia, being strange to the household, is a little frightened, and a good deal grieved by this pa.s.sage at arms.

"Is it really so bad as they would have us think?" she says, in a low tone, to Sir Mark, whom she has beckoned to her side. "Is it really all over between them?"

"Oh, dear, no!" says Sir Mark, with the fine smile that characterizes his lean, dark face. "Don't make yourself unhappy; _we_ are quite accustomed to their idiosyncrasies by this time; you, of course, have yet much to learn. But, when I tell you that, to my certain knowledge, they have bid each other an eternal adieu every week during the past three years, you will have your first lesson in the art of understanding them."

"Ah! you give me hope," says Portia, smiling.

At this moment Mr. Gower enters the room.

"Ah! how d'ye do!" says Dulce, nestling up to him, her soft skirts making a gentle _frou-frou_ as she moves; "_so_ glad you have come. You are late, are you not?" She gives him her hand, and smiles up into his eyes. To all the others her excessive cordiality means only a desire to chagrin Dare, to Stephen Gower it means--well, perhaps, at this point of their acquaintance he hardly knows what it means--but it certainly heightens her charms in his sight.

"Am I?" he says, in answer to her remark. "That is just what has been puzzling me. My watch has gone to the bad, and all the way here I have felt as if the distance between my place and the Hall was longer than I had ever known it before. If I am to judge by my own impatience to be here, I am late, indeed."

She smiles again at this, and says, softly:

"You are not wet, I hope? Such a day to come out. It was a little rash, was it not?"

With the gentlest air of solicitude she lays one little white jeweled hand upon his coat sleeve, as though to a.s.sure herself no rain had alighted there. Gower laughs gaily.

"Wet? No," he says, gazing at her with unmistakable admiration. His eyes betray the fact that he would gladly have lifted the small jeweled hand from his arm to his lips; but, as it is, he does not dare so much as to touch it though never so lightly. "Rain does me more good than harm," he says.

"How did you come?" asks she, still charmingly anxious about his well-being.

"I rode. A very good mare, too; though it seemed to me she never traveled so slowly as to-day."

"You rode? Ah! then you got all that last heavy shower," says Dulce, who has plainly made up her mind to go in for compa.s.sion of the very purest and simplest.

"My _dear_ fellow!" puts in Roger at this juncture, "you don't half consider yourself. Why on earth didn't you order out the covered carriage and a few fur rugs?"

Gower colors; but Roger is smiling so naturally that he cannot, without great loss of courtesy, take offence. Treating Dare's remark, however, as beneath notice, he turns and addresses himself solely to Dulce.

"To tell you the truth," he says, calmly, "I adore rain. A sunny hour is all very well in its way, and possesses its charms, no doubt, but for choice give me a rattling good shower."

To Roger, of course, this a.s.sertion, spoken so innocently, is quite too utterly delicious. Indeed, everybody smiles more or less, as he or she remembers the cause of the quarrel a moment since. Had Gower been thinking for ever, he could hardly have made a speech so calculated to annoy Dulce as that just made. To add to her discomfiture, Roger laughs aloud, a somewhat bitter, irritating laugh, that galls her to the quick.

"I must say I cannot sympathize with your taste," she says, very petulantly, to Gower; and then, before that young man has time to recover from the shock received through the abrupt change of her manner from "sweetness and light" to transcendental gloom, she finishes his defeat by turning her back upon him, and sinking into a chair beside Portia.

"A gleam of suns.h.i.+ne at last," exclaims Sir Mark, at this moment, coming for the third time to the surface, in the fond hope of once more restoring peace to those around.

"Ah, yes, it is true," says Portia, holding up her hand to let the solitary beam light upon it. It lies there willingly enough, and upon her white gown, and upon her knitting needles, that sparkle like diamonds beneath its touch.

"And the rain has ceased," says Julia. "How nice of it. By-the-by, where is Fabian?"

"You know he never sees anyone," says Dulce, a little reproachfully, and in a very low tone.

"But why?" asks Portia, turning her face to Dulce. Even as she speaks she regrets her question, and she colors a hot, beautiful crimson as the quick vehemence of her tone strikes on her own ears.

Sir Mark, leaning over her chair, says:

"Two lessons in one day? Ambitious pupil! Well, if you must learn, know this: Fabian never goes anywhere, except to church, and never receives anybody even in his own home, for a reason that, I suppose, even you are acquainted with." He looks keenly at her as he speaks.

