Portia says nothing.
"Well, certainly, at times they are amusing," says Mrs. Beaufort, as though just awaking to the fact that now and again one _can_ find a man with some wit or humor in him--"and I honestly confess"--with a little laugh and a great a.s.sumption of candor--"that I wish even Stephen Gower would drop in now and help us to pa.s.s away an hour or two."
"_Even_ Stephen Gower!" repeats Dulce. "Julia, what has that poor young man done to you, that you should speak thus meanly of him? _Even_, what an unkind word!"
"I don"t believe I quite meant it, do you know," says Julia, relenting.
"I like Stephen Gower very much. By-the-by, what do you think of him? I never yet heard you express an opinion, good or bad, about him. Do it now."
Leaning back in her chair, Dulce slowly and thoughtfully raises her arms in the air, with her fingers tipping each other, until presently they fall indolently behind her head, where she lets them lie.
"Well, let me see," she says, lazily, "I think, perhaps, like Chaucer"s man, he is a "veray parfit gentil knight.""
Portia lifts her eyes from her painting and turns them slowly upon her cousin; she regards her very silently for a moment or two, and then she smiles, and leaning forward, opens her lips.
""And of his port as meke as is a mayde,"" she says, mischievously, purposely choosing the same poet for her quotation that Dulce had taken for hers.
Miss Blount laughs.
"You, too, are severe upon our neighbor," she says, defending him more from obstinacy than from real desire to see justice done. "I confess he is at times a trifle too mild, but not effeminate, surely?"
"He is very handsome," says Portia, evasively.
"He has a charming mouth," says Dulce.
"I think you ought only to look at Roger"s mouth," says Julia, prudishly, whereupon Dulce shrugs her shoulders, impatiently, and, turning, devotes herself for the next ten minutes to the small artist lying at her feet--an attention received by the imperturbable Boodie with the most exasperating unconcern.
The afternoon wanes; day is sinking to its rest. Behind the tall dark firs "the great gold sun-G.o.d, blazing through the sky" may still be seen, but now he grows aweary, and would fain give place to his sister, the pale moon.
"The sweet keen smell--the sighing sound" of coming night is on the air.
The restless ocean is rolling inland with a monotonous roar; there is scarcely sufficient breeze to ruffle the leaves of the huge chestnut that stands near one corner of the old house, not far from the balcony outside the drawing-room windows, where Mrs. Beaufort and the two girls are sitting.
The children are playing somewhere in the distance. Their sweet and merry voices come up to the balcony now and then, and mingle with the breath of descending night.
And now from beneath the fir trees two figures emerge, and come towards the stone steps where their hostess is sitting.
"Are you clean?" asks Dulce, with a charming smile, leaning over the railings to see them better as they draw closer.
"To confess a horrid truth, I don"t believe we are," says Stephen Gower, glancing up at her, and regarding his rough shooting coat somewhat ruefully. "Will that admission exclude us from Paradise?"
"Dulce," says d.i.c.ky Browne, who is the second of the two figures, "I"m worn out. I"ve been walking all day, a thing I very seldom do; I have been firing off an unlimited number of cartridges, without, I am bound to confess--I am, as experience has doubtless taught you, a remarkably truthful person--without any very brilliant consequences, and I feel that very little more fatigue will be my death. Have compa.s.sion on us.
We faint, we die; show mercy and give us some tea and some cake. You"re awfully hungry, Gower, aren"t you?"
"Well, not very," says Mr. Gower, too occupied in his contemplation of Dulce"s charming face to be quite alive to what is so plainly expected of him.
"Oh, nonsense! He is tremendously hungry," says d.i.c.ky Browne. "Let us up, Dulce, and we will sit out there on the balcony, and won"t soil anything. Except gore, there isn"t much staining about us."
"But that is worse than anything," says Dulce with a shudder. "However, come up, and if you keep _very_ far away, I daresay I shan"t mind much."
