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The trip north from Fort Magruder was a most trying experience for Philip Dru, for although he had as traveling companions Gloria and Jack Strawn, who was taking a leave of absence, the young Kentuckian felt his departure from Texas and the Army as a portentous turning point in his career.
Stand! show thyself or death! or simply to strike.... Every sound, every whisper and rustle, seemed to me portentous and extraordinary.... I prepared myself.... I bent forward.... But half-an-hour passed, an hour passed; my blood had grown quieter, colder; the consciousness that I was doing all this for nothing, that I was even a little absurd, that Malevsky had been making fun of me, began to steal over me.
Another effect of the first Italian campaign, almost as immediate and certainly more portentous, was the sudden personal fame of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was the most talked-of man in France. The people applauded him. The government feared but flattered him. Schemers and plotters of every political faith sought his support.
The conspiracy burst out a few minutes afterwards, and then there ensued a most terrifying and portentous battle, rioters and loyalists furiously attempting to kill each other by the singular expedient of clattering their swords together so as to make as much noise as possible, and then passing them under their antagonists' armpits, till the stage was heaped with corpses; and all this bloody work entirely irrespective of the valuable glass and china on the supper-table, and the costly hearthrugs strewn about the floor.
As they gathered about the fire that evening it was Bill Lightfoot who engaged his portentous interest. He listened to Bill's boastful remarks critically, cocking his head to one side and smiling whenever he mentioned his horse. "Yes, sir," asserted Bill belligerently, "I mean it that gray of mine can skin anything in the country, for a hundred yards or a mile. I've got money that says so!"
Thus magnificently attired, he attended the theater and watched the reception of the play and the effect of each individual scene, with that vicissitude of feeling incident to his mercurial nature. Johnson's prologue was solemn in itself, and being delivered by Brinsley in lugubrious tones suited to the ghost in Hamlet, seemed to throw a portentous gloom on the audience.
But from the waiting steamer looming over us, a gigantic and portentous bulk, a thin wisp of steam hums from a pipe, and hangs across the vessel, a white wraith. Yet the hum of the steam is too subdued a sound in the palpable and oppressive dusk to be significant.
I said to myself: "If I wait long enough, the guardian will turn up and show me the tombs " and I rather hoped he wouldn't turn up too soon. I sat down on a stone and lit a cigarette. As soon as I had done it, it struck me as a puerile and portentous thing to do, with that great blind house looking down at me, and all the empty avenues converging on me.
From the pale agitation of her face they recoiled, startled and alarmed. She sat down abruptly as though her knees had given way under her. Her gloved hands were perceptibly trembling in her lap. She looked straight at Sylvia, and for an instant did not speak. If she had rushed in screaming wildly, her aspect to Sylvia's eyes would scarcely have been more eloquent of portentous news to come.
She led the way with a rustle or silk petticoats and a suggestion of lifted eyebrows. She was inclined to think that the thing sounded more portentous than amusing. Thank Heaven! it was not possible for Emily to have involved herself in annoying muddles. She was not that kind of woman. When she came out of the room some twenty minutes later she did not look quite like herself.
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