"Yes--I know--that is, I have heard, of course," says Portia, in a very still fas.h.i.+on, bending her eyes upon her knitting once more.

"How suddenly the rain has ceased," says some one; "it will be a very charming evening after all."

"The flowers are already beginning to hold up their poor heads," says Dulce, gazing down anxiously at the "garden quaint and fair" that stretches itself beneath the window. The skies are clearing, the clouds are melting away, far up above in the dark blue dome that overshadows the earth.

"The great Minister of Nature, that upon the world imprints the virtue of the heaven, and doles out Time for us with his beam," is coming slowly into view from between two dusky clouds, and is flinging abroad his yellow gleams of light.

"I hear wheels," says d.i.c.ky Browne, suddenly.

Everybody wakes up at once; and all the women try surrept.i.tiously to get a glimpse of their hair in the mirrors.

"Who can it be?" says Dulce, anxiously.

"If we went to the upper window we could see," says d.i.c.ky Browne, kindly, whereupon they all rise in a body, and, regardless of tempers and dignity, run to the window that overlooks the avenue, and gaze down upon the gravel to see who fate may be bringing them.

It brings them a vehicle that fills them with consternation--a vehicle that it would be charitable to suppose was built in the dark ages, and had never seen the light until now. It is more like a sarcophagus than anything else, and is drawn by the fossilized remains of two animals that perhaps in happier times were named horses. For to-day, to enable their mistress to reach Blount Hall, they have plainly been galvanized, and have, in fact, traversed the road that lies between the Hall and Blount Hollow on strictly scientific principles.

"The Gaunt equipage!" says d.i.c.ky Browne, in an awestruck tone. n.o.body answers him. Everybody is overfilled with a sense of oppression, because of the fact; that the ancient carriage beneath contains a still more ancient female, fatally familiar to them all. Smiles fade from their faces. All is gloom.

Meantime, the coachman (who has evidently come straight from the Ark), having turned some handle that compels the galvanized beasts to come to a standstill, descends, with slow and fearful steps, to the ground.

He has thrown the reins to another old man who is sitting on the box beside him, and who, though only ten years his junior, is always referred to by him as "the boy." Letting down a miraculous amount of steps, he gives his arm to a dilapidated old woman, who, with much dignity, and more difficulty, essays to reach the gravel.

"Some day or other, when out driving," says d.i.c.ky Browne, meditatively, "those three old people will go to sleep, and those animated skeletons will carry them to the land where they would _not_ be."

Then a step is heard outside, and they all run back to their seats and sink into them, and succeed in looking exactly as if they had never quitted them for the past three hours, as the door opens and the man announces Miss Gaunt.

"Remember the puddings," says d.i.c.ky Browne, in a careful aside, as Dulce rises to receive her first guest.

She is tall--and gaunt as her name. She is old, but strong-minded. She affects women's rights, and all that sort of thing, and makes herself excessively troublesome at times. Women, in her opinion, are long-suffering, down-trodden angels; all men are brutes! Meetings got up for the purpose of making men and women detest each other are generously encouraged by her. It is useless to explain her further, as she has little to do with the story, and, of course, you have all met her once (I hope not twice) in your lifetimes.

Dulce goes up to greet her with her usual gracious smile. Then she is gently reminded that she once met Julia Beaufort before, and then she is introduced to Portia. To the men she says little, regarding them probably as beings beneath notice, all, that is, excepting d.i.c.ky Browne, who insists on conversing with her, and treating her with the most liberal cordiality, whether she likes it or not.

Dexterously he leads up the conversation, until culinary matters are brought into question, when Miss Gaunt says in her slow, crus.h.i.+ng fas.h.i.+on:

"How do you like that last woman I sent you? Satisfactory, eh?"

"Cook, do you mean?" asks Dulce, to gain time.

"Yes--cook," says the old lady, uncompromisingly. "She was"--severely--"in my opinion, one of the best cooks I ever met."

"Yes, of course, I dare say. We just think her cooking a little monotonous," says poor Dulce, feeling as if she is a culprit fresh brought to the bar of justice.

"Monotonous!" says Miss Gaunt, in an affronted tone, giving her bonnet an indignant touch that plants it carefully over her left ear. "I don't think I understand. A monotonous cook! In my day there were bad cooks, and good cooks, and indifferent cooks, but monotonous cooks--never! Am I to believe by your accusation that she repeats herself?"