Portia Part 49

"Why so mute, fair maid?" he asks, dropping into a chair near hers.

"Am I mute?" she asks in her turn, thereby betraying the fact that she has been very far from them in her inmost thoughts.

"Rather," says Sir Mark; "would you think me rude if I asked the subject of your waking dreams?"

"No; I was merely thinking what an unsatisfactory place this world is."

She says this slowly, turning her large eyes somewhat wistfully on his.

If she likes any one on earth honestly it is Mark Gore.

"What a morbid speech," returns he. "Do you want a footstool, or a cup of tea, or what? Evidently something has made the whole world gray to you. And I can't even agree with you, I think this present world an uncommonly good old place, all things considered. Rough on us now and then, but quite pa.s.sible."

"You are happy," she says.

"And you?"--he lets his keen eyes seek hers--"of what can you complain?

You seem one of fortune's favorites. Have you not got as your most devoted slave the man of your heart?"

"I suppose so." There is a thorough lack of enthusiasm in her tone, that irritates him. He puts the end of his mustache into his mouth and chews it slowly, a certain sign that he is both grieved and annoyed. Then he changes his gla.s.s from his right eye to his left, after all of which he feels better for the moment.

"And besides," he says, with a valiant determination to follow his cross-examination to its bitter end, "you have successfully got rid of the man you hate. I refer to Roger."

"I suppose so." Just the same answer, in just the same tone.

Sir Mark is plainly indignant. Perhaps he had hoped to see her betray some emotion on the mention of her cousin's name, but if so he is disappointed.

"You grow apathetic," he says, somewhat sharply. "Soon you will care for nothing. A bad trick for any girl to learn."

"I have learned that trick already. I care for very little now," says Dulce, in a perfectly even tone. Her hands, lying in her lap, are without motion. Her eyelids are without a tremor. "And yet she is _not_ heartless," says Sir Mark to himself, reflectively. "I suppose she is only acting for my special benefit, and though it is rather a good performance, it is of no earthly use, as I can see right through her."

Nevertheless he is angry with her, and presently rising, he goes away from her to where d.i.c.ky Browne is holding high revelry amongst his friends.

d.i.c.ky has only just arrived. He has been absent all day, and is now being questioned--desired to give an account of himself and his time ever since breakfast-time.

"It is something new to be asked where I have been," says Mr. Browne, who also thinks it will be as new as it is nice for him to take the aggrieved tone and go in heavily on the ill-used tack.

"Never mind that," says Julia; "tell us only--where _have_ you been?"

"Well, really, I hardly quite know," says d.i.c.ky, delightfully vague as usual. "Round about the place, don't you know."

"But you must remember where?"

"As a rule," says Mr. Browne, meditatively, "I come and go, and no account is taken of my wanderings. To-night all is different, now I am put under a cross-examination that reduces me to despair. This is unfair, it is cruel. If you would always act thus it would be gratifying, but to get up an interest in me on rare occasions such as the present, is, to say the least of it, embarra.s.sing. I am half an orphan, some of you might be a father to me sometimes."

"So we will, d.i.c.ky, in a body," says Mark Gore, cheerfully.

"I like that," says Portia, laughing. "Instead of looking after _you_, d.i.c.ky, I rather think we want some one to look after _us_."

"Well, I'll do that with pleasure," says Mr. Browne. "It is my highest ambition. To be allowed to look after you has been the dream of my life for months:

"'Thy elder brother I would be, Thy _father_, _anything_ to thee!'"

"By-the-by, d.i.c.ky, where is your father now?" asks Stephen Gower, who is leaning against the mantelpiece in Dulce's vicinity, but not quite close to her. Ill-temper, called dignity, forbids his nearer approach to his G.o.ddess.

"Down South," says d.i.c.ky. "_Not_ in Carolina, exactly, but in Devon. It _does_ remind one of the ten little n.i.g.g.e.r boys, doesn't it?" Then he begins with a quite uncalled for amount of energy, "'Eight little n.i.g.g.e.r boys traveling in Devon, one overslept hisself, and then there were seven,'" and would probably have continued the dismal ditty up to the bitter end, but that Sir Mark calls him up sharp.

"Never mind the n.i.g.g.e.rs," he says, "tell us about your father. Where is he now?"

"Down at the old place, cursing his fate, no doubt. By-the-bye, talking of my ancestral home, I wish some day you would all come and put in a month there. Will you?"

"We will," says Julia, directly. Julia is always ready to go anywhere, children and all, at a moment's notice.

"Is it a nice place, d.i.c.ky?" asks Sir Mark, cautiously.

"No, it isn't," says Mr. Browne; "not _now_, you know. I hear it used to be; but there's no believing old people, they lie like fun. I'll get it settled up for all of you, if you'll promise to come, but just at present it isn't much. It is an odd old place, all doors and dust, and rats, I shouldn't wonder."

"That's nothing," says Gower. "Anything else against it?"

"Well, I don't know," replies d.i.c.ky, gloomily. "It _smells_, I think."

"Smells! good gracious, of what?" asks Julia.

"_Bones!_" says Mr. Browne, mysteriously. "_Dead_ bones!"

"What sort of bones?" asks Portia, starting into life, and really growing a little pale, even beneath the crimson glare of the pine logs.

"Human bones!" says d.i.c.ky, growing more gloomy as he says this, and marks with rapture the impression it makes upon his audience. "It reminds one of graves, and sarcophaguses, and cemeteries, and horrid things that rustle in coffin cloths, and mop and mow in corners. But if you will come, I will make you all heartily welcome."

"Thank you. No, I don't think _I'll_ come," says Julia, casting an uneasy glance behind her; the recesses of the room are but dimly lit, and appear ghostlike, highly suggestive of things uncanny from where she sits. "d.i.c.ky," pathetically, not to say affrightedly, "you have told us plenty about your horrid old house; don't tell us any more."

"There isn't any more to tell," says d.i.c.ky, who is quite content with his success so far.

"You haven't yet told us where you were all day," says Portia, lowering her fan to look at him.

"In the village for the most part--I dote on the village--interviewing the school and the children. Mr. Redmond got hold of me, and took me in to see the infants. It was your cla.s.s I saw, I think, Dulce; it was so uncommonly badly behaved."

Dulce, in her dark corner, gives no sign that she has heard this gracious speech.

"I don't think much of your schoolmaster either," goes on Mr. Browne, unabashed. "His French, I should say, is not his strong point. Perhaps he speaks it 'after the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,' for certainly 'Frenche of Paris, is to him unknowe?'"

"I shouldn't think one would look for foreign languages from a village schoolmaster," says Sir Mark, lazily.

"I _didn't_ look for it, my good fellow, he absolutely showered it upon me; and in the oddest fas.h.i.+on. I confess I didn't understand him. He has evidently a trick of coloring his conversation with fine words--a trick beyond me."

"What did he say to you, d.i.c.ky?" asks Julia, whose curiosity is excited.

"He told me a story," says Mr. Browne; "I'll tell it again to you now, if you like, but I don't suppose you _will_ like, because, as I said before, I don't understand it myself. It was hardly a story either, it was more a diatribe about his a.s.sistant."

"Peter Greene?"

"Ye--es. This objectionable young man's name was Peter, though, if the the schoolmaster is to be believed, he isn't _green_. 'Sir,' said he to me, 'that Peter is a bad lot--no worse. He can teach the Latin, and the Greek, and the astronomy, fust-cla.s.s; but as for probity or truth, or honest dealin's of any sort, he is _au revoir_!' What on earth did he mean?" says Mr. Browne, turning a face, bright with innocence, upon the group that surrounds the fire.