CHAPTER XXI.
"'Tis impossible to love and be wise."
They return. The early Winter night has fallen, and in the smaller drawing-room the curtains are already drawn, and though no lamps are lit, a sweet, chattering, gossiping fire sheds a radiance round that betrays all things to the view.
As Dulce enters the room everyone says, "Well, Dulce," in the pleasantest way possible, and makes way for her, but Miss Blount goes into the shade and sits there in a singularly silent fashion.
Sir Mark, noting her mood, feels within him a lazy desire to go to her and break the unusual taciturnity that surrounds her.
"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 passible."
"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 glass 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 Dicky Browne is holding high revelry amongst his friends.
Dicky 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 Dicky, 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, embarrassing. I am half an orphan, some of you might be a father to me sometimes."
"So we will, Dicky, in a body," says Mark Gore, cheerfully.
"I like that," says Portia, laughing. "Instead of looking after you, Dicky, 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, Dicky, 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 goddess.
"Down South," says Dicky. "Not in Carolina, exactly, but in Devon. It does remind one of the ten little nigger boys, doesn't it?" Then he begins with a quite uncalled for amount of energy, "'Eight little nigger 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 niggers," 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, Dicky?" 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 Dicky, 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 Dicky, 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. "Dicky," 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 Dicky, 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 class 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 fashion. 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, Dicky?" 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 assistant."
"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-class; 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.
"To-morrow will be Christmas Day," says the Boodie, suddenly. She is lying, as usual, full length upon the hearth-rug, with her chin sunk between both her palms, and her eyes fixed upon the fire. This remark she addresses apparently to a glowing cinder. "I wonder if I shall get many presents," she says, "and if they will be things to love."
"How sweet it is to study the simplicity, the lack of mercenary thought in the little child," says Dicky, regarding her with admiration; "now this dear Boodie of ours would quite as soon have an ugly present as a pretty one; she thinks only of the affection of the giver of it."
"I do not," says the Boodie, stoutly, "and I'd hate an ugly present;" then, with a sudden change of tone, "have you anything for me?"
"Darling," murmured Julia, with mild reproof.
"Certainly not," says Mr. Browne, promptly; "I want you to love me for myself alone!"
"Really nothing?" persists the Boodie, as if unable to credit her senses.
"Really nothing."
"Then what did you go to London for last week?" demands the irate Boodie, with rising and totally unsuppressed indignation.
This question fills Mr. Browne with much secret amusement.
"There have been rare occasions," he says, mildly, "on which I have gone to town to do a few other things besides purchasing gifts for you."
"I never heard anything so mean," says the Boodie, alluding to his unprofitable visit to the metropolis, "I wouldn't"—with the finest, the most withering disgust—"have believed it of you! And let me tell you this, Dicky Browne, I'll take very good care I don't give you the present I have been keeping for you for a whole week; and by-and-bye, when you hear what it is, you will be sorrier than ever you were in your life."
This awful speech she delivers with the greatest gusto. Mr. Browne, without a moment's hesitation, flings himself upon his knees before her in an attitude suggestive of the direst despair.
"Oh, don't do me out of my Christmas-box," he entreats, tearfully; "I know what your gifts are like, and I would not miss one for any earthly consideration. My lovely Boodie! reconsider your words. I will give you a present to-morrow" (already the biggest doll in Christendom is in her nurse's possession, with strict injunctions to let her have it, with his love and a kiss, the first thing in the morning); "I'll do anything, if you will only bestow upon me the priceless treasure at which you have darkly hinted."
"Well, we'll see," returns the Boodie, in a reserved tone; after which Mr. Browne once more returns to his seat and his senses.
But, unfortunately, the Boodie has not yet quite finished all she has to say. Rolling her little, lithe body over until she rests upon her back, and letting her arms fall behind her sunny head in one of her graceful, kittenish ways, she says, pathetically:
"Oh, how I wish Roger was here! He always was good to us, wasn't he, Pussy?" to her sister, who is striving hard to ruin her sight by stringing glass beads in the flickering firelight. "I wonder where he is now!"
As Roger Dare's name has been tabooed amongst them of late, this direct and open allusion to him falls like a thunderbolt in their midst.
Nobody says anything. Nobody does anything. Only in one dark corner, where the light does not penetrate, one white hand closes nervously upon another, and the owner of both draws her breath hurriedly.
Dicky Browne is the first to recover himself. He comes to the rescue with the most praiseworthy nonchalance.
"Didn't you hear about him?" he asks the Boodie, in a tone replete with melancholy. "He traveled too far, his hankering after savages was as extraordinary as it was dangerous; in his case it has been fatal. One lovely morning, when the sun was shining, and all the world was alight with smiles, they caught him. It was breakfast hour, and they were hungry; therefore they ate him (it is their playful habit), nicely fried in tomato sauce."
At this doleful tale, Jacky, who is lying about in some other corner, explodes merrily, Pussy following suit; but the Boodie, who is plainly annoyed at this frivolous allusion to her favorite, maintains her gravity and her dignity at the same time.