"Hard conditions," says Gower, in a lower tone.
So tea is got for them again, and the children, who always seem to _feel_ when plum-cake is to be had, come trooping noisily up the steps to join, uninvited, in the festivities.
Great content follows, and, indeed, all is peace until something said by the Boodie creates a confusion that sweeps calm to the winds. She has ensconced herself on Mr. Gower"s knee, without saying so much as "by your leave" or "with your leave," and now, raising one soft little dimpled hand to his chin, turns his face towards her own, and for a full minute regards him with silent curiosity.
"Well, is your Highness satisfied?" says Gower, feeling amused.
The Boodie takes no notice of this enquiry. She puckers up her smooth brows as if puzzled, and then says, slowly--
"I don"t believe one word of it!"
"Of what?" says Gower. Everybody by this time is looking at the Boodie, and the Boodie is steadfastly regarding Stephen Gower.
"It wasn"t true what she said," goes on the Boodie, meditatively, "because you have hair on your lip. _Girls_ don"t have hair on their lips--do they?"
"Not as a general rule," says d.i.c.ky Browne. "There _have_ been n.o.ble exceptions, but unhappily they are rare. Miss Gaunt is perhaps the only girl down here who can boast of hirsute adornment, and the growth upon her upper lip is not to be despised. But then she belongs to the higher and more powerful cla.s.s of females, in fact, as Wordsworth so touchingly expresses it, she
"Wears upon her forehead clear The freedom of a mountaineer."
I always--mildly--think Wordsworth must have been acquainted with Miss Gaunt."
"Go on," says Stephen to the Boodie, who is still lost in thought. "You have not yet told me what it is you disbelieve."
"It was something Portia said," returns the Boodie, composedly.
"That _I_ said! surely you are mistaken, darling," says Portia.
"No, I am not," persists the Boodie, in an unmoved tone.
"Stephen," again turning his face to hers, "are you "meke"?"
At this word all the truth becomes at once known to Portia and Dulce.
The Boodie had been in the room when they were discussing Stephen with her mother. She had heard everything. She is a little pitcher--she has long ears. Can nothing be done to stop her further speech?
"He is a very nice boy, but I"m not prepared to go as far as calling him meek," says d.i.c.ky Browne, who begins to scent mischief in the air. "Who applied that word to him?"
"I think it is time all you children ran away to nurse," says Julia, in answer to an agonized glance from both girls.
"It was Portia," says the Boodie to d.i.c.ky Browne, in her sweet innocent treble. "Dulce said first he was a "knight," and then Portia said he was a "meek maid." She said something, too, about "port," but I don"t think she meant Uncle Christopher"s port; I think she meant Stephen"s."
Deadly silence follows this bombsh.e.l.l. As Mr. Gower, only the day before, had been reading the "Canterbury Tales" for them in his very best old English style, it is impossible to believe the two quotations from them, used in the morning, are not now alive in his memory.
Gower colors, and looks questioningly at Dulce. His expression is not altogether one of chagrin. The child had said she (Dulce) had called him a knight--"a veray parfit gentil knight" it must have been. There is comfort, and even gladness in this thought; so much comfort, that he even feels inclined to forgive Portia for comparing him to a "mayde."
Still, some awkwardness is naturally felt by all--except the Boodie, who yawns indifferently, and finally follows the other children up to the nursery--and every one is vainly trying to think of some commonplace remark, that, when uttered, shall have the effect of restoring conversation once more into a safe channel, when an interruption occurs that puts chagrin and awkwardness out of their minds for the rest of the evening.
First upon the air the reports of two guns being fired off quickly, one after the other; then the quick flinty sound of a horse"s galloping hoofs.
Nearer they came, and still nearer, with that mad haste belonging to them, that suggests unmanageable fury in the brute beast; and as all on the balcony rise simultaneously and press forward to see what may be coming, Bess and the dog-cart turn the corner near the chestnut tree, and dash onwards towards the lower lawn.