"Nobody would eat Roger," she says.
"Why not? Like 'the boy, Billie,' he is still 'young and tender.'"
"Nobody would be unkind to Roger," persists the Boodie, unmoved. "And besides, when he was going away he told me he would be back on New Year's Day, and Roger never told a lie."
"'He will return, I know him well,'" quotes Mr. Browne.
This quotation is thrown away upon the Boodie.
"Yes, he will," she says, in all good faith. "He will be here, I know, to-morrow week. I am going to keep the present I have for him, until then. I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it any longer," says the Boodie, regretfully, "because—"
She hesitates.
"Because it wouldn't let you. I know what it is, it is chocolate creams," says Dicky Browne, making this unlucky speech triumphantly.
It is too much! The bare mention of these sweetmeats, fraught as they are to her with bitterest memories, awake a long slumbering grief within Dulce's breast. Fretted by her interview with Stephen; sore at heart because of the child's persistent allusion to her absent cousin, this last stab, this mention of the curious cause of their parting, quite overcomes her.
Putting up her hands to her face, she rises precipitately to her feet, and then, unable to control herself, bursts into tears.
"Dulce! what is it?" exclaims Portia, going quickly to her, and encircling her with her arms. Stephen, too, makes a step forward, and then stops abruptly.
"It is nothing—nothing," sobs Dulce, struggling with her emotion; and then, finding the conflict vain, and that grief has fairly conquered her, she lays down her arms, and clinging to Portia, whispers audibly, with all the unreasoning sorrow of a tired child, "I want Roger."
Even as she makes it, the enormity of her confession comes home to her, and terrifies her. Without daring to cast a glance at Stephen, who is standing rigid and white as death against the mantelpiece, she slips out of Portia's arms and escapes from the room.
Another awkward pause ensues. Decidedly this Christmas Eve is not a successful one. To tell the truth, everyone is very much frightened, and is wondering secretly how Stephen will take it. When the silence has become positively unbearable, Sir Mark rises to the situation.
"That is just like Dulce," he says—and really the amount of feigned amusement he throws into his tone is worthy of all admiration; though to be quite honest I must confess it imposes upon nobody—"when she is out of spirits she invariably asks for somebody on whom she is in the habit of venting her spleen. Poor Roger! he is well out of it to-night, I think. We have all noticed, have we not," turning, with abject entreaty in his eyes, to every one in the room except Stephen, "that Dulce has been very much depressed during the last hour?"
"Yes, we have all noticed that," says Portia, hurriedly, coming nobly to his assistance.
Dicky Browne, stooping towards her, whispers, softly:
"Quoth Hudibras—'It is in vain,
I see, to argue 'gainst the grain!'"
"I don't understand," says Portia; just because she doesn't want to.
"Don't you?—well, you ought. Can't you see that, in spite of her determination to hate Roger, she loves him a thousand times better than that fellow over there?—and I'm very glad of it," winds up Dicky, viciously, who has always sorely missed Roger, and, though when with him quarrelled from dawn to dewy eve, he still looks upon him as the one friend in the world to whom his soul cleaveth.
"Yes, I, too, have noticed her curious silence. Who could have vexed her! Was it you, Stephen?" asks Julia, who is as clever as Dicky at always saying the wrong thing.
"Not that I am aware of," replies Gower, haughtily. Calling to mind his late conversation with his betrothed, he naturally looks upon himself as the aggrieved party. All she had said then, her coldness, her petulance—worse than all, her indifference—are still fresh with him, and rankles within his breast. Coming a little more into the ruddy light of the fire, he says, slowly, addressing Portia,
"As—as Miss Blount seems rather upset about something, I think I shall not stay to dinner to-night. Will you excuse me to her?"
"Oh, do stay!" says Portia, uncertain how to act. She says this, too, in spite of a pronounced prod from Dicky Browne, who is plainly desirous of increasing the rupture between Stephen and Dulce. May not such a rupture reinstate Roger upon his former throne? Oddly enough, Dicky, who has no more perspicacity than an owl, has arranged within himself that Roger would be as glad to renew his old relations with Dulce as she would be to renew hers with him.
"There are other things that will take me home to-night, irrespective of Dulce," says Stephen, smiling upon Portia, and telling his lie valiantly. "Good night, Miss Vibart."
And then he bids adieu to the others, quite composedly, though his brain is on fire with jealousy, not even omitting the children. Sir Mark and Dicky, feeling some vague compassion for him, go with him to the hall door, and there, having bidden him a hearty farewell, send him on his way.
"I give you my word," says Dicky Browne, confidentially detaining Sir Mark, forcibly, "we haven't had a happy day since she engaged herself to Gower; I mean since Roger's departure. Look here, Gore, it is my opinion she doesn't care that for him," with an emphatic and very eloquent snap of his fingers.
"For once in my life, Dicky, I entirely agree with you," says Sir Mark, gloomily.